Pounding on Drum

While thinking (as usual) man that Kevin Drum sure is smart, I noticed an glaring error , a gaffe in this generally well written post.

REWRITING HISTORY....What planet do these people come from? Writing about George Bush's renewed commitment to preemptive war, Cliff May says:

It's easy to say that if we had left Saddam alone, nothing bad would have happened. But how is that different from what was said for years about Osama bin Laden?

Well, it's different because absolutely no one ever said that about Osama bin Laden.

I thought "hmmm 20 seconds with google ought to be enough to disprove that claim"
and searched "Bush AND Osama AND "not all that worried"".

Sure enough I found the totally perfectly written post by ... Kevin Drum on

October 13, 2004

GAFFE WATCH....I have to believe the biggest gaffe of the night was Bush's when he said:

Gosh, I just don't think I ever said I'm not worried about Osama bin Laden. It's kind of one of those ex-a-gger-ations.

Of course, two years ago he said exactly that:

I don’t know where he is. Nor — you know, I just don’t spend that much time on him really, to be honest with you. I....I truly am not that concerned about him.

Bush's statement was obviously a lie, and it lends itself so well to a video comparison that it's probably going to get played over and over and over. It was a big mistake to give news and talk shows such a good excuse to play that old video again.

Yes and your little tiny mistake gives me a bad excuse to cut and paste your old post


"Well, it's different because absolutely no one ever said that about Osama bin Laden." - KD

"I don’t know where he is. Nor — you know, I just don’t spend that much time on him really, to be honest with you. I....I truly am not that concerned about him." GWB quoted by KD.

OK OK so it wasn't that big a gaffe. The claim I am attacking is almost exactly correct. I am perfectly prepared to believe that only one human being in the past 10 years has been idiotic enough to say that Osama Bin Laden is not very dangerous, one is close to zero, but if that one is in the White House no where near close enough.