It's Never the Republican's Fault

Karl Rove's recent coments include the following:

Let me put this in fairly simple terms: Al Jazeera now broadcasts to the region the words of Senator Durbin, certainly putting America's men and women in uniform in greater danger.

And indeed, there is an Al Jazeera article which begins as follows:

A US senator has refused to apologise for comparing the actions of US soldiers at Guantanamo Bay to those of Nazis, while others have decried or defended the mandate and method used to hold prisoners there.

US Senator Dick Durbin on Wednesday refused to apologise for comments he made on the Senate floor referring to Nazis, Soviet gulags and a "mad regime" like Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge in Cambodia.

Illinois Republican party chairman Andy McKenna had demanded he apologise.

As Karl Rove and anyone else who has paid attention to the story knows, the reason that al Jazeera is covering the story is because the right wing spin machine decided to make it into a story. Indeed, al Jazeera mentions Andy McKenna by name as one of the one of the people responsible for turning Durbin's remarks into a news story.

This is, you might think, a pretty bold move by Rove: Going to a fundraiser and accusing Republicans of putting our troops in great danger. But apparently Rove didn't see it that way, because the complete paragraph is:

Let me put this in fairly simple terms: Al Jazeera now broadcasts to the region the words of Senator Durbin, certainly putting America's men and women in uniform in greater danger. No more needs to be said about the motives of liberals.

Our national discourse has reached the point where Rove can accuse Republicans of endangering our troops, throw in a non-sequitur reference to liberals, and be confident that his audience will blame liberals for what the Republicans did.

In fact, it's worse than that. I've seen no evidence that the lives of our troops have been placed in danger. Certainly Rove doesn't present any. So it appears that Rove has made up the charge that Republicans are endangering our troops, purely so that he could redirect the blame at liberals. If that's not bizarre, I don't know what is.
 

UPDATE (Saturday, June 25, 2005): Apparently Rove was lying when he said that al Jazeera broadcast Durbin's words. Abu Aardvark says:

I just ran a FBIS search (Foreign Broadcast Information Service - which monitors and translates foreign broadcasts for the American government). "Durbin" in the year 2005 for reports coming from Doha (where al-Jazeera broadcasts) turns up zero hits. "Guantanamo" turns up 17 hits, none of which mention the remarks of the Senator from Illinois.