Earlier today, I posted a bit about Wesley Clark that was based on a piece by George Will. In that piece, Will accused Clark of claiming that the White House pressured him to say there was a link between the 9/11 attacks and Saddam Hussein.
From Will's column:
As Clark crisscrosses the country listening for a clamor for him ("I expect to have my decision made by Sept. 19," when he visits Iowa -- feel the suspense), he compounds the confusion that began when he said on June 15 that on 9/11 "I got a call at my home" saying that when he was to appear on CNN, "You've got to say this is connected" to Iraq. "It came from the White House, it came from people around the White House. It came from all over." But who exactly called Clark?July 1: "A fellow in Canada who is part of a Middle Eastern think tank." There is no such Canadian institution. Anyway, who "from the White House"? "I'm not going to go into those sources. . . . People told me things in confidence that I don't have any right to betray."
July 18: "No one from the White House asked me to link Saddam Hussein to Sept. 11."
Will 's article makes it appear that at one point, Clark claimed that the White House pressured him to report a linkage, then later reneged on that claim.
But the truth is somewhat different. As reported by John Williams at Open Source, Will distorted the transcript:
Will reversed the order of Clark's statements! In the Russert interview, the "it" in the segment where Clark says "It came from the White House" refers to a "concerted effort ... to pin 9/11 and the terrorism problem on Saddam Hussein." But the way George Will orders it, "it" seems to refer to the call Clark says he received.This lexical twist lets George Will suggest that Clark's most famous story has changed a few times.
John supplies a link to the actual transcript which backs him up.
GEN. CLARK: I think it was an effort to convince the American people to do something, and I think there was an immediate determination right after 9/11 that Saddam Hussein was one of the keys to winning the war on terror. Whether it was the need just to strike out or whether he was a linchpin in this, there was a concerted effort during the fall of 2001 starting immediately after 9/11 to pin 9/11 and the terrorism problem on Saddam Hussein.
MR. RUSSERT: By who? Who did that?
GEN. CLARK: Well, it came from the White House, it came from people around the White House. It came from all over. I got a call on 9/11. I was on CNN, and I got a call at my home saying, “You got to say this is connected. This is state-sponsored terrorism. This has to be connected to Saddam Hussein.” I said, “But—I’m willing to say it but what’s your evidence?” And I never got any evidence. And these were people who had—Middle East think tanks and people like this and it was a lot of pressure to connect this and there were a lot of assumptions made.
It is clear that Will's manipulation of the transcript changed the meaning of Clark's remarks, creating an appearance of a flip-flop that simply did not occur. It's every bit as dishonest as anything Dowd has written. I expected better from Will.
Posted by Rich at September 19, 2003 9:40 PM | TrackBackI don't think this is close to a Dowd-ism, but maybe I am missing the point.
While the "It" (in temporal order) does take "concerted effort" as its antecedent (and that is not unimportant), I have re-read this thing three or four times and I keep reading what follows ("I got a call on 9/11...") as being in apposition with the antecedent. So the call on 9/11, to my understanding, is not different from "concerted effort"; it is in essence an integral part of the "concerted effort".
Will may have misleadingly simplified in order to make his point, and you can justly call him on that, but, unless I need a second cup of coffee, it sure seems to me that the essential meaning that he conveys is not inaccurate. Honestly, if I am misreading this, please clarify.
At this point, I still think that Clark implied that the White House (or people "around" the White House) wanted him to make public statements connecting 9/11 and Saddam. Clark subsequently pinned it on a Middle East think tank in Canada. I think Clark is the one who has some 'splainin' to do.
Posted by: Pablo on September 20, 2003 10:58 AMWhile I agree that Will's treatment of the quote was wrong, it's not half as bad as what Dowd has repeatedly done -- which either reverses the meaning of what the speaker's said, or else creates completely new meaning out of whole cloth.
Here, I think that Clark's original statement, as reflected in the transcript was ambiguous (perhaps deliberately so). I think Clark either fostered, or at least permitted, the inference that the call came from people "close to the White House." He did not, however, assert that as a positive fact. Will's statement removes Clark's "strategic ambiguity" in a way that is unfair.
In short, while I basically agree with your point, I think saying he's as bad as Dowd is an overstatement.
Posted by: Spoons on September 20, 2003 10:59 AMIt is a fact that any two points can be connected. That is what Lawyers do. What is at question here is how direct the connection is. The closest I can get to a direct connection is that Iraq is the centerpeice of Khilafah ( The idea of a single unified state under Islamic Law; aka Sharia). By Westernizing Iraq, the Khilafah plan would take a mortal blow. In theory, at least. I'm not so sure, Ideas die hard. Look at long the totally In5an3 Idea of Socialism has hung on. The only real cure for a bad Idea is a a better Idea. And since the idea of Western Democracy hasn't been able to replace the idea of Socialism, despite all the evidence of socialism's flaw, I don't really see how it will replace Khilafah, which is just an extreme brand of socialism. Regardless, using Iraq as a fulcrum to leverage Khilafah into the the trash can of history is better then the other solutions. And as Patton said, 'A good plan, done now with vigor, is better then a perfect plan done next week', or something like that. So there is your connection, sort of.
Terrorists
Terrorism
Khilafah
Iraq.
The alternative to working back down the chain involves Piks-Dans and decades of de-contamination efforts, as well as centuries of guilt. Exterminating the Arabs is possible but not desirable. A Mencken solution. And we can't surrender, since the enemy isn't taking prisoners. So while I don't think the Current plan will work, I can't think of anything better. And it will buy time. The Donks can't come up with a better answer either, so I don't feel to bad. As a Major Blogger, why don't you start a drive/quest to find a better solution then doing to the Arabs what we did to the American Indians. Have you heard that joke yet?
T.
It seems unlikely Mr Will expected readers to believe a phone call "came from the White House," "came from people around the White House," "came from all over"--that's nonsensical. Agreed it is a poorly constructed passage, but Pablo's "misleadingly simplified" describes it pretty well.
Anyway, the charge of dowdification is on a peripheral point. George isn't implying Clark flip-flopped--it's clear from the rest of the article he's accusing him of making it up. The most appropriate criticism would be over the ambiguous implication of dishonesty . . . but it's hard for any Clark supporter to make that case in this instance, since he was doing the same thing.
Enjoy the Instalanche.
Posted by: Cecil Turner on September 20, 2003 11:37 AMDowdification? Gen. Clark's statement was a subtle one designed to elicit the inference that the White House had marshalled it's legions in the VRWC to influence the punditry. The White House may in fact have done so, but if that is so, why is Gen. Clark backpeddling? Either way, this seems to be quite similar to the "Uranium in Africa" comment - designed to subtly influence public opinion on a hot topic while using literal accuracy as a shield against criticism of the comments obvious intent. Of course, I don't see the "Clark lied" meme bouncing around the Old Media world yet, nor do I suspect I will. This is, imho, to the good, but does seem the support the "the media is biased" meme. Waiting and watching . . .
Posted by: Mac on September 20, 2003 11:51 AMI saw the Russert program on original airing. George Will did not distort what Clark said. Clark claimed the white house called him and told him to connect 9/11 to Sadaam. Russert went back to the topic several times during the program. Clark then hemmed and hawed and came up with this canadian think tank thing.
Why is the national media so hell bent on supporting the enemy?
Posted by: Terry on September 20, 2003 12:12 PMRich,
I think that you're exactly right. Will changed the order of Clark's quotes to produce a false impression that Clark accused the White House of calling him. Read in its entirety and in the correct order, it's very hard for a fair-minded person to get that interpretation.
There's another error Will's column, which you quote above. He says that Clark attributed the call to "A fellow in Canada who is part of a Middle Eastern think tank." Will interjects, "There is no such Canadian institution."
But there are several, as a quick Google search will reveal. For example, there's the B’Nai Brith Canada Institute for International Affairs, the Inter-University Consortium for Arab and Middle Eastern Studies, the Canadian-Arab Federation, the Canadian Institute for Jewish Research, and the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies.
Terry, you're remembering incorrectly. You can go to the transcript here:
http://stacks.msnbc.com/news/927000.asp
and search for the word "Canadian." It isn't used. Then search for the word "call", and try to find the question where Tim Russert follows up about the source of the call. It doesn't exist; Russert doesn't ask him about it again.
Great post; thanks very much.
Great post; thanks very much.
Posted by: Ted Barlow on September 20, 2003 1:14 PM(oops, sorry for the double sign-off there.)
Posted by: Ted Barlow on September 20, 2003 1:15 PMRich
: "It is clear that Will's manipulation of the transcript changed the meaning of Clark's remarks... It's every bit as dishonest as anything Dowd has written.
Pablo: "At this point, I still think that Clark implied that the White House (or people "around" the White House) wanted him to make public statements connecting 9/11 and Saddam. Clark subsequently pinned it on a Middle East think tank in Canada. I think Clark is the one who has some 'splainin' to do."Pablo's exactly right. The people who defend Clark and attack Will need to explain what they think the general meant to convey. Did he mean to say he got a call from:
a) "the White House"
b) "people around the White House"
c) "all over"
d) a nonexistent Canadian think tank
Rich, do you really think Clark didn't intend to leave listeners with the impression that the White House pressured him to lie on the air about an al Qaeda-Hussein link?
Btw, I think "Dowdlerize" should replace "Dowdify." The latter is so dowdy.
Posted by: Michael on September 20, 2003 3:05 PMTed, Clark was obviously trying to imply that he was being pressured by people close to the WH to say there was a link to Iraq. It isn't just in one interview and you seem to be ignoring the fact that he did this over a period of time.
The reason you don't find reference to a Canadian Middle East think tank in the June 15th MtP transcript is because Clark was trying to imply that "the call" came from someone close to the WH. In subsequent interviews he tried to backpedal and move the think tank to Canada (kinda like, "I had sex with this really hot girl... You wouldn't know her... She's from Canada".) And then he tries to put it on the Jews:
Aug. 25: It came from "a Middle East think tank in Canada, the man who's the brother of a very close friend of mine in Belgium. He's very well connected to Israeli intelligence. . . . I haven't changed my position. There's no waffling on it. It's just as clear as could be."Will was right. Clark is a liar. Posted by: ajf on September 20, 2003 3:08 PM
But Clark has those bewitching "Dan Quayle eyes" -- he'll just mesmerize you and get away with it. Or start WWIII.
Posted by: Wes, Jr. on September 20, 2003 4:02 PMWill's interpretation is identical to that of FAIR as well. See http://www.fair.org/press-releases/clark-iraq.html. It's absurd to claim that Clark did not either intentionally or unintentionally imply that the call he supposedly received on 9/11 was from the White House or someone closely connected with the White House.
Posted by: Brian Carnell on September 20, 2003 4:07 PMOh, Paul Krugman also mentioned Clark's comments in a column and also thought Clark was talking about a call from the WH. Clark sent a letter to the Times to explain the "misunderstanding." See this.
Posted by: Brian Carnell on September 20, 2003 4:09 PMThe theory being put forward is that General Clark intentionally is trying to confuse people into thinking that the White House of calling him to try to get him to tie September 11th to Saddam. Clark's story is that he recieved a call from a Canadian think tank, not the White House. We're all agreed, right?
He had the interview in question on June 15. FAIR, a liberal media watch who want to argue that the White House was, indeed, trying to tie Septemeber 11th to Saddam, misinterpreted his remarks. (No matter what you think of Clark, whether you think that it's an easy misinterpretation or a hard one, it's clear that it is, in fact, a misinterpretation to say that he accused the White House. You can look at the transcript; he just didn't say that.)
FAIR's accusations are picked up by Gene Lyons and, on July 15th, by Paul Krugman. Not a lot of people read press releases by FAIR or Gene Lyons, but many people read Paul Krugman, including General Clark.
Hooray! Clark would have been thinking. My misleading worked!
In fact, he was so glad that his remarks had been misinterpreted in the way he intended that he...
well, he wrote a letter to the New York Times correcting them, dated July 18th.
That's a funny way for a guy who's intentionally spreading misinformation to behave, isn't it?
ajf, I brought up Canada because Terry said that he saw something that didn't happen. You say that Clark did this on several occasions, over several interviews. I don't think you're right, but you can correct me by posting a link to another interview where this sort of misinterpretation could arise. Here are his statements on the matter:
June 15: I was on CNN, and I got a call at my home saying, “You got to say this is connected. This is state-sponsored terrorism. This has to be connected to Saddam Hussein.”
July 1: And I personally got a call from a fellow in Canada who is part of a Middle Eastern think tank who gets inside intelligence information. He called me on 9/11.
July 18: I received a call from a Middle East think tank outside the country, asking me to link 9/11 to Saddam Hussein. No one from the White House asked me to link Saddam Hussein to Sept. 11.
August 24: [In response to Press' demand "Tell us who called."] A man from a-of a Middle East think tank in Canada, the man who’s the brother of a very close friend of mine in Belgium.
He hasn't changed his story, he's certainly never backtracked, and he's tried to correct the mistakes of pundits on the left and the right. (So the answer to your question, Michael, is (d), a Canadian think tank on Middle Eastern issues. At least five of them exist; I listed them above.)
I don't see how Clark is the bad guy here.
Posted by: Ted Barlow on September 20, 2003 7:37 PMWell, it came from the White House, it came from people around the White House. It came from all over. I got a call on 9/11. I was on CNN, and I got a call at my home saying, “You got to say this is connected. This is state-sponsored terrorism. This has to be connected to Saddam Hussein.” I said, “But—I’m willing to say it but what’s your evidence?” And I never got any evidence. And these were people who had—Middle East think tanks and people like this and it was a lot of pressure to connect this and there were a lot of assumptions made.
Clark did not "imply" that the pressure came from the White House - he says it right out. We do not misinterpret it.
I don't see that Clark attempted to make a distinction between a "concerted effort" and the phone call to him. The phone call is a part of the concerted effort.
Why else discuss it in the context of the question?
George Will's attempted deciphering of Wesley Clark's game of telephone, is more solid than
you claim. General Hamlet's stream of innuendo,
des apparently name a White House... Canadian
think talk close to the White House. Fox News,
saids that Thomas Hecht, a member of the Begin
Sadat center, seems to have come forward; however
it does not have offices in Canada. being a primarily Israeli think tank. There are some
indications that it may have White House connections, but Clark's reference is so garbled
as to fail to pass the smell test; right up there
with Ambassador Kenne/ I mean Wilson's allusions
to Karl Rove's supposed involvement in blowing his
wife's Company; a job he has done more to confirm:
Of course, similar questions could be raised of his tenure in the European theatre; during the Balkan brouhaha, first as chief of the Joint Staff, than as NATO chief
"According to a report in the Los Angeles Times in October 2001, from 1992 as many as 4,000 volunteers from the Middle East, North Africa and Europe, 'known as the mujahedin', arrived in Bosnia to fight with the Muslims. Richard Holbrooke, America's former chief Balkans peace negotiator, has said that the Bosnian Muslims 'wouldn't have survived' without the help of the mujahedin, though he later admitted that the arrival of the mujahedin was a 'pact with the devil' from which Bosnia is still recovering.
By the end of the 1990s State Department officials were increasingly worried about the consequences of this pact. Under the terms of the 1995 Dayton peace accord, the foreign mujahedin units were required to disband and leave the Balkans. Yet in 2000, the State Department raised concerns about the 'hundreds of foreign Islamic extremists' who became Bosnian citizens after fighting against the Serbs, and who pose a potential terror threat to Europe and the United States. US officials claimed that one of bin Laden's top lieutenants had sent operatives to Bosnia, and that during the 1990s Bosnia had served as a 'staging area and safe haven' for al-Qa'eda and others. The Clinton administration had discovered that it is one thing to permit the movement of Islamic groups across territories; it is quite another to rein them back in again.
Indeed, for all the Clinton officials' concern about Islamic extremists in the Balkans, they continued to allow the growth and movement of mujahedin forces in Europe through the 1990s. In the late 1990s, in the run-up to Clinton's and Blair's Kosovo war of 1999, the USA backed the Kosovo Liberation Army against Serbia. According to a report in the Jerusalem Post in 1998, KLA members, like the Bosnian Muslims before them, had been 'provided with financial and military support from Islamic countries', and had been 'bolstered by hundreds of Iranian fighters or mujahedin ...[some of whom] were trained in Osama bin Laden's terrorist camps in Afghanistan'. It seems that, for all its handwringing, the USA just couldn't break the pact with the devil."
Posted by: narciso on September 20, 2003 8:17 PMLet me expand on this a bit. Follow the fictional dialog:
GEN Clark: There was a huge conspiracy behind the Kennedy assassination.
Russert: Who? Who was involved in the coverup?
GEN Clark: The military. People around the military. All over, really. I got a call that said, "Hey, you have to distance the military from this Kennedy thing."
Now, if General Clark later says that, well, that call I got was from Michael Romero at whatreallyhappened.com, would we be mistaken to think that the phone call came from the military, or at least around the military?
Posted by: blaster on September 20, 2003 8:25 PMAt the very least, supporters of Gen. Clark who attacked Bush for his Bushisms owe Bush an apology.
Maybe Gen Clark is Casey Stengel re-incarnated & was trying to confuse us.
Forget MoDo & her Dowdification a/k/a lying; this is Abbott & Costello: Who's on First? No I didn't say the White House was on First....
TomCom
Posted by: TomCom on September 20, 2003 8:54 PMHere's the deal folks, and why I stand by my opinion. Had Will quoted Clark accurately, the case for a flip flop been much weaker; which is why Will inverted the order of the quotes. He created the impression of a direct connection which simply did not exist in the original quote.
Even though Clark's original statement is open to some interpretation, Will's manipulation adds an emphasis which he then uses to impugn Clark.
It's sloppy writing, and it stinks.
Posted by: rich on September 20, 2003 10:26 PMWes, Jr.: We've already had WWIII, we won. Now, we're working on "IV". BTW, Clark lied and nobody belives Krugman anymore.
Posted by: Drew on September 20, 2003 10:52 PMTed, you say you "don't see how Clark is the bad guy here."
Take a look at Clark's account of the call:
Caller: “You got to say this is connected. This is state-sponsored terrorism. This has to be connected to Saddam Hussein.”Clark: "I said, 'But—I’m willing to say it but what’s your evidence?'"
Does that sound anything like a guy at a think tank sharing his opinion with Clark, or does it sound like a political hack passing on instructions? The tone fits the "White House pressure" interpretation a lot better than the "think tank scholar" interpretation.
As recently as August 24 (as you helpfully point out), Clark still wouldn't identify Think Tank Man. I'll consider believing Clark's latest account when he produces a living Canadian think tank scholar (with hush-hush White House sources) who tells the press that he called Clark on 9-11 and demanded that he publicly connect the WTC attack with Hussein.
Rich, I think you should look again at the analogy blaster made in his last post. There is a reason that people from all points of the political compass interpreted Clark the same way: they heard precisely what the articulate Rhodes Scholar intended to convey.
Btw, does anyone have a transcript of the Hannity/Colmes interview? The closest thing I could find was a quotation at Spinsanity.
Posted by: Michael on September 20, 2003 11:20 PMThis isn't the only fisking Will deserves. Anyone who has read his work on the California recall knows he's off the deep end... (see my link to freshpotatoe's fisking of him)
Posted by: brendan smart on September 21, 2003 1:17 AMI'm laughing at all the folks trying to spin this so that Clark doesn't come out looking like a liar. Why would a "Canadian think tank" be trying to convince everybody that Saddam Hussein was behind 9-11? Why would they be saying "You got to say this is connected."?
Clark deliberately tried to leave the impression that it was the White House pressuring him to make the Iraq/9-11 connection. Unfortunately for him, this is the year 2003 and nobody was willing to let his statement die. Paul Krugman worked it into one of his tortured fantasies, and at that point Clark knew he had to retreat to his fall-back position.
I don't see how you can accuse Will of Dowdification, unless you want to accuse Krugman and FAIR of it as well.
Posted by: Pat Curley on September 21, 2003 11:37 AMPat,
I don't understand. Maybe they were saying that because they're neo-cons. The Project for a New American Century (among others) were promoting the idea that deposing Saddam was important for our national security long before September 11th. There's no reason to think that only Americans share these beliefs. This is pretty thin cord to try to call Clark a liar with.
I agree with one point. FAIR, Krugman and Gene Lyons are all guilty of misinterpreting Clark to promote their agenda. (Their agenda being accusing the White House of promoting the link between Saddam and 9/11.)
However, none of them took his quotes and rearranged the order. George Will did. That's Dowdification, and it's extremely deceptive, as Rich notes.
Also, Gene Lyons has apologized. FAIR, Krugman and George Will has not.
Posted by: Ted Barlow on September 21, 2003 1:09 PMA hypothetical question: If Clark did want everyone to understand his Meet the Press remarks precisely as FAIR and Will understood them ("the White House pressured me to lie"), then is Will "every bit as dishonest as Dowd"?
Dowd cut out half of a Bush paragraph so that it looked like he said al Qaeda was no longer a problem. No one reading Bush's complete remarks interpreted him to have meant that. In Clark's case, the seeming majority of readers who've looked at the full MTP transcript still think he at least implied the White House pressured him to lie.
I'm not sure I approve of Will's quote-order-reversal, be he may only be guilty, at worst, of "framing a guilty man." That would be pretty bad, but it doesn't come close to Dowd's conscious misrepresentation of Bush's meaning.
And Ted, why are you so credulous about Clark's explanations? You really don't find it suspicious that he won't produce Think Tank Man?
Posted by: Michael on September 21, 2003 3:31 PMYou really don't find it suspicious that he won't produce Think Tank Man?
Think Tank Man's been produced. Said the Star
Thomas Hecht, founder of the Begin-Sadat Centre for Strategic Studies, told the Star he placed the call to Clark and drew his attention to a potential link between Saddam and the Al Qaeda suicide hijackers.
The Begin-Sadat Centre has its headquarters in Israel and its only office elsewhere is the one Hecht established in Montreal.
The only thing that's been proved is that George Will really did shade the truth in smearing Clark.
What Clark said:
He got a phone call from someone in Canada.
He didn't say the phone call was from anyone in the White House.
The caller was connected with a Middle East think tank.
What Will said:
That the call came from the White House.
There is no such Canadian institution.
In the first case, the rearranging of the transcript is proof that Will is a liar. Clark never said the phone call came from the White House.
In the second case, there isn't a Canadian institution, but Clark never said that. The think tank is an Israeli institution with an office in Montreal, which, at least for now, is in Canada. The conclusion? Will is guilty of spinning Clark's statement in order to make Clark seem like a Very Big Liar, even though the facts on the ground confirm Clark's statement.
To quote today's Daily Howler:
Can you read? If so, you will note that Clark didn’t say that the phone call came from the White House. And when people began to think that he had, he clarified what he had meant. That’s the way that decent people conduct a public discussion.
George Will ain't decent people.
Oh holy jeebus.
Look at the sentence prior to Clark's assertion that he was asked to link Hussein and 9/11. "It came from all over." There is simply no way to spin this other than Clark was saying that the phone call came from a wide universe of people that includes--but does not consist exclusively of--the White House and people around it. Now, given that Clark claimed that the White House and the people around it were making the same assertions that the phone call asked him to make, this may indirectly suggest that he was attributing the phone call to one of the former two subclasses of the "all over" group.
Except for this: HE SPECIFICALLY NARROWS DOWN THAT GROUP TWO SENTENCES LATER. Specifically, Clark says:
"And these were people who had—Middle East think tanks and people like this and it was a lot of pressure to connect this and there were a lot of assumptions made."
Who on earth are "these... people" if not the ones that made the phone call? Really, people. The guy spoke awkwardly, but he was unequivocally clear. Furthermore, when others misinterpreted his statement, HE CORRECTED THEM ON RECORD.
George Will is either a hack, or he is a liar. Probably both.
Posted by: Joe on September 23, 2003 7:25 PMWas Clark "unequivocally clear" when he allegedly spoke to Michael Moore on 9/11/03?
My wife and I were invited over to a neighbor's home 12 days ago where Clark told those gathered that certain people, acting on behalf of the Bush administration, called him immediately after the attacks on September 11th and asked him to go on TV to tell the country that Saddam Hussein was "involved" in the attacks. He asked them for proof, but they couldn't provide any. He refused their request.
Moore has proven himself to be slack-witted and dishonest, so I'm open to speculation that he was just recyclying the common (mis)interpretation of Clark's "Meet The Press" remarks.
Posted by: Michael on September 24, 2003 6:52 PMDr. Squid, you believe Think Tank Man vindicated Clark?
Clark:
I got a call on 9/11. I was on CNN, and I got a call at my home saying, “You got to say this is connected. This is state-sponsored terrorism. This has to be connected to Saddam Hussein.” I said, “But—I’m willing to say it but what’s your evidence?” And I never got any evidence.The Toronto Star:
Thomas Hecht, founder of the Begin-Sadat Centre for Strategic Studies, told the Star he placed the call to Clark and drew his attention to a potential link between Saddam and the Al Qaeda suicide hijackers.Maybe Hecht's lying and it's all part of a really clever plot to discredit the general. Posted by: Michael on September 24, 2003 7:23 PMBut Hecht said he did not pressure the former army general, who became a CNN commentator after retiring from the military, to make the link and said the matter was raised in a phone call inviting Clark to come to Montreal for a speech.
Referring to the Moore comment, even if Clark actually said that, then Will is still guilty of modifying the interview quote to make a stronger case, since he wasn't present at the meeting Moore mentioned, and would have no knowledge of the alleged statement. And considering Moore's propensity for, shall we say, embellishing the truth, I would be hesitant to rely on anything he said.
Posted by: rich on September 24, 2003 7:31 PMRich, if Clark did want everyone to understand his Meet the Press remarks precisely as FAIR and Will understood them ("the White House pressured me to lie"), then is Will "every bit as dishonest as Dowd"?
Your "Will's as dishonest as Dowd" argument depends on 2 premises:
1) Will actually misinterpreted Clark.
2) Will changed the quote order.
Does the quote order really matter if Will accurately conveyed Clark's meaning? If (a big "if") Moore's telling the truth, then Will and everyone else was almost certainly right about the meaning of Clark's MTP comments.
And if Will accurately conveyed Clark's meaning, then where does that leave your "every bit as dishonest as Dowd" accusation? Wouldn't it be rather close to a lie?
Posted by: Michael on September 24, 2003 8:53 PMDealing with your two premises, the second first:
"2) Will changed the quote order."
This is not a supposition but a statement of fact, backed up by the transcripts from the interview. The only conjecture is "Why did Will invert the order?"
And that brings us to your first premise.
"1) Will actually misinterpreted Clark."
This leads directly to one of the following conclusions:
A) Will did not realize that the inversion of the quotation created an impression of a direct link which did not exist in the original quote.
B) Will intentionally inverted the quotes to give an erroneous interpretation.
Conclusion A is very unlikely. Will is a veteran writer, and unlikely to make such a major mistake in interpretation. This leaves conclusion B as the most likely case.
Note that in no case does the possibility that Will was telling the truth arise, which means your question, based on assumptions which are demonstrably false, is meaningless.
Posted by: rich on September 24, 2003 9:34 PMRich, "premise" doesn't mean "doubtful supposition." A premise can be an obvious truth. A mathematical axiom can be a premise. This is elementary logic terminology, and I don't know why it confuses you.
Rich: And that brings us to your first premise.Whoa there, hoss. You're missing a crucial distinction. Will re-ordered Clark's comments, but that's not necessarily the same thing as misinterpreting him."1) Will actually misinterpreted Clark."
This leads directly to one of the following conclusions ...
Clark's critics say he used inuendo to accuse the White House of pressuring him to lie about Hussein and 9/11. If this criticism is accurate, then Will accurately conveyed Clark's meaning, i.e., Will did not misinterpret Clark.
Do you discount the possibility that Clark wanted MTP viewers to get the impression that the White House pressured him to link Hussein and 9/11? Before Clark "clarified" his remarks, how did you understand them? I'm not asking you to reconstruct an interpretation based on what you know/think now. What did you think then?
Do you understand why the Moore allegation matters? If Clark has been going around privately complaining the White House pressured him to lie, then it becomes more plausible that this is how he meant us to understand his rambling attack on MTP.
Will thinks Clark accused the White House of pressuring him. I agree with Will. Most readers who are aware of Clark's "clarifications" still think he meant to slime the White House. If they're all right, then Will got the meaning right even though he re-ordered the sentences. Dowd, on the other hand, completely (and inarguably) misrepresented the meaning of Bush's statements.
There is a difference between altering words/phrase order and consciously mispresenting a speaker's meaning so that it bears no resemblance to what he intended. Do you understand the difference? Dowd committed the latter journalistic sin. Neither you nor anyone else has shown Will to have done the same thing thing.
Posted by: Michael on September 24, 2003 10:44 PMI've been reading George Will for a great many years. Mr. Will is a smug pedant who chooses his words with great care.
In this case he carefully distorts the order Clark's words. Why, oh why, would Mr. Will re-order the quotation? Did he do it for the sake of clarity or obfuscation?
I think we all know the answer.
Posted by: mark on September 25, 2003 7:00 AMMichael, if Will believed that Clark's statement clearly indicated that he was accusing the White House of pressuring him to draw a connection, why then did Will feel the need to modify the quote?
The only possible reason for changing the quote is if Will felt it was somewhat ambiguous, or unclear, and he wanted to make the connection clearer. The problem with that is that if the connection was ambiguous, then he had no basis other than his own bias for assuming that Clark intended to smear the White House. By reordering the quote, he presented that bias as fact, then used the distortion to impugn Clark.
Hello
Posted by: Jamie on November 2, 2004 11:41 PM