The End Of The World: blatant, absurdist lies

Wednesday, May 30, 2007

blatant, absurdist lies

Ledeen: ‘Sheehan-Reid-Obama-Clinton Cult’ Is ‘Disrupting Military Funerals’ Nationwide

National Review Contributing Editor and prominent neoconservative Michael Ledeen writes on The Corner today about a funeral in Texas for a U.S. soldier killed in Iraq:
In many places around the country, members of the Sheehan-Reid-Obama-Clinton cult disrupt military funerals, but I doubt they would attempt to perform their disgusting ritual in a fine place as described here.

The only “cult” that travels the country disrupting military funerals is the “anti-gay hate group Westboro Baptist Church,” whose leader Fred Phelps has picketed dozens of funerals with messages such as “Thank God For AIDS” and “God Hates Fags.” There are only 70 members of the church, “60 of whom are related to Phelps through blood or marriage or both.”

Obviously, Sens. Harry Reid (D-NV), Barack Obama (D-IL), and Hillary Clinton (D-NY) have nothing to do with Phelps’ group. (”As for Sheehan,” Attaturk notes, “she had to attend one funeral for sure, HER SON’S!“) Just last year, the Senate unanimously passed legislation prohibiting Phelps and others from protesting around military funerals.

Ledeen’s effort to smear people by associating them with a vicious hate group is particularly notable since Ledeen is an adviser to Karl Rove:

One is Michael Ledeen of the American Enterprise Institute, whose specialties include terrorism and the Middle East. His latest book, according to the official summary, asserts that “America must topple the regimes of the terror masters to eliminate the threat of terrorism.”

The two met after Bush’s election. “He said, ‘Anytime you have a good idea, tell me,’ ” Ledeen said. Every month or six weeks, Ledeen will offer Rove “something you should be thinking about.” More than once, Ledeen has seen his ideas, faxed to Rove, become official policy or rhetoric.

Ledeen later issued a “correction,” claiming that while the funeral protesters he mentioned were from a “disgusting anti-gay church,” the “anti-war cultists staged their own mock funerals, led by Sheehan’s followers at Code Pink.” This is more intellectual dishonesty. Phelps’ hateful demonstrations have nothing in common with Code Pink’s processions, which feature “mothers grieving the sons and daughters lost to war.”