The Maverick Tribe

The return of former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer to the national scene (he just started a pro-Iraq War political group called Freedom's Watch) has gotten me all verklempt.  Honestly, President Bush should not have let this guy go - he was a true believer, not to mention a real pro.  Neither Scott McClellan's shaky, autistically repetitious shtick ("I can't comment on an ongoing investigation, I can't comment on an ongoing investigation, Who's on first, What's on second...") nor Tony Snow's affable insincerity have ever held a candle to Ari's bullying command of the White House briefing room.  Whether evading, obfuscating, or just plain lying, Ari always did it with the utmost class.  Or as Slate.com put it, "Ari Fleischer's ability to repeat a lie even after it's been shown, repeatedly, to be false is what separates him from the amateurs."  His taking on the 5-foot, 83-year-old White House correspondent Helen Thomas set a new standard for political courage.  His helpful admonition that we Americans should "watch what [we] say, watch what [we] do" quite possibly defrayed thousands of dissenting voices that may have averted our important invasion of Iraq.

And, most recently, Ari's group Freedom's Watch manages to slake my yearning for those happy, innocent days of Early Bush, when it was still okay to just believe in things - for example, that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction or that Iraq had something to do with September 11th.  Not to spoil the surprise, but the new Freedom's Watch ad brings back that hoary old conflation of Iraq with 9/11, which goes something like this: 

"We went into Iraq because...*WE INTERRUPT THIS SENTENCE WITH HORRIFIC IMAGES OF PLANES FLYING INTO THE WORLD TRADE CENTER*...and that, children, is why we invaded Iraq.  Any questions?"

Enjoy: