Pen-Elayne on the Web

Clear as Mud

My bullshit detector (BD) went off pretty early this morning, during the Today Show's interview with Steve Emerson regarding the latest supposed Osama bin Laden tape. The program, which is practically a paeon now to Richard Effin' Butler (Matt Lauer even invoked his name five minutes later), has earned more and more of my healthy skepticism as their drumbeats for war grow ever louder. And here were Emerson and Katie Couric talking about how bin Laden was threatening retaliation if we attack Iraq! Huh?, I said. Aren't Hussein and bin Laden like mortal enemies? So of course I had to do a Google search on Emerson's name instead of, you know, getting dressed for work or something. And as I suspected, the batteries in my BD still don't need changing! Here's what FAIR has on him. Yeah, I always go to FAIR first because they tend to document faux journalists and expose "experts" best. But this idiot goes back further than 9-11; back on 11/5/00, Doug Henwood wrote this about him. Basically, the guy's a virulent anti-Arab, and my memory was refreshed as to where I'd initially heard his name - he was the first one to point fingers at Arabs after the Oklahoma City bombing in '95. Oh, and for those of you wondering, like me, why the Official US Government Translation says the tape mentions "our sons in Iraq" (or "our children in Baghdad" according to this translation) if there's no love lost between bin Laden and Hussein, the speaker is probably referring to this. Anyway, what Robin found most telling about this interview was how many times Emerson said "obviously" and "clearly" - if it's all so clear and obvious, why does one need an analyst in the first place? So that set us off on a Wallace-Shawn-in-Princess-Bride riff - "So you see, I can clearly not choose the war in front of me!"