Wednesday, October 24, 2001

Remora

We love stories like this one. We love them because the people who accord them respect are the same kind of people who scoff at wild Kennedy assassination conspiracies; yes, people, like George Will, who accused Delillo of being treasonous for having written a novel, Libra, that implies the CIA bumped old JFK; or the people from the commentariat of the nyt who decry (oh, decry me a river, as Tallulah Bankhead once said) Oliver Stone's JFK for its fictions and hyperbole. But even Oliver Stone at least tried to make a convincing link. Here's the first two grafs of an AP story:

"Former CIA Director James Woolsey says Iraq likely was involved in the attacks of Sept. 11 and that the United States will probably confront President Saddam Hussein as part of its ongoing campaign against terrorism.

``There are too many things, too many examples of stolen identities, of cleverly-crafted documentation, of coordination across continents and between states ... to stray very far from the conclusion that a state, and a very well-run intelligence service is involved here,'' he told the national convention of the American Jewish Congress on Monday."

Here's Georgie Will on Libra:

"DeLillo says he is just filling in "some of the blank spaces in the known record." But there is no blank space large enough to accommodate, and not a particle of evidence for, DeLillo's lunatic conspiracy theory. In the book's weaselly afterword, he says he has made "no attempt to furnish factual answers."

Weaselly, huh? It's weaselly to say, I wrote a novel, not a history book? Hmm, well, wonder what George thinks of the phrase, "...stray very far from the conclusion that a state, and a very well-run intelligence service is involved here." Let's see, stolen identities, check for Oswald; cleverly crafted documentation, ditto; coordinated between continents, well, that is what you call petitio principii, begging the question, no? Still, I would like Woolsey to tell us who he thinks was at the crossroads in Dallas, 1963. But we know his answer: Saddam Hussein!

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