> Meanwhile, you haven't at all addressed my main point, which is that
> Saddam was not a "terrorist" in the sense that he ever sponsored
> terrorist attacks against the U.S.A., yet there are a lot of seemingly
> very intelligent and honest people who nevertheless persistently
> conflate Saddam and Osama, and I still don't understand the motivation
> why or even the mechanism how, knowing what they know, they can do
> that.
Who are these intelligent and honest people? The only ones who do that that I can see are either dishonest (i.e., everybody on Bush's side) or not well informed.
Actually, I think it's not hard to understand why a lot of not-well-informed people connect SH and OBL. They operate on a simple, binary view of the world: there's our side, and (shudder!) Their Side, where all the evil meanies are. Spain, for some inexplicable reason, just defected to Their Side, and Poland might follow! The end of the world is no doubt near!
Jon Johanning // jjohanning at igc.org __________________________________ Belinda: Ay, but you know we must return good for evil. Lady Brute: That may be a mistake in the translation.
-- Sir John Vanbrugh: The Provok’d Wife (1697), I.i.