One of the most famous faces during the Iraq War was that of Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf, aka ‘Comical Ali’.
He was the Information Minister for Saddam Hussein’s regime, and specialised in saying outlandishly confident things that weren’t just untrue but could actually be demonstrably disproven by viewers with their own eyes.
His nadir came when he announced on live TV that ‘the infidels are committing suicide by the hundreds on the gates of Baghdad… be assured, Baghdad is safe, protected.’
In fact, the American soldiers he branded ‘infidels’ were very much alive just a few hundred metres away from where he was speaking, and the loud sound of their overwhelming superior weaponry blasting away at the beleaguered Iraqi forces could be heard in the background.
Don’t be Comical Donny, Mr President – you don’t have this lethal virus under ‘tremendous control’ and Americans who can see this with their own eyes will punish you at the ballot box if you keep lying to them. Pictured is Ambassador Debbie Birx, White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator, with Donald Trump, who had been displaying a chart outlining the virus testing process. However, the image and much-mocked flowchart quickly became a meme online where it was used to criticize the president
Comical Ali, who earned his nickname by becoming a global laughing stock, made his last official public appearance on 8 April 2003, when he said the Americans ‘are going to surrender or be burned in their tanks.’ When asked where he was getting this information from, he replied ‘authentic sources, many authentic sources.’ And he pointed out he ‘was a professional, doing his job.’
The main lesson of Comical Ali’s story is that modern technology through the internet, cell phones, 24/7 cable news, and social media, doesn’t let anyone get away with the kind of bogus propaganda so prevalent during the two World Wars.
A lie doesn’t fly if we can all immediately see the truth for ourselves.
I thought of this when I watched President Trump’s COVID-19 press briefing yesterday in which he stated with unequivocal confidence: ‘It’s a very contagious virus. It’s incredible. But it’s something we have tremendous control of.’
Really, Mr President?
If you have such ‘tremendous control’ over it then why is the United States moving into complete lockdown, with schools, bars, restaurants and gyms all being frantically closed on official orders?
One of the most famous faces during the Iraq War was that of Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf, aka ‘Comical Ali’ (pictured)
And why are is the number of infection rates (now at least 3,485), and deaths (currently 65), in the US beginning to explode?
More pertinently, if you’ve got it all under such ‘tremendous control’ then why is your own top infectious disease expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci warning that America could face a similar catastrophe to what is unfurling in Italy if it doesn’t take immediate drastic action to try to combat it?
Asked by CNN’s Jake Tapper if he thought hundreds of thousands of Americans could die from COVID-19, Fauci replied: ‘It could be worse.’
So, the notion that the US has it under ‘tremendous control’ would be laughable if it wasn’t so serious.
And the abject failure by the Trump administration to implement sufficient testing on this virus, because usable tests have simply not been available despite the president’s insistence everyone could have one, is one of the main reasons why it is now raging out of control.
This is not the first time President Trump has made such an outlandish and obviously untrue claim about his administration’s control of the coronavirus.
In fact, he’s kept saying the same absurd thing from the very start of the crisis.
In late January, when the US confirmed its first case, Trump said that ‘we have it totally under control.’
I watched President Trump’s COVID-19 press briefing yesterday (pictured) in which he stated with unequivocal confidence: ‘It’s a very contagious virus. It’s incredible. But it’s something we have tremendous control of.’ Really, Mr President?
By late February, when there several dozen cases in the US, he insisted: ‘We have it very much under control in this country.’
Senior White House aides repeated the same ridiculously over-positive mantra as the crisis developed.
Larry Kudlow, director of the National Economic Council, said the virus ‘is contained’ soon after it broke out. And Kellyanne Conway, counselor to the President, also said it is ‘being contained.’
Neither had any evidence for these assertions, and it was blindingly obvious to anyone who had been watching what was happening in countries like China, Iran, South Korea and Italy, that once the virus lands, it is virtually impossible to control.
The problem for President Trump is that no amount of his usual bullish bluster can stop a lethal and unprecedented virus from wreaking havoc.
He’s tried all his preferred distracting tricks – from constantly bigging himself up for how well he is handling the crisis, to blaming everyone else from Barack Obama to the CDC for the testing failures, and lashing out at Democrats for perpetrating another ‘hoax’ against him when they rightly criticized his failure to take the virus seriously enough when he self-evidently didn’t.
Trump can’t even just throw money at it to solve the problem, as he’s now desperately doing – because the virus doesn’t care about cash. In fact, with heavy irony, it is easily transmitted on bank notes.
So, the cold, hard truth is that America doesn’t have COVID-19 under ‘tremendous control’ at all, which is why the stock markets continue to implode, and by spouting such easily disproven claptrap, President Trump is not just doing American citizens a massive disservice, he may be costing lives.
If you have such ‘tremendous control’ over it then why is the United States moving into complete lockdown, with schools, bars, restaurants and gyms all being frantically closed on official orders? New York was eerily quiet on Sunday amid the closures
More pertinently, if you’ve got it all under such ‘tremendous control’ then why is your own top infectious disease expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci (pictured) warning that America could face a similar catastrophe to what is unfurling in Italy if it doesn’t take immediate drastic action to try to combat it?
Indeed, his rhetoric is already having a very damaging effect on the public’s willingness to take this crisis seriously.
An NBC & Wall Street Journal poll published yesterday showed that while 70% of Democrats are worried the virus will impact their families, only 40% of Republicans feel the same.
This has emboldened some of Trump’s more well-known supporters to go public with outrageous statements urging people to ignore the expert medical and scientific advice.
Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) said yesterday that this was a ‘great time to go to a local restaurant ‘or ‘local pub’.
And former Wisconsin Sheriff David Clarke attacked what he said was a ‘flu panic’ and demanded people combat ‘government foolishness’ by joining forces to ‘rise up and push back’, ‘go into the streets’ and ‘visit bars, restaurants, shopping malls, churches and demand your schools re-open… NOW!’
Every war draws out ‘useful idiots’ but this one seems to be drawing out a whole new level of stupidity, and one that no vaccine can cure.
Tennessee brothers Noah and Matt Colvin drove 2000 miles around the state buying 17,700 bottles of hand sanitizer, hoping to see them at a massive profit on Amazon by selling them on for $70 a bottle.
But the online store moved fast to clamp down on such greedy exploitative pandemic price-gouging and shut down their account after they’d sold just 200 bottles, leaving them with 17,500 bottles of hand sanitizer they can’t sell.
Tennessee brothers Noah and Matt Colvin (pictured) drove 2000 miles around the state buying 17,700 bottles of hand sanitiser, hoping to see them at a massive profit on Amazon by selling them on for $70 a bottle. But the online store moved fast to clamp down on such greedy exploitative pandemic price-gouging and shut down their account after they’d sold just 200 bottles, leaving them with 17,500 bottles of hand sanitiser they can’t sell
‘I’m not looking to be in a situation where I make the news for being that guy who hoarded 20,000 bottles of sanitiser that I’m selling for 20 times what they cost me,’ said Matt Colvin, who is of course now that guy.
But he’s not the only victim of Corona-Stupid-Virus.
We’ve seen huge numbers of people out partying all over America despite urgent directives to avoid large gatherings, including many Spring Breakers flocking to beaches in Florida despite orders for groups of 50 or more to stop.
‘It won’t happen to me!’ they exclaim confidently when asked what the hell they’re doing by TV reporters. ‘I’m young and healthy!’
And maybe it won’t.
Or maybe it will, but they’ll only suffer mild symptoms.
But the breath-taking stupidity comes from the fact that if they do get infected during their mass gathering partying, they may return home and infect elderly or sick relatives in a way that may kill them.
It’s the same kind of appalling selfishness we’ve seen from panic-buyers buying up every toilet roll or bag of pasta, regardless of whether it leaves others with nothing.
There’s a perfectly good argument for sensible stocking up of a few weeks of basic provisions, but the kind of insane scenes we’re seeing where people are literally fighting each other in their local Walmart, are ridiculous.
Just as it defies belief that as most of the world has moved rapidly into social distancing lockdowns, the British government’s continued to allow pop concerts (the Stereophonics played to 12,000 people yesterday in Cardiff, Wales) and sporting events like the Cheltenham horse-race festival that attracted 250,000 visitors.
We’ve seen huge numbers of people out partying all over America despite urgent directives to avoid large gatherings, including many Spring Breakers flocking to beaches in Florida despite orders for groups of 50 or more to stop. ‘It won’t happen to me!’ they exclaim confidently when asked what the hell they’re doing by TV reporters. ‘I’m young and healthy!’
And don’t even get me started on the imbeciles who flew off for skiing holidays at the weekend and are now squealing about not being able to get home again due to the numerous travel bans that have been enforced. What did these dim-witted twerps think was going to happen as all hell broke loose around the world?
This is an unprecedented crisis that requires the unblinking obedience of billions of citizens all over the world to do what is required to protect ourselves, our families and our countries from a highly dangerous threat.
For that happen, it is vital that we trust our leaders to make the right decisions.
President Trump doesn’t seem to realise, or deliberately chooses not to realise, that every word that comes out of his mouth right now matters more than anything else he has said as president, and every word must be true.
‘Careless talk costs lives’ was the World War 2 slogan, referring then to the need for absolute discretion with secrets that might help the enemy.
It applies just as well now in this war on COVD-19, only for a different reason – that false information may lead to the public making the wrong choices that may imperil their health and safety.
So, stop telling everyone this is under ‘tremendous control’, Mr President, when it so obviously isn’t, and hasn’t been since you first told us it was.
Level with us in a truthful way, even if the truth is tough to hear.
This is a war against a devastating virus we don’t fully understand, and nobody knows exactly what is going to happen with it.
Just tell the American public you’re going to do everything in your powers to combat it and ask for their help and support.
If you earn their trust and guide the country through the storm into calmer waters later this year, you’ll be rewarded with re-election in November.
If you keep spewing ‘it’s all under tremendous control’ nonsense like Comical Ali, and millions of Americans end up dying, you’ll end up an unelectable laughing-stock with nobody laughing.