Why is Biden engaging in disinformation on Gaza?

This fact came back to me as I watched the Israeli terror unfold in al-Shifa Hospital, eight weeks ago now. I became fixated on the 39 premature babies there, the ones who were evacuated from the neonatal intensive care unit into two beds, wrapped with foil. I pictured them gasping for breath, slowly dying.

Then came the news that five nameless infants were discovered decomposing in Al Nassr Pediatric Hospital, abandoned after the Israeli army forced the medical staff and patients to flee. I pictured how they died alone, cold and in terror.

I cannot doubt that senior officials in the Biden administration have seen the images and videos. I have to believe that many of them are horrified by what they have seen. And I also believe that their awareness of the horror, and their awareness of their active participation in producing it, is, in part, what leads them to fabricate intelligence estimates and tell outright lies.

But there is something else at work in the Biden administration’s effort to disseminate fake Israeli news: disinformation has been a potent weapon in war and in the commission of genocide. And it has been used frequently, perhaps to diminishing effect in the modern media age.

The US government is not very credible when it comes to intelligence. Recall Secretary of State Colin Powell’s cheap performance at the United Nations in 2003, when he accused Iraq of possessing weapons of mass destruction and presented a prop vial containing white powder as evidence.

But in matters of war, a crummy presentation and half-hearted delivery is sometimes good enough. Powell’s antics didn’t fool anyone, but his presentation was enough to distract from the impending catastrophe.

We learned over time what we knew all along: there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. And the only uranium yellowcake to speak of was baked up by British and American spies.