Gore Vidal Quotes
There's no such thing as a war against terrorism. It's idiotic. These are slogans. These are lies. It's advertising, which is the only art form we ever invented and developed.
Vidal, Gore. Dreaming War: Blood for Oil and the Cheney-Bush Junta. Thunder's Mouth Press, 2002.
President George W. Bush, to justify the invasion of Iraq had told the public that the Iraqi regime was developing nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction, and had participated in the September 11 attack on the United States by assisting Al Qaeda. It turned out that these statements were false. The administration claimed that their error was well intentioned and the result of faulty intelligence. Opponents claimed that the administration officials knew that they were exaggerating and had pressured the intelligence agencies to create intelligence conclusions that supported their story.
Theodore Roosevelt was the Presidential nominee. See {634097} and {585962}--Samuel Johnson, for a 1758 version of this idea.
The quotation was given by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld just prior to the war with Iraq, 2003.
One of the major reasons that President George W. Bush had given for invading Iraq was that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. None were found.
Accusing her of being a fellow traveler with Communist sympathies, Nixon called her "the Pink Lady" and said she was "pink right down to her underwear." See {627826} and {619498}. Douglas and her campaign thought the accusations were so absurd that at first they did not even bother to respond. Nixon repeated the them and stayed “on message” and by the time that Douglas, who had opposed communism all her life, was believed to be one or at least a “fellow traveler” by most Californians—and finally she responded with statements like this, but it was way too late to turn public perception around. She awarded Nixon the derogatory nickname “Tricky Dick” which the majority of the public used for him throughout his career--{600036}.
Cicely Isabel Fairfield
Eugene Luther Gore Vidal was an American writer and public intellectual known for his epigrammatic wit, patrician manner, and polished style of writing. Vidal was openly bisexual and his novels often dealt with LGBT characters, which was unusual at the time. Beyond literature, Vidal was heavily involved in politics. He twice sought office—unsuccessfully—as a Democratic Party candidate, first in 1960 to the United States House of Representatives (for New York), and later in 1982 to the U.S. Senate (for California).
