The lefty cartoonist and columnist Ted Rall called me a "Bush apologist" back in 2002 for debunking his conspiracy theories about the war in Afghanistan. Now he's claiming he was right all along in a diatribe where he absurdly labels me a "neoconservative Republican":
Now that only 9% of Americans believe the war in Iraq can be won, it's easy to forget how bad things got for those of us who were against it from the beginning. As the Great Northern Plains blog reminds us, those of us who stood up against this idiotic war against Iraq were getting trashed by the radical right while the moderates and liberals quivered in fearful silence. Paul Krugman referenced this typical Weekly Standard piece in his normally excellent New York Times column, but fumbled by focussing on elected officials trashed by the radical right rather than on the journalists and other citizens who actually paid a price for being correct.
Here's the section about Yours Truly:
Did you know that your average Iraqi fellow would much rather watch his relatives be raped or eaten by dogs than have to shake hands with an American Marine on the sidewalk?
"Regardless of their political affiliations, patriotic Iraqis prefer to bear the yoke of Saddam's brutal and corrupt dictatorship than to suffer the humiliation of living in a conquered nation. . . . The thought of infidel troops marching through their cities, past their mosques, patting them down, ordering them around, disgusts them even more than Saddam's torture chambers."
--Cartoonist and conspiracy-theory book author Ted Rall, April 2, 2003
I assume that the "conspiracy theory" book they're referring to was GAS WAR, which detailed the development of the Trans-Afghanistan Pipeline project, a project neoconservative Republicans like Brendan Nyhan said was pure fiction. Now, of course, the pipeline is under construction even as Afghanistan collapses into worse chaos. As for my quote, well, looks like I called that one right. As usual.
Now that my politics have been vindicated, will the publications that censored my cartoons because of my politics between 2001 and 2005 apologize to their readers and pick them back up again? Don't hold your breath. After all, being the Week In Review editor of the New York Times means never having to say you're sorry.
Rall is unfortunately not a member of the reality-based community. For the record, I never claimed that the Trans-Afghanistan Pipeline project "was pure fiction." In fact, I pointed out that Pakistan had "recently lobbied the new US ambassador to the country on behalf of the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan pipeline" and specifically acknowledged that "President Bush and Vice President Cheney, as former oilmen, certainly understand the importance of the pipeline projects, but these are surely only part of a complex set of factors being weighed by the administration." Rall, on the other hand, has not seen this ludicrous conspiracy theory vindicated:
Finally the Bushies had the perfect excuse to do what the U.S. had wanted all along: invade and/or install an old-school puppet regime in Kabul. Realpolitik no more cares about the 6,000 dead than it concerns itself with oppressed women in Afghanistan; this ersatz war by a phony president is solely about getting the Unocal deal done without interference from annoying local middlemen.
Needless to say, the fact that a pipeline project is underway hardly proves that it was the sole motivation for the war. (See my original column for more.)
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