Gleaming Jewels of Stupidity

One of the things I like about writing books is the chance to read other peoples' reactions after they're written. After John Stauber and I wrote our latest book, The Best War Ever: Lies, Damned Lies and the Mess in Iraq, we posted an accompanying video on YouTube. The video has now been viewed more than 200,000 times, and people of various ideological persuasions have added their comments.

In the last few days, the video page has seen a running debate between other YouTubians and a supporter of the war who identifies himself as a 35-year-old U.S. Army Captain. I find the debate interesting as an illustration of how desperately the war's supporters continue to recycle obvious falsehoods and long-discredited lies from the Bush administration.

Sometimes the enthusiasm with which "usarmycaptainamerica" rewrites history is simply laughable, as when he insists that "Democrats, with the exception of and handful [sic] (maybe 5) voted to go to war in Iraq. Get your facts straight and your head screwed on right. ... If you refuse to believe that, and refuse to look at the facts, than I cant help you, you will remain a gleaming jewel of stupidity."

Actually, 133 Democratic members of the U.S. House of Representatives voted against the resolution in 2002 authorizing Bush to go to war, as did 21 Democrats in the Senate. The number of Democrats voting for the resolution was 126 in the House, 21 in the Senate. Republicans were virtually unanimous in supporting the war, but the Democratic vote was an almost perfect 50-50 split.

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