The Goalposts Must Move

THE ALWAYS ASTUTE JEANNE DEVOTO has had another moment of bitter sanity. Keep on the lookout for future goalpost movement in line with her predictions in Step by step...

Instapundit passes on a note from a reader about the NYT's new formulation, "No stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction have been found since the invasion.

So that's the new standard, I guess -- and a tacit admission that WMD have been found. But unless Bush can produce "stockpiles" now, it'll have all been a lie, you see. . . .

Oh no. That's not far enough. There are steps in these things, you know. Fallback positions.

1. "No evidence that Saddam Hussein ever possessed weapons of mass destruction has been found since the invasion." This one is pretty much confined to people ignorant enough to never have heard of al-Anfal, or crazy enough to deny it happened. Most media outlets are neither, and started instead with...
   
   
2. "No evidence that Saddam Hussein was currently involved with weapons of mass destruction has been found since the invasion." Pretty much put paid to by David Kay, frantic though the spinning was there. He certainly had active programs, primed to start production as soon as sanctions were lifted, and Kay said as much. So...
   
   
3. "No weapons of mass destruction have been found since the invasion." The sarin and mustard gas pretty much demolished that one, although some media outlets were a bit late to hear the news. It became necessary, therefore, to resort to the next step...
   
   
4. "No stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction has been found since the invasion." As noted above, this is the current stage. But suppose we track the origin of the sarin-filled mortar shell to the building it came from, and find, oh, a hundred more like it? Then we will move on to...
   
   
5. "No LARGE stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction have been found since the invasion." There were only a hundred or so, the reasoning will go. Probably just leftovers, never mind that Saddam never declared any binary mortar shells of this type. Nothing to worry about. And if we find a more massive cache, say those truckloads that may have been moved to Syria? No problem - we still have...
   
   
6. "No evidence that Saddam Hussein intended to provide weapons of mass destruction to terrorists has been found since the invasion." This is the crowning move, since it both changes the subject and opens up a whole new sequence of possible goalpost moves:
   • In the face of any evidence that he did so intend, we can simply switch to saying there's no evidence that he actually did it.
   • If evidence turns up that he did do it, perhaps there's no evidence that his beneficiaries called themselves "al Qaeda".
   • And if we find a photograph of Saddam himself handing a large box labeled "Smallpox" to Mullah Omar, we simply do another switch and point out that these weapons haven't actually been used to attack the US "since the invasion".

It's easy and it's fun, and we can play along at home!

Posted by Vanderleun at May 25, 2004 10:20 PM