Tuesday, March 14, 2006

From James Webb's March 8 appearance on the Colbert Report:

Colbert: Are you saying that we shouldn't have gone to war in Iraq?
Webb: I don't think that we should have gone to... into Iraq, no.
Colbert: So you do not think that we should have liberated the Iraqi people. You'd rather see them under Saddam. Saddam is good to you.
Webb: Well...
Colbert: I'm just saying, that's what you just said.
Webb: There are a lot of bad people out there. I think Kim Il-sing is a bad guy. And the question is how we use our military in order to address those types of things.
Colbert: Yeah, but Kim Il-sung has nuclear weapons, you don't want to mess with that guy.
Emphasis, obviously, added. This exchange inspired in me a great number of questions. The main three:
  • Who the hell is Kim Il-sing? Did he mean Kim Il-sung? If so, shouldn't he, as a world-wise Senate candidate, have known that Kim Il-sung has been dead for more than a decade? And if not, who the hell is Kim Il-sing?
  • Was Colbert's response the right one? I know the show's a spoof, but come on, that's a tricky bit of business. Correct him, and make him look like an asshole? Or pretend he's talking about someone who's still alive, and hope no one notices?
  • And finally, why hasn't anyone noticed? (Technorati; Google; Google News)? (It's enough to make me wonder if maybe there is someone named Kim Il-sing, in which case I'm the asshole.)

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