If there's anyone out there who's still in touch with those rubbery/silvery liitle creatures with the really big eyes, now would be the time to give them a nudge. We haven't had any really juicy UFO sightings since that last flurry of hastily-compiled documentaries intended to save the History Channel from oblivion in the mid-nineties. (You remember, the ones sandwiched between the Civil War and Hitler.)

So please, if you've been abducted recently, please give the liitle guys a call back and ask them to hover a saucer or two over Area 51 next Tuesday, just for an hour or so. We'll chip in for the anti-matter necessary to make the trip, so the cost should be minimal.

Help us to put this WMD fervor behind us for another year or two, just long enough to get some reasonable folks into the White House. It's your patriotic duty, after all.

Right-wing conspiracy theories should come as no surprise. These are the people who think the media is in a conspiracy to make Republicans look bad, and scientists are in a conspiracy against christianity and for global warming.

This one is new, however. It's the first right-wing conspiracy theory I have heard in which Republicans are part of the conspiracy.

It's a revival of 1950's radical wingnuttery as exemplified by the John Birch Society and the peripatetic perambulations of Mme. Chiang and all of that, including a lot of Time Magazine's "reporting" back in those days. (NB: Time has always been a right wing organ -- often a radical one, it didn't just recently turn into one.)

It's this whacked out wingnuttery that the character of Jack D. Ripper is satirizing in "Dr. Strangelove." Precious bodily fluids indeed.

And this specific issue of "found" WMD has been kicking around the wingnutosphere for years, and has been periodically brought to the fore by the Powers That Be of that Ilk so as to mobilize the troops (Cheeto™-Eaters to the Rescue!) to fight The Enemy. I'm not even sure the story being bruited by Phillips is anything new. In fact, it sounds very, very similar to most of the other "found" WMD stories of the past four years that have a "Syria connection", and that suggests a single source for all of them, this modern day incarnation of Jack D. Ripper, David Gaubatz, Hero.

In the '50's, that aspect of whacky wingnuttery was kept pretty much in its place, the attics and belfries of polite society, at least most of the time after McCarthy's overreach was stifled. And so it is, pretty much, today. The "found" WMD story is confined to the fringes of the right wing devotees, most of the time, and it is disavowed specifically by His Majesty, more's the pity, though he once said:

Bush, May 29, 2003: We found the weapons of mass destruction.

Jumping the gun as it were.

Of course Santorum and Hoekstra coming out with their little dog and pony show of "found" WMD (old munitions not completely destroyed after GWI) and it getting immense play on FOX has embedded the notion of something being found in/shipped out of Iraq as a result of Our Triumphant Invasion.

But the Phillips story is red meat for the True Believers.

John Birchism was never all that big in terms of membership and believers but their influence was surprising. Though they couldn't have their way, they were able to get their themes and obsessions into the public debate, and frantic worries about "fluids" and "communist infiltration" and whatnot were more common than we might suspect. Otherwise sane people would get crazy about this or that topic, in part because the Birchers were flogging it.

It was a viable alternative worldview, and for some, having that alternative is necessary.

Great research, great article. As usual.

So, to summarize what's been reported before: these extremist, illogical conspriacy theories always have existed on the far right and probably always will. The difference is that now the "transmitters" of these theories (borrowing a term from David Neiwert) like Malkin and Limbaugh are embraced by the mainstream media, who often reports the right wing theories uncritically.

Why does the mainstream media now treat the equivalent of black helicopter theories like they are valid news? Again, it has already been documented that the media consolidation, which began at the end of Reagan's term when the media ownership rules were loosened (at the same time that the Fairness Doctrine was scrapped) wasn't by accident. There was intent on the part of the leaders of the right (think: Heritage Foundation) to bring the major news organizations into the fold. Through a long process of ownership change/consolidation followed by selective hiring and promoting, the character of the news organizations themselves changed. Which is why the contrast between their treatment of Clinton and of Bush (and incidentally of Gingrich and of Pelosi) is so marked.

So, all well and good. And Glenn does a terrific job of documenting in detail the double standards here every day.

So what are we to do about it?

"We found them! We found Sadaam's WMDs!"

"Really. Can we see them?"

"No."

The complete and utter LACK of evidence somehow is transformed into ALL THE PROOF THAT IS NEEDED, and in fact disproves any evidence supporting the contrary position.

Could there really be any more than 1 or 2 percent of the population that believes WMDs *were* found in Iraq, but both Bush and the Democrats want this "fact" hidden to avoid embarrassment?

If this explains everything, I feel better: The religious fundamentalists plus some deranged people would be the only ones able to hang on to this kind of crap indefinitely, the rest of us would see it (eventually) for what it is. I hope it is that simple.

It could be: 9/11 shocked the people, so even some of the reasoned ones panicked and acted and thought crazy. If so, they will eventually all sober up.

I hope this is all (or most) there is to it.

farnsworth:

Can anyone believe they would choose a lie that leaves them responsible for an unjustifiable war over a lie that justifies their actions?

How much is Negroponte paying you to say that???