Ralph Reed, liar

Watched the Daily Show last night, and hadn't gotten around to fact checking his guest, Ralph Reed. I got as far as opening up the 9/11 commission pdf, then got distracted by making tuna skewers and slurping sake with D.

[The 9/11 report is available online here]

Ezra Klein of Pandagon beat me to it...

Ralph Reed popped up on the Daily Show tonight. Reed, former director of the Christian Coalition and current director of the Southeast for the Bush campaign, found himself attempting to rebut Stewart's instinct that Iraq was a diversion from the War on Terror. In his quest to do just that, Ralph mentioned page 66 of the 9/11 Commission Report no less than three times. By repeatedly referencing the extensive and incriminating ties supposedly documented on a specific page of the authoritative document, Ralph both employed the old debater's trick of hinting at extensive knowledge by virtue of knowing insignificant details (hence the repetition of the page number) and drilled viewers with the knowledge that the 9/11 Commission had, in fact, found terrific examples of cooperation and thought them important enough to report.


Very good Ralph, very convincing. And while page 66 does talk about the few links between al Qaeda and Iraq, it concludes "to date we have seen no evidence that these or the earlier contacts ever developed into a collaborative operational relationship. Nor have we seen evidence indicating that Iraq cooperated with al Qaeda in developing or carrying out any attacks against the United States."


Ralph deliberately misrepresented the Commission's conclusion (imagine how fucked his point would have been had Stewart whipped out the report and read the three paragraphs aloud), misled Stewart's audience and, quite frankly, sinned. Is this really the sort of guy the Bush campaign wants representing them?