You can fool some of the people…

Written By: - Date published: 1:02 pm, October 4th, 2007 - 2 comments
Categories: blogs - Tags:

…all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time, said Abraham Lincoln. John Key appears to be learning that lesson the hard way, much as Brash did with the Brethren.

The PM once referred to Key as “insubstantial”. A growing number in the media seem to be coming to the same conclusion.

First it was Braunias a few weeks back writing of his interview with Key: “it wasn’t as simple as thinking that the lights were on but no one was home. It was more the case that he was in there, somewhere, but there were no lights on…”

Now Colin Espiner is giving Key the scrutiny he deserves. On Key’s outrageous claim that “the Iraq war is over”:

At the very least Key’s comments were insensitive; at worst they betrayed a surprisingly slippery grasp of foreign affairs.

Suddenly, National doesn’t seem to know what it stands for or what its policies and principles are. Key has gone from sure-footed and confident to bumbling, shifty, and evasive in a matter of days.

Here’s his full post.

2 comments on “You can fool some of the people… ”

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  1. Sam Dixon 1
    4 October 2007 at 4:03 pm

    any time you’re reduced to saying ‘technically I’m right’ you’ve lost http://www.nzherald.co.nz/category/story.cfm?c_id=280&objectid=10467733

    and anyway, he’s lying when he says me meant the ‘conventional war’.

    Why on Earth would he feel the need to point out on National Radio that the conventional war is over when it ended more than 4 years ago, and has become just the opening act in the world’s largest ongoing conflagration? everyone knows the ‘conventional war is over’, it’s stupid to think that’s what he was talking about.

    Of course, when he said the war is over he was talking about the war that we normally mean whn talking aobut the war in Iraq, that is the complex of fighting that has been going on since the Ba’athist regime was ousted. Doubtless, he’s seen the positive spin General Petraeus put on circumstances at the Senate hearings last month and the triumphalism coming from the neocons now that casualties are falling after reaching an all time peak in the mid-months of the year, and from that concluded, foolishly, that the war is over.

    Well, every day I’m going to send him an email, in the subject line will be the number of deaths in the war reported on icasualties.org that past day, and a running total. Maybe, he’ll spare a moment to think of those still dying in the war he has announced over. Probably not though.

  2. Z K Muggletonspofin 2
    4 October 2007 at 4:18 pm

    George W Bush declared ‘the war’ to be over soon after they invaded. One would expect that an absence of war is…peace? That’s why the USA, Britain and Australia have spent billions on keeping hundreds of thousands of troops in Iraq to fight ‘the peace’?? If Key thinks there is no war, conventional or otherwise, what is Bush’s “War on Terrorism” all about?

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