Politics and Culture

Maureen Dowd:

Dowd, who won a Pulitzer Prize for commentary in 1990, told The Huffington Post that the mistake was unintentional. She claims she never read Marshall's post last week and had heard the line from a friend who did not mention reading it in Marshall's blog.

I don't really care about this--it's too "inside baseball" for me, but I do find her explanation funny. First, when people talk about an article, do they quote it word for word or do they summarize and paraphrase it? Did he print it out and take it to the party? Second, what are the chances that Maureen would remember the quote, exactly, on the odd chance that the guy did, in fact, do that? And, then, to not go to Talking Points Memo when she got home?

"More and more the timeline is raising the question of why, if the torture was to prevent terrorist attacks, it seemed to happen mainly during the period when the Bush crowd was looking for what was essentially political information to justify the invasion of Iraq."

The quote itself makes absolutely no sense. It's a non-sequitur, no sigue. Why can't the Bush administration be trying to prevent terror and looking for evidence of WMD in Iraq at the same time?

It's like asking, "Why would the Obama administration be creating uncertainty by transforming health care while trying to stimulate the economy." Wait, that's actually a good question. It would be like incredulously asking, "Why would somebody be trying to prevent an attack while finding evidence against somebody he thinks might attack the United States in the future? The answer's pretty obvious, no?