Franken FurterJamie Allman pointed me
to this video of Al Franken on the Today Show. The clip is getting a lot of attention because of Franken's semi-joking reference to the execution of Karl Rove and Scooter Libby--and isn't it refreshing to see liberals suddenly interesting in prosecuting treason and supporting the death penalty?--but there are several other remarkable moments in this video.
At about 2:40 in the clip, Lauer actually asks a good question:
Lauer: In Iraq last week, there was a referendum on a new constitution and about 60% of Iraqis turned out to vote. We've got a milestone coming up, almost 2000 US troops killed in Iraq. Does that progress though on the political side--this freedom to vote and this turnout by the Iraqi people--does it justify in some ways the loss of US lives?
Not surprisingly, Al would prefer not to answer that question, so he doesn't:
Franken: Boy I don't know. We--we have blown--first of all we shouldn't have gone in, we went in, and I was--I supported it at the time, because I believed Colin Powell and I believed, uh, Judy Miller [smirk], and I believed the administration for some reason. Uh, we've bungled it, going in. We have had political--you know when we turned over the interim government, gave them sovereignty, things were supposed to get better, they got worse. When, uh, we had the elections, uh the first set of elections, very inspiring, things have gotten worse since then. There needs to be two fronts here, and one front ain't going so good.
First, I'm rather surprised to hear that Franken supported the war in Iraq (at the time). Of course he quickly gets onto another topic. Note too that Lauer goes on to point out that Franken admits in the book that he doesn't have all the answers (actually he doesn't have any of them, nor does he have the right questions). Franken comes back with a comment about how it's all a terrible mess, and all Bush's fault. But wait a minute! Didn't Franken say that he supported the war? So is it Al Franken's fault too? And what in the world is he talking about with the "two fronts" part?
And later, Lauer doesn't catch Franken lying:
Franken: This was about trying to smear a guy, who was saying, they didn't try to buy nuclear material from Niger. You're lying. They lied.
In fact, no matter how many times liberals try to bring this up, they're wrong. The only person lying about
what Joe Wilson found in Niger was Joe Wilson.
