Analyzing Ann

I'm taking a bit more scientific approach to analyzing Ann Coulter's latest column. I've broken it down sentence by sentence. Her latest column is generally about how the war in Iraq is going better than we think it is, but it is only Liberal and Media perfidity that keeps you from knowing this. So I broke Ann's sentences (there were forty three of them) into three groups. Those that were attacks on liberals, those that were reports of positive progress, and those that were more or less neutral.

Obviously a tough distinction, but by my analysis, 10 sentences were neutral (or 23%), 13 were positive (or 30%) and 20 were attacks (47%, nearly half). So Ann Coulter is more interested, at least in this article, in attacking liberals than she is in putting forward any positive program or defense of President Bush.

It doesn't help that a number of Ann's positive statements seem factually challenged. For example, she continues to suggest that Saddam Hussein reached out to Osama Bin Ladin, despite the lack of proof (and the pretty consistent debunking of "proofs" her colleagues have put forward.

Ms. Coulter also suggests that we have found weapons of mass destruction. Someone should pass that information along to the Bush Campaign so they can trumpet it. I mean if we really did find caches of Weapons of Mass Destruction that threatened the United States, well, that's something the American People ought to know before they go into their voting booths in November. Unless, of course, Ann is referring to discredited reports.

She also spends a lot of time knocking down arguments made by Mr. Nicolas Kristol before the war. Easy enough to do, I suppose. Apparently Mr. Kristol thought our troops would face stiffer resistance from Iraqi troops, but we actually beat the Iraqi army pretty quickly. Apparently Mr. Kristol thought that capturing Hussein would be dangerous and cost the lives of many men, but we caught him easily and without it being bloody. Nice little strawman argument as it doesn't answer any of the questions about the difficulty of occupying Iraq. I mean, I'm certainly glad we beat the Iraqi Army and National Guard, but I kind of expected that, truth to tell.

On the other hand the current phase of our occupation of Iraq is proving to be a bit more difficult.

On the attack side, she calls Liberals and the media (which, just to be clear, are one and the same) Liars, Pusillanimous, womanly, and 1984 style toltalatarians. She also suggests that if the terrorists invaded Manhattan, it would immediately surrender. I wonder why Ann hates Americans so much. Or at least Americans who happen to live in New York City. Or who happen to be liberal.