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Article: The War According to John le Carre
- Article from:
- The Washington Post
- Article date:
- January 23, 2003
- Author:
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John le Carre, the author of some brilliant spy novels, writes in
the Times of London that "America has entered one of its periods of
historical madness." The present time is "worse than McCarthyism" and
even worse than -- an odd choice -- "the Bay of Pigs." Maybe le Carre
means the Cuban missile crisis. It's possible. After all, he gets so
much else wrong.
One, for starters, is his assertion that "88 per cent of the
American people want" to go to war with Iraq. Where he got that
figure is beyond me. The figure is 57 percent, down from 62 percent
in December. Since le Carre's article was published Jan. 15, he was
clearly typing faster than he was thinking.
Le Carre is, of course, a famous ...