TRUTH CREEP

If you've been following the blog discussion of the New York Times story about the online archive of Iraq documents, you know there's one paragraph in the story that's garbled:

Among the dozens of documents in English were Iraqi reports written in the 1990s and in 2002 for United Nations inspectors in charge of making sure Iraq had abandoned its unconventional arms programs after the Persian Gulf war. Experts say that at the time, Mr. Hussein's scientists were on the verge of building an atom bomb, as little as a year away.

Clearly this is meant to convey the fact that Saddam was perhaps a year away from building a nuke at the time of the Gulf War. But the juxtaposition of "in 2002," "at the time," and "as little as a year away" has led idiots at right-wing blogs to declare that the Times now believes Saddam was a year away from a nuke in 2002. More appallingly, this line is now being spread by the administration -- Digby says Condoleezza Rice and Dan Bartlett have repeated it in interviews today.

I tried to give this sort of thing a name back in January -- "truth creep." "Truth creep," I said, is a lie that "sounds like the truth [and] in fact ... is the truth -- but with a few key details (the key details) distorted, muddied, and/or excised."

The GOP campaign is now running on nothing but truth creep.

The deliberate distortion of John Kerry's gaffe was truth creep. This, from a recent campaign rally, is especially nasty truth creep (though it's been the standard GOP distortion of the Democratic position, i.e., the necessity of due process, for months):

THE PRESIDENT: In all these vital measures for fighting a war on terror, the Democrats in Washington follow a simple philosophy: Just say no. (Laughter.) When it comes to listening in on the terrorists, what's the Democrats' answer?

AUDIENCE: Just say no!

THE PRESIDENT: Just say no. When it comes to detaining terrorists, what's the Democrat's answer?

AUDIENCE: Just say no!

THE PRESIDENT: When it comes to questioning terrorists, what's the Democrat's answer?

AUDIENCE: Just say no!

THE PRESIDENT: When it comes to trying terrorists, what's the Democrat's answer?

AUDIENCE: Just say no!

And now this.

Two thoughts:

First, the Times needs to wake up and pay attention to the online reaction to its article, which means it needs to issue a clarification of that passage today, in real time. (Why does the Times bother publishing blogs if it's not going to use them well?)

And second, I don't care what it's called, "truth creep" or anything else, but somebody has to give this phenomenon a name. That's the first step in beginning to grasp the particular toxicity of lies that share 98% of their DNA with the truth.