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February 18, 2005

Goin' off the rails on the Kool Aid Express

Conversation with a DittoHead

We've got a subcontractor working out of our facility where I work. Apparently he's a former employee from a number of years ago. Seems like a nice guy. I've helped him out with some of his equipment needs and we've gotten into the habit of greeting each other every morning when he comes in.

I end up walking past his work area multiple times each day. And sometimes I'll stop and chat with him for a while. So, I know that he's a DittoHead because he never misses the Rush Limbaugh show on his radio. In fact, I've never heard his radio tuned to anything other than "Conservative" talk shows. He's also got a couple of prominently place Bush 2004 stickers on his pickup.

This morning I'm strolling by and knowing that he's into politics I mention that he missed a great debate last night. He doesn't seem to have known about it so I tell him that it was a debate between Howard Dean and Richard Perle.

The first thing he says is to ask me who Richard Perle is. I tell him, amazed that he could be a political junky and not know who Richard Perle is. Then he says something about Dean being a nutcase.

I briefly describe what last night's debate covered and we end up talking about Iraq. I pointed out to him that Richard Perle criticized Bush's decision to occupy Iraq after Saddam had been toppled from power. He doesn't like that and launches into a forced analogy of what would have happened if in D-Day we had stormed Normandy Beach, killed some Nazis and then withdrawn.

One thing leads to another and he asserts that we know that Saddam and Al Queda were working together and that while Saddam didn't play a direct role in 9/11 that the relationship was still there and that this justified our invading Iraq. As supporting evidence he cites the $25k payments that Saddam was making to the families of Palestinians who participated in suicide bombings against Israel. I point out that Al Queda had nothing to do with that arrangement and that it had more to do with Hamas than Al Queda. Further, Syria and Iran are the powerbases for Hamas, not Iraq.

Then he wants to talk about WMD. He says that John Kerry said that Saddam possessed WMD, as if this was relevant to whether Saddam actually possessed any. I let it slide and point out that the subsequent searches of Iraq while Bremer was in control failed to find a shred of evidence that Saddam possessed what the Bush administration had claimed he possessed. Then I pointed to Iran's and Libya's nuclear programs and how those trace back to Pakistan, not Iraq. I asked him how did it make any sense to go after Saddam rather than deal with Pakistan. Then he absolutely floors me...

He says that Pakistan got it's nuclear technology from Clinton and Gore. Stunned, I just look at him incredulously. He repeats that Clinton and Gore gave Pakistan the technology to make nukes and that therefore what Iran and Libya received from Pakistan is Clinton and Gore's fault.

I just walked away. What do you say to someone who thinks they know things that simply aren't factual? I could have pointed out that President Reagan believed that Pakistan might possess functional nukes in 1988. Or that the Thatcher government if Britian believed that Pakistan had functional nukes in 1987. Or even that Pakistan's leading nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan stated in a published interview that `what the CIA has been saying about our possessing the bomb is correct.' That also in 1987. Clinton and Gore didn't take office until early 1993.

Bush voters took great offense at suggestions that they are stupid based on last year's PIPA survey of Bush and Kerry supporters perceptions of what the respective candidates actually advocate. Okay... they're not stupid. They're ignorant. Or at least most of them are.

Clinton and Gore gave Pakistan the technology to build nukes???

I'm supposed to respect that kind of tinfoil hat lunacy???

Posted by Kevin at February 18, 2005 01:32 PM