Rick Santorum’s “glaring falsehood” on Iran
August 15th, 2011 § Leave a Comment
Paul Pillar of the National Interest has an important piece on last week’s Republican presidential candidates’ debate in Iowa where neconservative Rick Santorum perpetuated an unsubstantiated, alarmist claim about Iran.
Writes Pillar:
…Santorum also used a glaring falsehood: that “ Iran is a country that has killed more American men and women in uniform in Iraq and Afghanistan than the Iraqis and the Afghans have.”
This was hardly the only factual error uttered during the debate (and Paul didn’t get things quite right in characterizing what the U.S. intelligence community has said about the Iranian nuclear program), but it was the biggest whopper of the evening as far as foreign affairs were concerned. It also was the most dangerous falsehood. Inaccuracies such as Tim Pawlenty calling Michael Mullen a general rather than an admiral, or Jon Huntsman mistakenly characterizing the pace of U.S.-Chinese diplomacy, are unlikely to make any difference in public perceptions that could have policy consequences. But Santorum’s assertion, against the backdrop of habitual demonization of Iran, is just the sort of falsehood that is likely to stick and to contribute to mistaken public beliefs that in turn could provide support for disastrous policies.
Read the entire article here and also check out Juan Cole’s must-read analysis of the event.
