You don't have to be George Lakoff to understand how misframing a statement with imprecise language can be harmful to your argument.
Right now there is a diary on the Rec List that claims the Neocons "got it wrong." It links to another article that talks about how the Neocons "got it wrong." And THAT article links to yet another article that talks about how Neocons "got it wrong."
Why, I could almost be moved to forgive them for merely getting it wrong.
But the fact is, they didn't get it wrong. On every front, they had the accurate information, and they chose to lie about it.
The Vanity Fair article the link eventually led to is partially titled "Perpetually Wrong Paul Wolfowitz".
How kind the establishment is to themselves. Indeed, the article mentions how people were deceived about WMDs. But in establishment land, deceiving people doesn't make you a "liar". It makes you just "wrong."
Now, I can understand if your great ambition is to make the cable news talk show circuit - there's no quicker way to be shunned then to go on TV and call someone, a made man like Wolfowitz, a liar.
But what is the point of mincing words here? One of the best parts of being a homespun blogger is you actually get to tell the truth, if you want to.
It is a lie to claim that these asswipes were merely "wrong." Let's not revise history. We had multiple groups of weapons inspectors, multiple whistleblowers, and countless other knowledgeable people who knew Saddam had no WMDs.
We had multiple Middle East experts, and even some Republicans who warned repeatedly of the quagmire that was bound to ensue.
These clowns had all the info they needed. They knew they were lying about the case for war. They just didn't care.
No really, you only had to be moderately informed to know they were all lying. In 2002, UN weapons inspectors verified what everyone knew in 1998, that Iraq's WMDs had been destroyed.
My dentist knew.
And there's someone else who knew too: Hillary Clinton. Her husband, the president, was the one who ordered Iraq's WMD destroyed.
Everyone but the most clueless American TV viewers knew what was up. Saddam Hussein was playing fast and loose with the oil spigots. He had to be removed. The State Dept under Colin Powell had a plan. Replace Saddam with a friendly General. They had the guy waiting.
But the Neocons had other plans than a quiet regime change. They wanted to reinvent it as another Chicago School, Neoliberal experiment, and fuck OPEC in the process.
There's books about it and stuff. With leaked documents and everything. For another day perhaps.
In the meantime, let's not defend the Neocons by mischaracterizing their lies as mere mistakes. These are criminals who should have been prosecuted long ago, for many crimes. Not one of which is being wrong.