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December 20, 2005
Ignorance is Bliss, MT
I'm going to buck a trend here and say that if some two-bit cow-tipping Senator from Montana wants to believe that some or all of the 9/11 terrorists got into the US via Canada, we should go ahead and let him do so. Jumping up and down and demanding retractions and apologies is probably just going to reassure the few remaining rubes out there who believe it that they're on to something. What's worse, it's undignified. And what's even worse than that, it forces us to live with half-assed retractions like this:
Montana Senator Conrad Burns said Tuesday he "misspoke" when he claimed terrorists involved in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks entered the United States from Canada.
But he insisted his mistake at a news conference this week shouldn't obscure security problems "that clearly exist on the border."
In a letter to Ambassador Frank McKenna, Burns noted a man who planned to bomb a New York City subway in 1997, Gazi Ibrahim Abu Mezer, was arrested on this third illegal entry into the United States from Canada.
He also noted Ahmed Ressam, the so-called Millennium Bomber who plotted an attack on the Los Angeles Airport, entered illegally from Canada.
…
"These incidents are disturbing and should not be ignored," Burns wrote.
There now, do we all feel better? Or did that "retraction" have precisely the opposite effect that Ambassador McKenna hoped?
(Cross-posted to the Shotgun.)
Posted by Chris Selley at December 20, 2005 09:32 PM
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