Repeating the Lie Doesn’t Make It True

[[H U H ?]] * No wonder some Americans continue to believe the Republican fiction that Saddam Hussein was in terrorist league with the still-elusive Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda. During an invitation-only luncheon attended by business and political honchos in southwestern Utah, five-term U.S. Senator Orrin Hatch, a frequent Bush apologist and defender of the White House’s warrantless domestic spying operations, reportedly told listeners that “we’ve stopped a mass murderer in Saddam Hussein. Nobody denies that he was supporting al-Qaida. Well, I shouldn’t say nobody. Nobody with brains.” The latter statement was obviously intended as a slap at Democrats, who seem actually to have read the report prepared by Bush’s bipartisan 9/11 commission (which found “no ‘collaborative relationship’ between Iraq and Al Qaeda”), even if Hatch did not.

Back in 1976, when lawyer Hatch first campaigned for the Senate, he endorsed term limits for members of Congress, arguing that his Democratic opponent, three-term Senator Frank Moss, was out of touch with voters. Too bad for Utahans that the man who is now their senior senator didn’t term-limit himself. Clearly, he has fallen out of touch with reality.