From the latest entry in their ongoing pathological obsession with Michael Moore:
Moore uses fake quotes as chapter headings, implying that Bush (or administration officials) said things they never said. The most problematic is “#3 Whopper with Bacon: ‘Iraq has ties to Osama Bin Laden and al Qaeda!'” (page 53) He quotes Bush repeatedly stating that “We know [Saddam] has ties to Al Qaeda” – but provides no source suggesting the administration tied Saddam to Bin Laden personally.
I assume this needs no elaboration. I assume readers of this site understand that in this universe, the Bush administration tried to tie Saddam to al Qaeda (and by excruciatingly obvious extension, to bin Laden) at every possible opportunity. I assume, in short, that you are not playing whatever childish game of schoolyard “gotcha” that they’re playing over at Spinsanity (Ari Fleischer never said it so it’s not true, nyah nyah nyah!), that you read the newspaper and watch the President on the news, and are aware that when he mentions 9/11 a dozen or so times in a speech about Iraq, it’s not just because some proofreader screwed up somewhere — that he is in fact conveying a specific message, which is in turn fodder for commentators and critics.
I assume, in short, that you understand that it is not by accident that a majority of Americans recently polled believe that Saddam was behind 9/11.
Always remember that the self-appointed fact-checkers of the internet are themselves human, as was demonstrated with the Snopes brouhaha a couple of weeks back. “Non-partisan” or not, everybody’s got a bias, everybody’s got an angle, everybody’s got a bug up their ass about something.
Afterthought: even by their own standards, I’m not really sure what the point of the last sentence in the paragraph above could possibly be. Bush tied Saddam to al Qaeda, but not to bin Laden personally, so Michael Moore is a liar? File under straws, clutching at.