The Kennedy connection:

On PBS' NewsHour, Mark Shields expressed a view that is fairly common at this time of the 40th anniversary of president Kennedy's death. About conspiracy theories, with which Shields doesn't believe in:

... the idea that this small troubled tormented man could do something so large and change history by doing it is just somehow, offends people's sense of rationality. I think they're looking for something deeper, something to explain the magnitude of the enormity of what this little man did.

That's our view as well. If you agree with us, consider the following assertion about 9/11:

The idea that a small group of fanatics could do something so large and change history by doing it is just somehow, offends people's sense of rationality. I think war-hawks are looking for something deeper, something to explain the magnitude of the enormity of what this group did.

Basically, we take the view that all evidence to date indicates that al Qaeda is a menace, but nothing on the scale of a state power. But people want to believe that there is something big (and in Bush's case "evil") out there, and so start swinging at figures like Saddam, who fit their own conspiracy theories.

posted by Quiddity at 11/22/2003 10:58:00 PM