Left I on the News

Back in 2007, while he was still running for President, Obama signed on to the big lie about Iran: "They're in the process of developing [nuclear weapons]. And I don't think that's disputed by any expert." Of course he wasn't the first, nor the last, to sign on to the big lie. In the last week, we've seen two people who most people probably think of as either liberal or at least somewhat "progressive," certainly not reactionary, signing on.

First was Stephen Colbert, interviewing Jeffrey Goldberg on the subject of why Israel should (or shouldn't right now) attack Iran [transcript mine from the video]:

Colbert: Iran is pushing the world's [emotional] button by threatening to push their [literal] button...Israel sees them as an existential threat because Iran has declared their goal is to wipe Israel off the map.

Goldberg: Iran says they seek the destruction of Israel. They are trying to gain nuclear weapons, this is what most of the world believes. [Colbert um-hum, right, right]

Colbert: For some reason they [Israel] are paranoid about people who want them dead having a nuclear bomb.

And no, Colbert defenders, none of this was remotely offered as sarcasm, irony, or any kind of comedy.

Next was Richard Engel, NBC's "chief foreign correspondent" (practically the only one the way network staffing goes these days), being interviewed by Rachel Maddow:

"If the idea [of the invasion of Iraq was] to stop weapons of mass destruction, Iran has been unleashed, and Iran, by all accounts, is trying to find and create a weapon of mass destruction.

No ifs, ands, or buts, and certainly no challenge from Maddow. Simply conventional wisdom, sorry, make that wisdumb, exactly on a par with the wisdumb that asserted, equally without challenge from the all-knowing voices of authority, that Iraq had WMD.