On the radio show today (Tuesday) I confronted one of the most annoying and incompetent guests I've ever welcomed to my program in more than ten years of dialogue and debate. Ruth Rosen is a historian and former UC Berkeley professor who wrote a provocative column asserting that Oliver Stone had gone along with the "Big Lie" of the Bush administration--- that Sadam Hussein "committed" the crimes of 9/11. I played her an excerpt of the President's Monday press conference in which he specifically, unequivocally acknowledged that Sadam had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks so she quickly retreated to claiming that it was Cheney, not Bush, who promoted this "Big Lie" (which she explicitly compared to the techniques of Goebbels and Hitler). Amazingly, this "distinguished academic" provided not a single citation -- not one! -- for her insistence that Cheney "often" misled people about Iraq's involvement in attacking the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. A caller, hoping to rescue Professor Rosen, mentioned a 2005 appearance by Cheney on "Meet the Press." While the Vice President certainly discussed Iraq's long-standing support for terrorism, and many contacts with Al Qaeda (also cited by the bi-partisan 9/11 Commission) he never came close to claiming Saddam's idirect involvement in 9/11--- saying twice, "We just don't know."

   The Left has become so deeply attached to its slogan "Bush Lied, Thousands Died" that they feel no need to provide the slightest evidence of the President's "lies" -- deliberate fabrications or distortions of the truth. Concerning WMD's, of course President Bush (like President Clinton before him, and countless other world leaders) made mistatements (based on faulty intelligence) about the Iraqi threat-- but anyone who can't grasp the difference between a mistatement and a lie isn't ready for serious public discourse.

   Nor was Professor Rosen, with her propesterous case about a different Bush-Cheney lie--- for which she remained, for a full hour, unable to provide a scrap of evidence. She remained so badly informed about the whole run-up to war that she even insisted that President Clinton had never called for regime change in Iraq-- until I read her (on the air) the text of the "Iraq Liberation Act of 1998," passed overwhelmingly by both houses of Congress and proudly signed by President Clinton on October 31-- a "Public Law" which unequivocally defined regime change as a principal goal of US policy.

   Flustered by the on-air challenges, Professor Rosen accused me of "ranting and shouting" (I did neither) and insisted that I show her some 'respect" because she was a "Professor Emeritus at the University of California at Berkeley, and I insist upon that." Sorry, Professor Rosen--- respect ought to be earned, not demanded, even for former academics from beautiful Berserk-ley. And you can earn it by doing your homework on subjects you choose to raise in your writing, and agree to discuss on the radio.