The previous post is, intentionally, not very charitable. Allow me to explain why.
Andrew Natsios was massively, staggeringly wrong, about the cost of the Bush administration's adventure in Iraq. He was off by hundreds of billions of dollars. He proclaimed this foolishness on national television. And when Ted Koppel mercifully offered him the chance to qualify his statement, he not only refused to do so, but he seemed to chide Koppel for even considering that the invasion, destruction and rebuilding of another country might cost American taxpayers a penny more than $1.7 billion.
Natsios was utterly, publicly, obstinately and arrogantly wrong. That entails a loss of credibility — it makes him incredible. It makes him a fool.
But this loss of credibility needn't be irreversible.
The reason I'm being so deliberately harsh toward Andrew Natsios is that he hasn't in any way acknowledged that his credibility was in question — that in fact his credibility no longer existed. He hasn't made the slightest attempt to regain or rebuild it. He has simply carried on, continuing to make ex cathedra pronouncements, confident that the public and the press won't notice.
It's all so brazenly Winston Smith. And, of course, it's not just Andrew Natsios. We see the same foolishness mixed with unrepentant arrogance on an almost daily basis from George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Condoleezza Rice. We've seen the same thing even from peripheral members of the administration, like Judith Miller. "I was proved fucking right!" Miller shrieked about her WMD reporting, long after it had been proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that she was, well, fucking wrong.
To err is human, of course, and I'm not suggesting that Natsios or Bush or Miller or anyone else be held to some inhuman standard of perfection. But if the truth matters at all, then mistakes need to be acknowledged and corrected. I'm not angry that Natsios struck out. I'm angry that he swaggered out of the batter's box as if he'd just hit a grand slam, and he still insists that he's batting 1.000.
Natsios said some utterly foolish things on Nightline. But what makes him an utter fool is not just that he said those things, but that he continues to pretend that reality hasn't totally contradicted his version of events. It's not just that what he said was untrue, it's that he acts as though the difference between true and false doesn't matter — as though it doesn't matter to his own reputation and credibility, as though it doesn't matter to the world.
Natsios and Bush and all the others who misled the American public into thinking this war would be a cakewalk that could be won on the cheap, were wrong. Their mistake has already cost taxpayers (or, really, since Bush won't take responsibility for his budget either, taxpayers' grandchildren) hundreds of billions of dollars. And thousands of American lives. And tens of thousands of Iraqi lives.
The difference between true and false, in other words, can be lethally important. Andrew Natsios should not be allowed to suggest otherwise with impunity. I'm not sure how else to prevent him from doing that other than to hold him up to ridicule — to mock him as a fool.
Pointing and laughing, and/or hurling fruit is probably a bit over the top, so here's a more concrete, and more coolly polite, suggestion: Natsios has taken a new position at Georgetown University. If I were a student paying whatever it is that one pays to attend Georgetown, I would be offended that I was being charged all of that to be instructed by Mr. $1.7 Billion. I think Natsios' students owe it to themselves, and to the truth, to demand that their new professor explain his multi-billion dollar mistake before he is allowed to begin any other lecture.
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