The big lie

As President Donald Trump’s White House and the State Department continue to escalate the rhetoric after the assassination of Iranian General Qasem Soleimani, a whirlwind of inaccuracies and falsehoods have been emerging. But it was up to his Vice President Mike Pence to tell a lie so outrageous that it could be disproven before he finished his sentence, or in this case, tweet.

Pence claimed that Iran’s Quds Force, which was led by Soleimani, “Assisted in the clandestine travel to Afghanistan of 10 of the 12 terrorists who carried out the September 11 terrorist attacks in the United States.”

This is disproven by the official US 9/11 Commission Report, which states, “We have found no evidence that Iran or Hezbollah was aware of the planning for what later became the 9/11 attack.”

Pence even misquoted the number of terrorists involved. There were 19 hijackers, not 12, as Pence claimed.

The VP made his allegation while accusing Soleimani of “plotting imminent attacks” against Americans. But Pentagon sources who spoke to The New York Times contradicted this claim as well.

The officials “said there was nothing new about Iranian behaviour in recent months or even weeks,” according to the Times story. A defence department official also said there was “nothing new in the threat presented by the Iranian general.”

While Trump is known to be almost incapable of telling the truth — The Washington Post reported in August 2019 that he had told over 10,000 lies while in office — Pence has restrained himself from telling any real whoppers before his personal “big lie”. But in 2004, he did lie while claiming Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, helping to justify the last US invasion in the region. “The big lie”, incidentally, is a propaganda technique originating in Hitler’s Mein Kampf. Tell a lie so “colossal” that no one could “believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously”.

Public support for Nazi policies that led to the Holocaust and World War II was built using ludicrous claims that appealed to people “in the primitive simplicity of their minds.”

Published in The Express Tribune, January 5^th, 2020.

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