February 04, 2004

ETERNAL TURKEY

Throw a couple more simpletons on the plastic turkey pile. First up, Daniel Patrick Welch:

Almost nothing could be further from the cynical, blood-drenched, plastic-turkey photo-op truth.

Welch wouldn’t recognise the truth if it was served to him on a big silver platter. And here’s Yamin Zakaria:

President Plastic Turkey Bush, "Foot in Mouth" Donald Rumsfeld with his "unknowns" and Saint Tony Blair with his 'divine' revelation, followed the example of Paul Wolfwitz, as they sneaked in and out of Iraq.

Just as Yamin "Can't Spell Wolfowitz" Zakaria followed the example of earlier turkey believers. How long will this myth persist?

UPDATE. One more. Texas A&M student Collins Ezeanyim:

Bush was shown carrying a fake turkey while visiting troops in Baghdad during Thanksgiving.

Posted by Tim Blair at February 4, 2004 07:19 PM
Comments

The writers perpetuating the myths know they are false. They don't care. They are preaching to a choir that can't handle reality. Looking reality squarely in the eye would devastate these limp minded fools.

As Jack Nicholson says in the movie A Few Good Men, "You want the truth? You can't handle the truth!"

Posted by: Reid at February 4, 2004 at 09:13 PM

Tim asks: "How long will this myth persist?"

I don't know, but plastic turkeys can last for centuries.

Posted by: perfectsense at February 4, 2004 at 09:21 PM

Donald Rumsfeld with his "unknowns"

Don't let them get away with this one, either. Rumsfeld was making a perfectly comprehensible statement; it was the press that was too stupid to understand what he was saying.

Posted by: Robert Crawford at February 4, 2004 at 11:17 PM

Robert, you are spot on. If you haven't read Mark Steyn's piece on this go and find it.

Posted by: Razor at February 5, 2004 at 12:00 AM

Plastic turkey myth? We're talkin' -- hell, what's that phrase Catholics use for the bones of saints, holy grails and other miscellaneous objects that were considered to be holy because of their association with (or being pieces of) the saints?

Jeez, can't you just see Dom DeLuise playing the part of "Columbine" Moore, waddling through the ruins of a long-abandoned American base in Iraq, supervising an archeological dig for the holy plastic turkey whilst black marketeers and other miscreants hound and bedevil our hero?

Posted by: Tongue Boy at February 5, 2004 at 12:21 AM

That myth will last as long as the stolen election myth - forever in the eyes of the true believers. It is an article of faith in their leftist dogma, like the global warming hoax and the idea that Saddam was pretty much Mother Theresa with a moustache.

Posted by: Latino at February 5, 2004 at 12:27 AM

My question (which will earn the respondent immortality) is: Why are these people so stupid?

Posted by: Richard Cook at February 5, 2004 at 02:38 AM

Practice, Mr. Cook. Lots & lots of practice.

Lessons from the Richard Brinsley Sheridan School of Stupidity help. A testimonial to our founder from Dr. Johnson:

'Sherry is dull, sir, naturally dull; but it must have taken him a great deal of pains to become what we now see him. Such an excess of stupidity, sir, is not in Nature.'

The Sheridan School of Stupidity can do all this for you, & more! But once you've graduated, how will you keep up your credentials? Taking your news from Michael Moore, Robert Fisk, & state-owned broadcasters is a good way to preserve that precious intellectual virginity for a lifetime. Thousands of trained SSS operatives are hard at work round the clock to protect you from any information that might tear your graceful veil of fashionable left-wing illusion.

I trust, sir, this answers your question.

Posted by: Jay Random at February 5, 2004 at 03:20 AM

Your head is humming & it won’t go, in case you don’t know,
The TURKEY’s calling you to join it,
Dear Dan Welch can you here the gobble—& did you know,
Your platter lies full of fly-glitt’ry shit.

Posted by: ForNow at February 5, 2004 at 04:01 AM

What's even funnier is that past tense is 'snuck' not sneaded. This writer is grammatically illiterate too.

Posted by: zeluna at February 5, 2004 at 04:15 AM

sneaded = sneaked

Posted by: zeluna at February 5, 2004 at 04:15 AM

BUSH LIED! TURKEYS DIED!

Posted by: mojo at February 5, 2004 at 08:20 AM

Sorry, no. Everyone says "snuck", but that's no no more correct than saying "ain't." The correct past tense of "sneak" is "sneaked". Merriam-Webster's English dictionary lists both and says:

usage From its earliest appearance in print in the late 19th century as a dialectal and probably uneducated form, the past and past participle snuck has risen to the status of standard and to approximate equality with sneaked. Indications are that it is continuing to grow in frequency. It is most common in the U.S. and Canada, but has also been spotted in British and Australian English.

But your sentiment that the author is an idiot is absolutely correct. :-)

Posted by: Mary in LA at February 5, 2004 at 08:23 AM

I’ve learnt to prefer irregularly pronounced &/or spelt verbs for the flavor & color that they bring to our otherwise monotonous tumbles toward the inevitable proof of statistical & physical laws’ grimly reaping.

prove proved proven
spell spelt spelt
learn learnt learnt
shit shote shitten

Posted by: ForNow at February 5, 2004 at 09:04 AM

No, Shit becomes shat, if for no other reason than the wonderful resonancy it brings to the name of Kowloon's racecourse, Sha Tin (Shat In).

Posted by: slatts at February 5, 2004 at 10:29 AM

Bugger your plastic turkey distractions. So a couple more idiot bloggers are peddling old news, so what?!?!

Let's have a smartarse joke about 500 dead US troops dead in Iraq. Let's all laugh about that.

Posted by: Miranda Divide at February 5, 2004 at 10:37 AM

Didja hear the one about the lefties who opposed the war and kept Saddam in place so there'd be no more killing? No? Neither did the human shredder operator or the mass graves digger. 100,000 a year at last count.

Posted by: slatts at February 5, 2004 at 10:51 AM

You speak of buggering plastic turkeys, Miranda? You... you twisted, sick individual! Somebody call PETA, now!

Posted by: Alice at February 5, 2004 at 11:07 AM

Lets see... 1991 to 2003, 100,000 a year, that's more than a million people the US could have "saved" if they'd done it when they first had a chance.

So what took you so long? And how come you have fucked the whole thing up so badly?

Posted by: Miranda Divide at February 5, 2004 at 11:43 AM

"So what took you so long?"

Because they listened to the UN.

Posted by: Gary at February 5, 2004 at 11:54 AM

On second thoughts, Miranda, perhaps some buggery would improve your disposition. Let's see if we caon fine us a volunteer.

Posted by: Alice at February 5, 2004 at 05:01 PM

Whoops. That would be "can find us".

Posted by: Alice at February 5, 2004 at 05:02 PM

The idea of leftists’ being unhappy at US troops’ getting killed is preposterous, especially to those of us who actually know leftists. Some of the louder leftists hanging out too much in or about academic settings tend to forget that we conservatives know plenty of leftists personally! We’ve many of us known leftists who at one time or another said that they’d like to see the US get “bloodied” so that it would “learn more humility.” One leftist speaking in all seriousness, not even anger, said to me before the first Gulf War that “several thousand—or maybe just a few thousand” US troops’ deaths would be good. The number went down as she saw my face.

Clearly, for the Left, not enough US troops are getting killed! How can the US feel bloodied if more US troops just won’t die? How to get those numbers higher? More US troops used to get killed by the week in Vietnam!

From “343 — Real numbers in Iraq” by Michael Novak, Feb. 2, 2004, at National Review Online http://www.nationalreview.com/novak/novak200402020959.asp

Yet as of January 15, exactly ten months after the war began on March 16, 2003, the official number of U.S. combat deaths listed by the Defense Department was 343. Another 155 had died from non-hostile causes, including 100 in accidents and others from illness. Since non-hostile causes are responsible for army deaths in peacetime as well as wartime, in bases at home as well as in war zones, many of the non-hostile deaths ought not to be counted as specific to Iraq, although, of course, a portion of them are.

Posted by: ForNow at February 5, 2004 at 05:08 PM