Countdown: Bush administration has zero credibility

Posted by David DeGraw at 12:13 PM on September 14, 2006.

Keith Olbermann ran a segment on the Bush administration's attempts to link Saddam to al Qaeda. He opened:

"If the Iraq debate seems especially exhausting, it may be due to the steady erosion of the foundation for any productive debate, facts."

After airing a montage of the administration's spin on the link issues, Keith has a fascinating discussion with Newsweek senior editor Jonathan Alter.

Some highlights:

OLBERMANN: Let's start with the basics. Americans, even media types, especially in crises, historically give top government officials a presumption of credibility until proven dastardly... How much of that presumption of governmental credibility remains?

ALTER: I'd say between zero and none, at least as far as the media goes, and I think any sentient American at this point, they've lost their credibility many, many times over. Does that mean they've lost the argument? No, because, as you've been indicating, facts often don't determine the resolution of the arguments. So they could end up winning in November by distorting the argument. But on credibility and the facts, they've lost.

They remind me of, you know, a politician who's caught in bed with a prostitute, and his wife comes in and sees him, and he looks up and says to her, Who do you believe, me or your cheating eyes? You know, they don't have any credibility anymore, so they just assert something that ain't so and hope that it plays....

It's a tremendous problem, because if you move from an evidence-based foreign policy, or domestic policy, to a--what you could call a faith-based policy, which takes you out of the realm of facts, out of the realm of rational policy-making that gone on in both Democratic and Republican administrations for many, many years, you're into a whole different place....

You know, the author Ron Susskind heard about three years ago from an official in the Bush White House, Hey, you guys aren't relevant anymore. You're in what he called the reality-based community....

We've moved to a different place. So they're recognizing that facts are for wimps, and that, you know, strength belongs to people who can craft the truth for their own purposes. The problem is, that way eventually lies tyranny... If you lose a common ground of facts on which to move forward as a society, nobody can agree on anything, and you can't pull together to solve problems.

Check out this video clip and pass it on.

Full transcript on the flip side.

Transcript courtesy of MSNBC:

OLBERMANN: If the Iraq debate seems especially exhausting, it may be due to the steady erosion of the foundation for any productive debate, facts. Our fourth story on the COUNTDOWN tonight, the persistent lie a link, a preexisting link, between Iraq and al Qaeda. President Bush last week told CBS News, quote, "One of the hardest parts of my job is to connect Iraq to the war on terror." Of course, any good boss knows how to delegate the hard stuff. And so the past several days have seen a veritable assault by his staff on what, in any other plane of existence, would constitute consensus reality, the knowledge, known to the intelligence agencies of the U.S., Britain, and Israel, to the 9/11 Commission, to, most recently, the bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee, and to many of your sharper domesticated farm animals, that al Qaeda and Iraq were not partners, allies, or even friends.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIPS)

RICE: There were ties going on between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein's regime going back for a decade. There were ties between Iraq and al Qaeda.

TIM RUSSERT, HOST: And the meeting with Atta did not occur.

CHENEY: We don't know. You've got Iraq and al Qaeda testimony from the director of CIA that there was indeed a relationship, Zarqawi in Baghdad, et cetera.

SNOW: There was no direct operational relationship, but there was a relationship.

(END VIDEO CLIPS)

OLBERMANN: What happens when reality, in the form of that Senate report, dares to intrude? Watch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIPS)

RUSSERT: Committee said that there was no relationship. In fact, Saddam...

CHENEY: I haven't seen the report. I haven't had a chance to read it yet.

SNOW: But the Senate report--rather than get, you know--and I don't want to get into the vagaries of the Senate report.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

OLBERMANN: Let's call on Jonathan Alter, a senior editor at "Newsweek" and an MSNBC contributor, and a presidential historian, author of "The Defining Moment: FDR's 100 Days, the Triumph of Hope."

Jonathan, good evening.

JONATHAN ALTER, AUTHOR, "THE DEFINING MOMENT": Hi, Keith.

OLBERMANN: Let's start with the basics. Americans, even media types, especially in crises, historically give top government officials a presumption of credibility until proven dastardly. I mean, we remembered the "Maine" for 75 years, till it was pretty much proven the Spanish did not blow it up, it was an accident. How much of that presumption of governmental credibility remains?

ALTER: I'd say between zero and none, at least as far as the media goes, and I think any sentient American at this point, they've lost their credibility many, many times over.

Does that mean they've lost the argument? No, because, as you've been indicating, facts often don't determine the resolution of the arguments.

So they could end up winning in November by distorting the argument. But on credibility and the facts, they've lost.

They remind me of, you know, a politician who's caught in bed with a prostitute, and his wife comes in and sees him, and he looks up and says to her, Who do you believe, me or your cheating eyes? You know, they don't have any credibility anymore, so they just assert something that ain't so and hope that it plays.

OLBERMANN: In particular, regarding Iraq and al Qaeda, and the link that does not exist, except in the minds, or at least the speechifying, of the administration, is the essential problem here, is the turning point, the hinge, what the noted political historian Daffy Duck called pronoun trouble? I mean, does the current administration see all terrorists as equal and one, and therefore, to them, there really is a link between all bad guys? Is it that simple?

ALTER: Yes, I think we'll see this as the period of the great conflation, that conflate, you know, people who've been fighting each other for 700 years, Sunnis and Shi'ites, and they throw them all, they lump them all together.

It's a little bit like what happened during the cold war, when all commies were the same. You know, it was about 15 years after the split between the Soviets and the Chinese communists that Washington finally acknowledged that they didn't actually like each other. Before that, it was all commies are all the same.

It helps to unify the country to fight by lumping everybody in together. So that's part of what's happening.

Look, (INAUDIBLE), Keith, most people aren't paying a lot of attention to all this head-slamming at the line of scrimmage in Washington. The Republicans just want to get through one message, We want to kill the terrorists more than the other guys. The Democrats, in turn, want the message to be, The war in Iraq is a disaster.

So everything that you're hearing from the Republicans is just to drive home that first message.

OLBERMANN: Let's look long term. How much do you think the undermining of consensus reality threatens this country's ability to engage in meaningful debate about threats we face, whether they're terrorists, otherwise, whatever next comes down the pike?

ALTER: It's a tremendous problem, because if you move from an evidence-based foreign policy, or domestic policy, to a--what you could call a faith-based policy, which takes you out of the realm of facts, out of the realm of rational policy-making that gone on in both Democratic and Republican administrations for many, many years, you're into a whole different place.

You know, the author Ron Susskind heard about three years ago from an official in the Bush White House, Hey, you guys aren't relevant anymore. You're in what he called the reality-based community.

We've moved to a different place. So they're recognizing that facts are for wimps, and that, you know, strength belongs to people who can craft the truth for their own purposes.

The problem is, that way eventually lies tyranny, not here in the United States, but in a larger cosmic sense. If you lose a common ground of facts on which to move forward as a society, nobody can agree on anything, and you can't pull together to solve problems.

OLBERMANN: But everybody who's tried that here, dating back to the Alien and Sedition Acts, and at 1801, eventually there's been a tipping point in which that faith-based reality has evaporated. Is there a tipping point coming? Is there something to wake people up about this?

ALTER: Oh, I think we've woken up. And that's the good news, Keith. You know, you have a president who is at historically low levels of popularity. When we see that he went up a little bit in a last couple days, it takes our eye off the ball. The American people figured this out after Katrina. That was the tipping point.

So he is--he will be seen as incompetent no matter what he says, no matter what kind of arguments he makes, and even if the Democrats hold onto Congress.

OLBERMANN: I agree with you on the timing of that. It's just like all tipping points, it may not be measured immediately.

Jonathan Alter of "Newsweek" and MSNBC, as always, sir, great thanks for your time.

ALTER: Thanks a lot, Keith.

David DeGraw is AlterNet's video blogger.