Wow! I'm so honored to be cited in the Wall Street Journal! Huh? Hey, wait just a minute!
James Taranto at the Wall Street Journal, in a piece entitled "Lefties for Ahmadinejad", cites Reese Erlich citing me.
Come on! A "lefty"? The insolence!
Erlich falsely asserted earlier that I stated as fact that the U.S. was involved in interfering with Iran's internal affairs during the recent election and the unrest and violence that followed. I did not do so, but merely expressed my view that this could be a possibility. I had already responded to Erlich to correct his error.
But now Taranto has taken it to a whole new level with his smear piece, building even more assumptions on top of the original strawman argument. It seems that if one doesn't dismiss that possiblity of U.S. interference offhand, one is therefore a "leftist" and a "friend" of Ahmadinejad.
Ah, yes. I remember seeing this propaganda device back before the invasion of Iraq when I was saying there was no evidence Saddam Hussein had WMD and that the U.S. government was lying to start a war. I got called -- besides "conspiracy theorist", "anti-American", "un-Christian", and a host of others -- a "Saddam supporter".
And, me? A "leftist"? That's a good one. I also got called a "liberal" and a "leftist" a lot for opposing the Iraq war. I was kidding above; I don't really take it as an insult. It's just that, to this day, try as I might, I haven't managed to figure out what logical syllogism people are using to arrive at this conclusion.
Taranto's logic here is equally solid.
Which is to say it's complete asinine nonsense.
