Posted 10:25 PM by Scoobie Davis

James Taranto: Objectively Pro-Osama
Amazingly, James Taranto has not apologized for his McCarthyite smear that Moveon.org is "pro-Saddam." Here is Taranto's muddled logic:

As for "pro-Saddam," we suppose some clarification is in order. We will concede there is no evidence that MoveOn's members are admirers of Saddam Hussein himself, his ideology or his style of tyranny. Very few Americans are pro-Saddam in that sense...But MoveOn is, or at least was, pro-Saddam in this sense: Its position on the major issue of the day, whether to effect "regime change" in Iraq through military force, was essentially indistinguishable from that of Saddam himself. MoveOn advocated continuing a 12-year standoff whose central feature was that it left Saddam in power.

This is interesting logic. However, Taranto himself agreed with the Bush regime's decision to divert resources from finding bin Laden to finding a nonexistent link between bin Laden and Saddam in order to divert more resources from rooting out bin Laden's cadre groups to fighting the war in Iraq; this is precisely what bin Laden wanted. Taranto's view was essentially indistinguishable from that of bin Laden himself. Tarnanto advocated a policy whose central feature was that it left bin Laden free to commit more terrorism. By his own logic, Taranto is pro-Osama.