Here's Some Convincing EvidenceEric Alterman,
writing in the HuffPo about a piece in the NY Times regarding the Hollywood nitwits helps out with a cite for an anecdote that Rob Reiner mentions:
"To me, the death of people at somebody's hands over the stupidity of this man is astounding!" he shouted at me. "When I hear that on the weekend of the Super Bowl an Iraqi expatriate was explaining to him the difference between Kurds and Sunnis and Shiites, it makes me want to cry. I want to cry!" (Reiner said he recalled hearing this anecdote on cable news or talk radio, though I wasn't able to find any reference to it subsequently.)Alterman notes:
UPDATE: This just in: The Packer quote in the Times is:
Bush is a man who has never shown much curiosity about the world. When he met with Makiya and two other Iraqis in January, I was told by someone not present, the exiles spent a good portion of the time explaining to the president that there are two kinds of Arabs in Iraq, Sunnis and Shiites. The very notion of an Iraqi opposition appeared to be new to him. War has turned Bush into a foreign-policy president, but democratizing an Arab country will require a subtlety and sophistication that have been less in evidence than the resolve to fight.
From Dreaming Of Democracy, By GEORGE PACKER (NYT) 7730 words, Published: March 2, 2003Now, get that "evidence". Packer was told by someone
not present, that this happened. Wow, that's quite an authoritative sourcing. Packer wasn't there, but he heard about it from somebody who wasn't there, who heard about it from... where? We're not told that. Indeed we're not given any information about the source other than that
he wasn't there.
