In the “I-kid-you-not” category, the Washington Posts’s official fact checker (that’s the title of his feature column) Glenn Kessler has actually declared that President Obama did not tell a lie when he claimed this week that he never drew a red line when it comes to Syrian chemical weapons.
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“This is a puzzler. How can the president say he did not create a “red line” when his statement last year about a “red line” is one of the most famous statements of his presidency?”
A “puzzler” indeed Glenn. For those of you who might have missed it, here is what Obama said in Stockholm, Sweden on Wednesday about his red line:
“I didn’t set a red line. The world set a red line.”
And, for those normal people who don’t follow politics as obsessively as we do, here is what Obama said about Syrian chemical weapons at a press conference on August 20, 2012:
“We have been very clear to the Assad regime, but also to other players on the ground, that a red line for us is we start seeing a whole bunch of chemical weapons moving around or being utilized. That would change my calculus. That would change my equation.”
Seems pretty clear right? Obama drew a red line around the use of Syrian chemical weapons, and then tried to claim he was really only enforcing international law — something common sense would tell you is at least deceitful, if not outright dishonest.
Obama’s statement is pretty lengthy too, and he goes into detail on just how exactly the red line he drew wasn’t really drawn by him.
“First of all, I didn’t set a red line. The world set a red line. The world set a red line when governments representing 98 percent of the world’s population said the use of chemical weapons are abhorrent and passed a treaty forbidding their use, even when countries are engaged in war.”
But our good friend Glenn doesn’t really see it that way. Sure, he admits Obama set the red line since that’s pretty inescapable but then he engages in some logical jiu-jitsu that would make Royce Gracie jealous [emphasis mine]:
“When the administration unexpectedly decided to seek congressional approval for a military strike, officials clearly faced a conundrum. The president needs the votes of Republicans in order to win approval, but given the partisan distrust of his leadership, the White House apparently decided it would not be helpful to ask for support for an Obama “red line.” So the rhetoric shifted — it was now the world’s red line.”
See you silly rubes, Obama’s “rhetoric” just shifted. He didn’t really say something untrue, he just used different words.
If this smells like bovine manure to you, that’s because it is. But wait, the manure gets richer:
“To sum up, the president made an ill-considered rhetorical statement a year ago, without consulting his aides. But the White House staff decided they could not take it back and even considered it a useful example of firm presidential leadership when they needed to inform Congress of evidence of chemical weapons use by Syria.
But the president apparently was never comfortable with his own words. So when new talking points were crafted to make this line seem less like an “Obama red line” and more like a world-backed red line, the president bungled the language again. He made it appear as if he was denying he had called it a red line, when that was obviously not the case.”
Read that again. This is hilariously typical of the B.S. language of politics. It’s not that Obama deliberately drew a red line when asked about Syrian use of chemical weapons, it’s just that he made an “ill-conceived rhetorical statement” or something.
How absurd. What does it matter if Obama wasn’t comfortable with his red line? He still set it, then tried to deny that he set it this week. That’s not bungling the talking points, that’s telling a lie. Any “fact-checker” who takes their job seriously should be able to recognize that.
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