Believing Passionately in the Palpably Not True

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This item from the March 31st Washington Post:

Greeted by anti-war protesters at almost every stop in a tour of working-class England, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Friday that the Bush administration has probably made thousands of “tactical errors” in its handling of the Iraq war.*

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* “Rice Admits Thousands of ‘Tactical Errors’ in Iraq” by Glenn Kessler, Washington Post Staff Writer, Friday, March 31.

Comments

[et alia]

It's simply the official narrative of the war: things are going well overall, and anything that is not is an aberration. For every atrocity, there is an equal and opposite—nay, greater!—bit of glurgesome good news. If a family is killed at a checkpoint, it is more than counterbalanced by some child in the green zone getting a lollypop after a visit to the dentist.

I believe the most conservative estimates of the Iraqi civilian dead from the war are around 30,000. As miserable and bloody a tyrant as Saddam Hussein was, those people would be alive today if the US hadn't invaded, and not even Christopher "Just you wait!" Hitchens could deny that. Until someone attacks the standard narrative at that level, the standard narrative will be the one repeated ad nauseam et ad infinitum by the mainstream news media and pols. I'm not holding my breath.