During the debate, Joe Biden made the sensible observation that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad doesn’t control the Iranian security services. Rather, ultimate power is wielded by the clerical establishment with the Supreme Leader being, as the title implies, at the peak of the power structure. Michael Ledeen offers the following devastating rebuttal:
Did Biden Really Say “Theocracy,” not “Bureaucracy”? [Michael Ledeen]
Lots of keen-eared readers are telling me that. The transcript I read said “bureaucracy.” But if Biden said “theocracy” he made a grammatical mistake as well as a logical one. “Theocracy” refers to a system, not an institution. And it is incoherent to distinguish between the theocrats and Ahmadinejad, since Ahmadinejad is a theocrat. Bigtime theocrat, in fact. So Biden would be making a distinction without a difference, as we used to say in Logic 101…
So there! This has been a lesson in “pretending not to understand what the guy is saying.” If you apply this method to the word salads Palin offered up at the debate while stalling to process her note cards, you could really have fun. Like when she explained that she’s “not one to attribute every activity of man to the changes in the climate.” Me neither!
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