Political Plague

Forget Bird Flu--a far deadlier disease already felled over 59 million Americans. This new epidemic's scary symptom--widespread and massive Democrat amnesia. Hence the name: WMDA.

The potent WMDA virus takes two forms, Moonbat and misled:

• Moonbat: This horrifying strain targets the brain, destroying cranial cells and synapses. WMDA's pathology is progressive and terminal--attacking cognitive function and associative recall, each of which degrade precipitously before death. In extremis, the infected imagine Republicans invented regime change and that only the Bush Administration thought Saddam had WMDs. The afflicted lose all memory of President Clinton, President Goober, French President Chirac, Vice President Gore, Sen. Ted Kennedy, Sen. Harry Reid, Sen. Robert Byrd, Sen. John Kerry, Sen. Jay Rockefeller, Rep. Nancy Pelosi, most others in Congress, the MSM, Clinton's senior CIA Iraq specialist, and literally hundreds more.
  
  WMDA victims often experience delusions that containment and sanctions worked (forgetting both the tireless efforts of France, Russia and China to spare starving Iraqis while short-stopping some of the love, as well as their own campaign to drop sanctions). Amnesia blocks recollection that Bush and Blair always cited liberating the Iraqis as a reason for invading. Near the end, patients typically regress into an imagined, but simpler childhood before the Internet eradicated the plague called "un-challenged flip-flop."
  
  Tragic indeed. Infantile too.



• Misled: Those who acknowledge the Internet may still contract the misled WMDA virus. This variant triggers similar symptoms; diagnosis is simple: those with WMDA (mild) can only concoct conspiracies they claim interfere with their superior intelligence and distort their decision making. One typical tendency is imagining the Bush Administration used mind-control until the afflicted believe Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. Indeed, many claim the President -- sometimes called a "syndicate" -- can swindle skeptical enemies!.
  
  Though the milder misled mutation need not be fatal if swiftly treated, it's actually the greater threat--its sufferers invariably become WMDA carriers, who can pass-on the disease. And, alarmingly, scientists say misled WMDA is the first pathogen spread via electrons and photons. So carriers can infect others even absent any direct proximity--including television viewers.
  
  Given the unusual features of misled WMDA, the worst-case risks are carriers with routine exposure to large audiences, such as journalists, entertainers and politicians. The Center for Disease Control is optimistic about an experimental treatment requiring publication of the truth. At first, the Administration suggested deploying the public sector to immunize Americans. Initial results appeared promising, particularly the "Silberman-Robb report, which concluded [Chapter One, Case Study: Iraq, Conclusion 26; text accompanying note 830]:

  The Intelligence Community did not make or change any analytic judgments in response to political pressure to reach a particular conclusion, but the pervasive conventional wisdom that Saddam retained WMD affected the analytic process.

  Others saw value in an alternate technique developed by the Senate Select Committee on Pre-war Intelligence Assessments, stating [Page 273]:

  The Committee did not find any evidence that Administration officials attempted to coerce, influence, or pressure analysts to change their judgments related to Iraq's weapons of mass destruction capabilities.

  And in the past month, unaffected Americans in the media and the Senate (151 Cong. Rec. S12419-20 (Nov. 7, 2005)) launched new vaccine trials.
  
  Still, epidemiologists warn anti-misled WMDA efforts could falter. Several sounded the alarm over evidence symptoms already have spread to at least two Senators (and possibly other Democrats), liberal lobbyists and a growing group of leftist bloggers.
  
  The latest misled WMDA victim is liberal blogger/journalist Josh Marshall. Though tragic, his story is typical: Marshall's natural immunity disappeared when quoting the overview of the Silberman-Robb Report:

  [W]e were not authorized to investigate how policymakers used the intelligence assessments they received from the Intelligence Community. Accordingly, while we interviewed a host of current and former policymakers during the course of our investigation, the purpose of those interviews was to learn about how the Intelligence Community reached and communicated its judgments about Iraq's weapons programs--not to review how policymakers subsequently used that information.

  The quote was accurate, but Marshall took sick when insisting Silberman-Robb "were simp[l]y not authorized to examine potential political manipulation of intelligence, only mistakes within the IC itself." His over-broad delusions made Marshall miss the finding that the Administration didn't alter any intel process or conclusion.
  
  Moreover, Marshall's feverish condition left him unable to comprehend that intel is never unanimous and always includes evidence to the contrary. Possible sources cannot be permitted to paralyze. Decisions based on intelligence must necessarily discard data deemed unreliable. And having made its decision, no Administration can afford a priori publication of the improbable. Sadly, misled WMDA victims such as Marshall lose such logic.

Conclusion: WMDA represents America's most serious public health challenge since the 1918 flu. Unfortunately, the afflicted can't remember remarks from the 90s, much less the lessons of history.

As the Wall Street Journal recently opined (subscription-only):

everyone who has looked into the question of whether the Bush administration lied about intelligence, distorted intelligence, or pressured intelligence agencies to produce assessments that would support a supposedly pre-baked decision to invade Iraq has come up with the same answer: No, no, no and no.

Only illness could explain the Dems' strategy:

1. Spout easily refutable lies; then



2. Fall back to concede they're weak, gullible and easily fooled by a man they see as America's worst and least intelligent President.

Either way, hardly a persuasive display of leadership. Expect to see more such antics as the plague progresses.

(via Right Wing News, The Anchoress, Glenn Beck, Texas Rainmaker and Mary Mostert)