There is one simple reason that the nation's media whores - especially the elite of the DC and national media (the executives, editors, publishers, owners, and lobbyists of the Washington Post, New York Times, CNN, Washington Times, Fox 'news,' etc.) - are SELLING AMERICA DOWN THE RIVER - they are ensconced comfortably in their COCOON of DC power and privilege, and the MORE that Bush-Cheney et al make a MESS of the Iraq occupation, THE MORE MONEY, INFLUENCE, and POWER flows through Washington DC.
Look at the state of Kansas - HALF of their National Guard equipment is deployed in Iraq - being used and abused until depreciated to zero (written off) - and they will NEVER BE REIMBURSED for those expenditures and costly equipment.
YET the Washington press whores GIVE President Bush a FREE PASS for his "TAX CUTS" mantra - even though shipping states' National Guard equipment to Iraq is effectively a BACK DOOR TAX.
------------------------------------------------
<< [few] ...foreign policy professionals... do the honorable thing and resign when the alternative is to carry out a disastrous policy.
Disastrous for whom? After 2001, budget discipline evaporated, vivid photo ops multiplied, and American citizens checked their constitutional freedoms at the door. Apart from a few awkward moments at Presidential press conferences, EVERYONE IN WASHINGTON IS THRIVING in the MESS that Tenet facilitated.
There was thus no reason to make Tenet suffer. He accepted his Medal of Freedom, signed his book deal, and was wafted into Georgetown University to teach a new generation of College Republicans to feed at the public trough. Should they recoil at his public criticism of Vice President Cheney, Tenet can fall back on the applause of the American Hellenic Educational Progressive Association. Few Greek-Americans care to write off one of their own as a failure. >>
===============================================
Tenet's Forgettable Twin
John Brady Kiesling
05.11.2007
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-brady-kiesling/tenets-forgettable-twin_b_48217.html
I'm grateful to Arianna Huffington's excellent memory. On April 29, 2007 she argued that CIA Director George Tenet should have resigned to protest the way his agency was being misused in the run-up to the Iraq War. She came up with my name as a reminder that foreign policy professionals occasionally do the honorable thing and resign when the alternative is to carry out a disastrous policy.
Disastrous for whom? After 2001, budget discipline evaporated, vivid photo ops multiplied, and American citizens checked their constitutional freedoms at the door. Apart from a few awkward moments at Presidential press conferences, everyone in Washington is thriving in the mess Tenet facilitated.
There was thus no reason to make Tenet suffer. He accepted his Medal of Freedom, signed his book deal, and was wafted into Georgetown University to teach a new generation of College Republicans to feed at the public trough. Should they recoil at his public criticism of Vice President Cheney, Tenet can fall back on the applause of the American Hellenic Educational Progressive Association. Few Greek-Americans care to write off one of their own as a failure.
Intellectually, my decision to resign from the U.S. Foreign Service in February 2003 was a fine one. The American people are less secure because of President Bush's policies, and soon they will be less prosperous. But the brain circuitry that rewards humans for good decisions is the same circuitry our chimpanzee cousins use. Happiness in social animals does not derive from being right. It comes from the social reinforcement we get from our troop.
The U.S. government offers heroin-like rewards to those who play by its rules. I did not have Tenet's bedside secure telephone or morning meetings with the President. Still, as head of the Political Section of U.S. Embassy Athens I basked in the glory of a superpower. I chaired meetings of my acolytes, lectured journalists, chatted with cabinet ministers, rode in motorcades with flying flags. Withdrawal meant long, gray days and restless nights.
It would be silly to envy the painlessness of Tenet's transition. The applause I got from the "reality-based community" was as warm and respectful as I could have hoped. My letter of resignation to Secretary of State Powell, which I cc'd to the New York Times, still gets quoted by scholars and bloggers. It was, the writer Michel Faber said, "a masterpiece of dignity, eloquent reasoning, acute analysis and, most of all, humanity." And with such psychic support I had better be content.
Diplomacy is one of the rare professions open to a mild-mannered person with a BA in ancient Greek and MA in ancient history. I resigned with just under twenty years in the U.S. Foreign Service, at age 45. Hanging on another five years for my pension was the prudent course, but I was angry and the war was going to start in three weeks.
My daughter's college tuition was paid up. The proceeds from selling my house in DC would keep me fed for five years or so. Returning from Greece, I was horrified at the nonsense filling the media. On foreign policy, the Washington Post was as pompous and parochial as the Washington Times. In 2003 there seemed a desperate need for a "Diplomacy for Dummies" book to explain what kind of world Americans are part of. Also, I was squeamish about looking for a real job.
Americans are no more disposed to employ our Cassandras than the ancient Trojans were. Accurate prophecy regarding Iraq does not require brilliance or deep expertise. An open-minded person who watched the interplay of nationalism and religion in the Middle East, anyone who listened sympathetically to ordinary Muslims, could have predicted the response to our amateurish attempts at preemptive democracy. And now that foreign policy pragmatism is socially acceptable again, the spies, diplomats, politicians, journalists and academics are pulling out their private correspondence to remind us that indeed they knew better. They would have given an honest opinion on Iraq back when it mattered, but their Commander in Chief failed to ask them for it.
This being so, with perceptive and deferential analysts a dime a dozen, any organization would be rash to hire someone of proven disloyalty and tactlessness. U.S. government contracts keep afloat almost every significant foreign-affairs employer in the country. Adding my tainted name to the masthead would do them no favors.
No one gets rich writing books. Tenet earned his $4 million advance for emerging from the shadows, sharing a few secrets that had reached their sell-by date, and making the politically timely point that what happened was someone else's fault. I was offered one tenth of one percent of that amount for writing a book that explained, drawing on my own awkward apprenticeship, what diplomacy does and how and why.
The publishers are right, of course. The public sees diplomacy not as the glamorous front lines of America's national defense but rather as a remote province of languid and impenetrable cookie-pushers. Americans are infatuated instead with the idea that the world revolves on secrets and conspiracies. This is an extremely profitable delusion. Spies can expect an invitation to The Daily Show or at least 60 Minutes. Diplomats do their sixty minutes on C-Span2 and hit the university lecture circuit with a box of books in the trunk of a borrowed car.
My book reviews were kinder than Tenet's. The ex-ambassadors and academics who reviewed Diplomacy Lessons praised it handsomely: "... a new George Kennan..." "...Kiesling's broad scope and incisive wit are reminiscent of some of Sir Harold Nicolson's best essays on diplomacy." Few Americans recognize those names. Still, enough non-specialists devoured the book to convince me to keep writing.
I live simply these days in central Athens. By bicycle (the silver SUV had palled, even if I could still afford it) it takes half an hour to Korydallos prison. There I study "Revolutionary Organization 17 November," a Greek terrorist group that humiliated the CIA for 27 years. This next book would be more salable if I soft-pedaled U.S. blunders, but then key lessons for America's "war on terrorism" would be lost.
Yes, by a strict reading of his oath of service, Tenet should have resigned. His job was to protect the people and Constitution of the United States. He worked for a President who would pay no attention to any lesser gesture. He deserves the criticism Ms. Huffington meted out for his self-serving performance.
I took the less-traveled road, and am content. Greek-style "filotimo" ("love of honor") is certainly worth having. Government employees nurturing grand suburban aspirations, however, would be ill-advised to cling to it. Tenet has been richly rewarded by the American system for hiding his doubts and pandering to the Old Testament instincts of his boss. Until human sensibilities evolve in the wake of some global catastrophe, it will always feel more comfortable, to fawn on the powerful and hope for the best.
-- John Brady Kiesling
Friday, May 11, 2007
Cowardly Washington Post finally notices: A MAJORITY of Iraqi Parliament DEMANDS US WITHDRAWL. Poor WP - they had so much invested in Bush's war...
Notice how the COWARDLY, LYING editors of the Whore Washington Post put this FRONT PAGE STORY - on page A-12, where 99% of readers will never see it.
The Post, like Bush Political Advisor Karl Rove, are WALLOWING in their ability to MISINFORM readers - the Post well understands that if a story doesn't make the FRONT PAGES in BLARING HEADLINES ("Lincoln Bedroom SCANDAL!" "White House Trashing SCANDAL!") for weeks on end, then readers and the public probabaly won't notice or pay much attention.
The Washington WHORE Post - where quaint notions like "Iraqi DEMOCRACY" get BURIED way deep in the A-section, where most readers will never see it.
---------------------------------------------------
Iraqi Lawmakers Back Bill on U.S. Withdrawal
By Joshua Partlow
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, May 11, 2007; A12
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/10/AR2007051000387_pf.html
BAGHDAD, May 10 -- A majority of members of Iraq's parliament have signed a draft bill that would require a timetable for the withdrawal of U.S. soldiers from Iraq and freeze current troop levels. The development was a sign of a growing division between Iraq's legislators and prime minister that mirrors the widening gulf between the Bush administration and its critics in Congress.
The draft bill proposes a timeline for a gradual departure, much like what some U.S. Democratic lawmakers have demanded, and would require the Iraqi government to secure parliament's approval before any further extensions of the U.N. mandate for foreign troops in Iraq, which expires at the end of 2007.
"We haven't asked for the immediate withdrawal of multinational forces; we asked that we should build our security forces and make them qualified, and at that point there would be a withdrawal," said Bahaa al-Araji, a member of parliament allied with the anti-American Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, whose supporters drafted the bill. "But no one can accept the occupation of his country."
In Iraq and the United States, there is deepening frustration among lawmakers and the public over President Bush's troop buildup, a policy that has yet to prevent widespread killing in Iraq. At the same time, Bush and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki are dispatching their emissaries in an urgent transatlantic gambit to shore up support.
Iraq's national security adviser, Mowaffak al-Rubaie, was in Washington this week to ask Democratic members of Congress to have patience with the "surge" and not abandon Iraq at such a precarious time. On Wednesday, Vice President Cheney landed in Baghdad to press the government to act quickly on a host of divisive political issues that the Bush administration deems threatening to long-term stability.
On his second day in Iraq, Cheney spoke to U.S. soldiers at a base near Tikrit about the difficulties they face each day. "We are here, above all, because the terrorists who have declared war on America and other free nations have made Iraq the central front in that war," he said, according to a transcript of his remarks. He added: "The United States, also, has made a decision: As the prime target of a global war against terror, we will stay on the offensive. We will not sit back and wait to be hit again."
But as in the United States, Iraq's lawmakers are moving further away from the views of the government, particularly on the basic issue of the American presence in their country. The draft bill is being championed by a 30-member bloc loyal to Sadr, but it has also gained support from some other Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish legislators. So far, at least 138 lawmakers have signed the proposed legislation, the slimmest possible majority in the 275-member parliament, according to Araji. Nasar al-Rubaie, another Sadr loyalist, told the Associated Press that the proposal had 144 signatures.
"We think that America committed a grave injustice against the Iraqi people and against the glorious history of Iraq when they destroyed our institutions and then rebuilt them in the wrong way," said Hussein al-Falluji, a lawmaker from the largest Sunni coalition in parliament and a supporter of the timetable proposal.
Several legislators, including those loyal to Maliki, said they doubted that the effort would succeed at a time when Iraqi troops still rely heavily on U.S. firepower. The most prominent political parties in Iraq -- such as Maliki's Dawa party; the Shiite group known as the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq; the Iraqi Islamic Party, a leading Sunni group; and prominent Kurdish factions -- appear to oppose setting specific dates for withdrawal. And even if such dates were fixed, it is unclear whether that would compel the United States to obey them.
"I don't think it's a good idea," said Hachim al-Hassani, a secular Sunni from the Iraqi National List and a former speaker of parliament. "Unless we complete building our forces so we are capable of defending the country and bringing security to the country, then we are not ready for something like this. A premature withdrawal could lead to a civil war in Iraq."
Ali al-Adeeb, a lawmaker from the Dawa party and an aide to Maliki, said any timetable for American withdrawal should be accompanied by a timetable for training and equipping the Iraqi security forces.
"Pressures are increasing here in Iraq and also in the States for the withdrawal of the multinational forces. . . . and it seems that keeping these forces here indefinitely won't solve the problems in Iraq," he said. "But it should happen gradually, so that Iraqi forces can handle the security tasks."
There was also some disagreement over the terms of proposed timetable legislation. Kurdish lawmaker Mahmoud Othman told the Associated Press he had agreed to back the measure on the condition that it included an accompanying timeline for the buildup of Iraqi forces, but this was not included in the draft. Othman called the omission a "deception."
Hassan al-Shimmari, a Shiite who leads the Fadhila Party in parliament, also signed the petition and had similar concerns.
"We can all see that it's not possible for the American troops to leave, and that withdrawing right now would lead to a disaster in Iraq, because the Iraqi security forces are still very weak, and they are still controlled by their sectarian and factional loyalties," he said.
The violence driven by such sectarian rifts continued Thursday, as the insurgent group known as the Islamic State of Iraq, a coalition that includes al-Qaeda in Iraq, posted a video on the Internet that purports to show the killing of nine Iraqi police and army officers. The one-minute video shows the uniformed and blindfolded men kneeling in a row on a patch of dirt as a black-masked gunman shoots them rapidly in the head, one after another, saying "God is great" with each execution. The insurgents apparently demanded the release of prisoners before shooting the men, according to a video posted earlier.
The gruesome scene resembles a video posted April 19, also by the Islamic State of Iraq, showing the apparent execution of 20 Iraqi soldiers and police officers.
On Thursday, the U.S. military said one Marine had been killed Tuesday during fighting in Anbar province in western Iraq. Two other U.S. soldiers died Thursday from gunshot wounds, one in Baghdad and the other in Diwaniyah, south of the capital.
Special correspondents Saad al-Izzi and Waleed Saffar contributed to this report.
The Post, like Bush Political Advisor Karl Rove, are WALLOWING in their ability to MISINFORM readers - the Post well understands that if a story doesn't make the FRONT PAGES in BLARING HEADLINES ("Lincoln Bedroom SCANDAL!" "White House Trashing SCANDAL!") for weeks on end, then readers and the public probabaly won't notice or pay much attention.
The Washington WHORE Post - where quaint notions like "Iraqi DEMOCRACY" get BURIED way deep in the A-section, where most readers will never see it.
---------------------------------------------------
Iraqi Lawmakers Back Bill on U.S. Withdrawal
By Joshua Partlow
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, May 11, 2007; A12
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/10/AR2007051000387_pf.html
BAGHDAD, May 10 -- A majority of members of Iraq's parliament have signed a draft bill that would require a timetable for the withdrawal of U.S. soldiers from Iraq and freeze current troop levels. The development was a sign of a growing division between Iraq's legislators and prime minister that mirrors the widening gulf between the Bush administration and its critics in Congress.
The draft bill proposes a timeline for a gradual departure, much like what some U.S. Democratic lawmakers have demanded, and would require the Iraqi government to secure parliament's approval before any further extensions of the U.N. mandate for foreign troops in Iraq, which expires at the end of 2007.
"We haven't asked for the immediate withdrawal of multinational forces; we asked that we should build our security forces and make them qualified, and at that point there would be a withdrawal," said Bahaa al-Araji, a member of parliament allied with the anti-American Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, whose supporters drafted the bill. "But no one can accept the occupation of his country."
In Iraq and the United States, there is deepening frustration among lawmakers and the public over President Bush's troop buildup, a policy that has yet to prevent widespread killing in Iraq. At the same time, Bush and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki are dispatching their emissaries in an urgent transatlantic gambit to shore up support.
Iraq's national security adviser, Mowaffak al-Rubaie, was in Washington this week to ask Democratic members of Congress to have patience with the "surge" and not abandon Iraq at such a precarious time. On Wednesday, Vice President Cheney landed in Baghdad to press the government to act quickly on a host of divisive political issues that the Bush administration deems threatening to long-term stability.
On his second day in Iraq, Cheney spoke to U.S. soldiers at a base near Tikrit about the difficulties they face each day. "We are here, above all, because the terrorists who have declared war on America and other free nations have made Iraq the central front in that war," he said, according to a transcript of his remarks. He added: "The United States, also, has made a decision: As the prime target of a global war against terror, we will stay on the offensive. We will not sit back and wait to be hit again."
But as in the United States, Iraq's lawmakers are moving further away from the views of the government, particularly on the basic issue of the American presence in their country. The draft bill is being championed by a 30-member bloc loyal to Sadr, but it has also gained support from some other Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish legislators. So far, at least 138 lawmakers have signed the proposed legislation, the slimmest possible majority in the 275-member parliament, according to Araji. Nasar al-Rubaie, another Sadr loyalist, told the Associated Press that the proposal had 144 signatures.
"We think that America committed a grave injustice against the Iraqi people and against the glorious history of Iraq when they destroyed our institutions and then rebuilt them in the wrong way," said Hussein al-Falluji, a lawmaker from the largest Sunni coalition in parliament and a supporter of the timetable proposal.
Several legislators, including those loyal to Maliki, said they doubted that the effort would succeed at a time when Iraqi troops still rely heavily on U.S. firepower. The most prominent political parties in Iraq -- such as Maliki's Dawa party; the Shiite group known as the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq; the Iraqi Islamic Party, a leading Sunni group; and prominent Kurdish factions -- appear to oppose setting specific dates for withdrawal. And even if such dates were fixed, it is unclear whether that would compel the United States to obey them.
"I don't think it's a good idea," said Hachim al-Hassani, a secular Sunni from the Iraqi National List and a former speaker of parliament. "Unless we complete building our forces so we are capable of defending the country and bringing security to the country, then we are not ready for something like this. A premature withdrawal could lead to a civil war in Iraq."
Ali al-Adeeb, a lawmaker from the Dawa party and an aide to Maliki, said any timetable for American withdrawal should be accompanied by a timetable for training and equipping the Iraqi security forces.
"Pressures are increasing here in Iraq and also in the States for the withdrawal of the multinational forces. . . . and it seems that keeping these forces here indefinitely won't solve the problems in Iraq," he said. "But it should happen gradually, so that Iraqi forces can handle the security tasks."
There was also some disagreement over the terms of proposed timetable legislation. Kurdish lawmaker Mahmoud Othman told the Associated Press he had agreed to back the measure on the condition that it included an accompanying timeline for the buildup of Iraqi forces, but this was not included in the draft. Othman called the omission a "deception."
Hassan al-Shimmari, a Shiite who leads the Fadhila Party in parliament, also signed the petition and had similar concerns.
"We can all see that it's not possible for the American troops to leave, and that withdrawing right now would lead to a disaster in Iraq, because the Iraqi security forces are still very weak, and they are still controlled by their sectarian and factional loyalties," he said.
The violence driven by such sectarian rifts continued Thursday, as the insurgent group known as the Islamic State of Iraq, a coalition that includes al-Qaeda in Iraq, posted a video on the Internet that purports to show the killing of nine Iraqi police and army officers. The one-minute video shows the uniformed and blindfolded men kneeling in a row on a patch of dirt as a black-masked gunman shoots them rapidly in the head, one after another, saying "God is great" with each execution. The insurgents apparently demanded the release of prisoners before shooting the men, according to a video posted earlier.
The gruesome scene resembles a video posted April 19, also by the Islamic State of Iraq, showing the apparent execution of 20 Iraqi soldiers and police officers.
On Thursday, the U.S. military said one Marine had been killed Tuesday during fighting in Anbar province in western Iraq. Two other U.S. soldiers died Thursday from gunshot wounds, one in Baghdad and the other in Diwaniyah, south of the capital.
Special correspondents Saad al-Izzi and Waleed Saffar contributed to this report.
Tuesday, May 08, 2007
The hard BIGOTRY of the New York Times - just substitute "Liebensraum" for "National Security interests"!
Well, finally we, the American people, are making some progress! SIX long years after the NEW YORK TIMES advocated and enabled the Republican COUP of election 2000 (first by the Times serially LYING and EXAGGERATING all charges and accusations against the Clinton administration - including turning "LINCOLN BEDROOM!" into a FRONT-PAGE SYNONYM FOR SCANDAL! - then by smearing Al Gore as a prevaricator, while the Times knew damn well that Texas Governor George W. Bush was being FAR LESS THAN FORTHCOMING about his AWOL during Vietnam War record, and his DUI arrest record, etc - well, FINALLY American writers and activists are calling the Whore Times to account - for a sense of entitlement that matches Germans in the WWII years who felt that they were entitled to take over Jewish apartments in German cities, or set up farm homesteads in conquered, occupied Eastern European and Russian towns and villages.
===========================================
The Hard Bigotry of the New York Times
By David Swanson
Mon, 2007-05-07
http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/22231
A New York Times editorial on May 7th is titled "The Soft Bigotry of Iraq," and begins:
"Whether out of blind loyalty or blind denial, most Congressional Republicans are prepared to back up President Bush's veto of the Iraq spending bill."
Whether out of blind loyalty or blind denial or corrupt corporate interests, the New York Times pretends to be writing only about Republicans, while building into its editorial the assumption that the Democrats, too, must retreat in the face of a veto. The Democrats, as we all need to be constantly reminded, are in the majority, yet the Times' editorial arrives at this as its penultimate sentence:
"The final version of the spending bill should include explicit benchmarks and timetables for the Iraqis, even if Mr. Bush won't let Congress back them up with a clear timetable for America's withdrawal."
"Mr. Bush" won't LET Congress pass a bill demanded by the vast majority of Americans? Why, because he might veto it again? If he vetoes enough of these war spending bills, Americans will get what they wanted anyway: he'll have to end the war.
The New York Times clearly believes that Americans' attention spans have been reduced to zero, and that we can now forget things even while they are still happening. Bush just vetoed a bill because it included a meaningless non-binding request to end the war while leaving a huge military presence behind and stealing most of the oil. The bill was miles behind the public's demand for peace, but Bush vetoed it, and demanded a bill free of even the nonbinding request to end the war. Immediately, the chant arose from the media: Stand Up to Bush! Don't back down! Send him a bill with no request to end the war!
The criteria for "standing up" were instantly redefined to include "benchmarks", such as oil theft, but no "timeline" to end the war, only "timelines" that might be imposed on those insufferable Iraqis who are handling the occupation of their own country so poorly.
That's right, the way to stand up to Bush, and not back down, and be tough, and stand strong, is to impose demands on Bush's victims. Only in America…
The New York Times' editorial continues: "It is now essential that the revised version not back away from demanding that Iraq's prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, finally deliver on the crucial national reconciliation measures he has spent the last year dodging. And it must make clear that American support for his failures - and Mr. Bush's - is fast waning."
So, now, over four years into a criminal war supported by fewer that a quarter of Americans, Congress should pass LEGISLATION in order to communicate that Americans may soon cease supporting the failures of Nuri Kamal al-Maliki? I'd like to see a poll on what percentage of Americans even know who Nuri Kamal al-Maliki is. Then I'd like to see a poll on whether Americans would prefer for Congress to
A.-pass a bill to make clear that their support for Maliki's and Bush's failures is waning;
or
B.-pass a bill to cut off the money and end the war.
The New York Times goes on to claim that some even unlikelier beliefs are commonly held: "What Mr. Maliki needs to do to slow Iraq's bloodletting is no mystery. Iraq's security forces must stop siding with the Shiite militias. Iraq's oil revenue must be apportioned fairly. Anti-Baathist laws now used to deny Sunni Arabs employment and political opportunities must be rewritten to target only those responsible for the crimes of the Saddam Hussein era."
The bloodletting is generated first and foremost by the occupation of Maliki's country by a foreign army. Therefore, the first thing he needs to do is to demand that the occupiers leave. Rewriting the laws of a puppet government at this point is not going to restore order. And "oil revenue apportioned fairly" is code for giving Exxon Mobil and other U.S. and British corporations control over most of the oil. This has been explained in an op-ed printed by the New York Times in March: http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/19606
It's explained well here as well: http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/22108
But this recent article by the New York Times buried the lead at the bottom of the story: http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/?q=node/22103
The May 7th editorial then takes a turn into irony:
"Without these steps, Mr. Maliki and his allies cannot even minimally claim to be a real national government. With them, there is at least a chance that Iraqis can muster the strength to contain the chaos when, as is inevitable, American forces begin to leave."
A puppet government in an occupied land can only be legitimate if it obeys its master. True enough. But why must the New York Times agree so wholeheartedly with Fox News that Americans should only reduce the occupation after Iraqis have shown they can contain the insurgency? The Americans can't contain it. It's going from bad to worse. And were the occupation to go away, so would most of the insurgency. There must be some grim humor intended and secret laughter resulting from this policy of telling the Iraqi people that we will occupy them until their government has shown that it can contain the resistance to our occupation after the occupation is gone.
Then the New York Times goes after Bush for not demanding more of his victims:
"Mr. Bush acknowledges that these benchmarks are important. Yet he refuses to insist, or let Congress insist, that Baghdad achieve them or face real consequences. Each time Baghdad fails a test, Mr. Bush lowers his requirements and postpones his target dates - the kind of destructive denial Mr. Bush called, in another context, the soft bigotry of low expectations. Consider the Baghdad security drive. Last week, The Washington Post reported that Mr. Maliki's office had helped instigate the firing of senior Iraqi security officers who moved aggressively against a powerful Shiite militia. After betting so many American lives, the combat readiness of the United States Army and his own remaining credibility on this bloody push to secure the capital, it is a mystery why Mr. Bush would allow the Iraqi leader to undermine it."
So, even while we pretend that the Iraqis have their own government, Bush is understood to be responsible for what that government does or does not do. Thus we can stand up to Bush by criticizing dark-skinned Arab-speaking Muslims, and avoid the whole unpleasantness of ending the war.
"Then," the New York Times continues, "there is the endless soap opera that is one day supposed to produce a fair share-out of Iraqi oil revenues. The Bush administration prematurely popped champagne corks in February when Mr. Maliki's cabinet agreed on a preliminary draft. Now, in May, there is no share-out, no legislation and even the preliminary agreement is starting to unravel. The leading Sunni Arab party in Mr. Maliki's cabinet is now threatening to withdraw its ministers, declaring that it has 'lost hope' that the Iraqi leader will deal seriously with Sunni concerns."
"Share-out" is a stock market term meaning "hand over the damn oil." The adjective "fair" in this instance is used to mean "handed over primarily to white English-speaking Christians."
There is nothing "soft" about the bigotry that allows the belief that Iraqis cannot best run their own country and manage their own resources.
The Times' editorial concludes: "Mr. Bush, by contrast, sees 'signs of hope' in the Baghdad security situation, urges Americans to give his failed policies more time and seems offended that Congress wants to impose accountability on Baghdad and the White House. The final version of the spending bill should include explicit benchmarks and timetables for the Iraqis, even if Mr. Bush won't let Congress back them up with a clear timetable for America's withdrawal. If Mr. Maliki and Mr. Bush still don't get it, Congress will have to enact new means of enforcement, and back that up with a veto-proof majority."
Again, this is not true. If Congress passes only bills to end the war, and no bills providing new money to extend it, the war will eventually end (following the illegal use of other funds, impeachment, and removal from office) whether the bill is signed or not.
===========================================
The Hard Bigotry of the New York Times
By David Swanson
Mon, 2007-05-07
http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/22231
A New York Times editorial on May 7th is titled "The Soft Bigotry of Iraq," and begins:
"Whether out of blind loyalty or blind denial, most Congressional Republicans are prepared to back up President Bush's veto of the Iraq spending bill."
Whether out of blind loyalty or blind denial or corrupt corporate interests, the New York Times pretends to be writing only about Republicans, while building into its editorial the assumption that the Democrats, too, must retreat in the face of a veto. The Democrats, as we all need to be constantly reminded, are in the majority, yet the Times' editorial arrives at this as its penultimate sentence:
"The final version of the spending bill should include explicit benchmarks and timetables for the Iraqis, even if Mr. Bush won't let Congress back them up with a clear timetable for America's withdrawal."
"Mr. Bush" won't LET Congress pass a bill demanded by the vast majority of Americans? Why, because he might veto it again? If he vetoes enough of these war spending bills, Americans will get what they wanted anyway: he'll have to end the war.
The New York Times clearly believes that Americans' attention spans have been reduced to zero, and that we can now forget things even while they are still happening. Bush just vetoed a bill because it included a meaningless non-binding request to end the war while leaving a huge military presence behind and stealing most of the oil. The bill was miles behind the public's demand for peace, but Bush vetoed it, and demanded a bill free of even the nonbinding request to end the war. Immediately, the chant arose from the media: Stand Up to Bush! Don't back down! Send him a bill with no request to end the war!
The criteria for "standing up" were instantly redefined to include "benchmarks", such as oil theft, but no "timeline" to end the war, only "timelines" that might be imposed on those insufferable Iraqis who are handling the occupation of their own country so poorly.
That's right, the way to stand up to Bush, and not back down, and be tough, and stand strong, is to impose demands on Bush's victims. Only in America…
The New York Times' editorial continues: "It is now essential that the revised version not back away from demanding that Iraq's prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, finally deliver on the crucial national reconciliation measures he has spent the last year dodging. And it must make clear that American support for his failures - and Mr. Bush's - is fast waning."
So, now, over four years into a criminal war supported by fewer that a quarter of Americans, Congress should pass LEGISLATION in order to communicate that Americans may soon cease supporting the failures of Nuri Kamal al-Maliki? I'd like to see a poll on what percentage of Americans even know who Nuri Kamal al-Maliki is. Then I'd like to see a poll on whether Americans would prefer for Congress to
A.-pass a bill to make clear that their support for Maliki's and Bush's failures is waning;
or
B.-pass a bill to cut off the money and end the war.
The New York Times goes on to claim that some even unlikelier beliefs are commonly held: "What Mr. Maliki needs to do to slow Iraq's bloodletting is no mystery. Iraq's security forces must stop siding with the Shiite militias. Iraq's oil revenue must be apportioned fairly. Anti-Baathist laws now used to deny Sunni Arabs employment and political opportunities must be rewritten to target only those responsible for the crimes of the Saddam Hussein era."
The bloodletting is generated first and foremost by the occupation of Maliki's country by a foreign army. Therefore, the first thing he needs to do is to demand that the occupiers leave. Rewriting the laws of a puppet government at this point is not going to restore order. And "oil revenue apportioned fairly" is code for giving Exxon Mobil and other U.S. and British corporations control over most of the oil. This has been explained in an op-ed printed by the New York Times in March: http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/19606
It's explained well here as well: http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/22108
But this recent article by the New York Times buried the lead at the bottom of the story: http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/?q=node/22103
The May 7th editorial then takes a turn into irony:
"Without these steps, Mr. Maliki and his allies cannot even minimally claim to be a real national government. With them, there is at least a chance that Iraqis can muster the strength to contain the chaos when, as is inevitable, American forces begin to leave."
A puppet government in an occupied land can only be legitimate if it obeys its master. True enough. But why must the New York Times agree so wholeheartedly with Fox News that Americans should only reduce the occupation after Iraqis have shown they can contain the insurgency? The Americans can't contain it. It's going from bad to worse. And were the occupation to go away, so would most of the insurgency. There must be some grim humor intended and secret laughter resulting from this policy of telling the Iraqi people that we will occupy them until their government has shown that it can contain the resistance to our occupation after the occupation is gone.
Then the New York Times goes after Bush for not demanding more of his victims:
"Mr. Bush acknowledges that these benchmarks are important. Yet he refuses to insist, or let Congress insist, that Baghdad achieve them or face real consequences. Each time Baghdad fails a test, Mr. Bush lowers his requirements and postpones his target dates - the kind of destructive denial Mr. Bush called, in another context, the soft bigotry of low expectations. Consider the Baghdad security drive. Last week, The Washington Post reported that Mr. Maliki's office had helped instigate the firing of senior Iraqi security officers who moved aggressively against a powerful Shiite militia. After betting so many American lives, the combat readiness of the United States Army and his own remaining credibility on this bloody push to secure the capital, it is a mystery why Mr. Bush would allow the Iraqi leader to undermine it."
So, even while we pretend that the Iraqis have their own government, Bush is understood to be responsible for what that government does or does not do. Thus we can stand up to Bush by criticizing dark-skinned Arab-speaking Muslims, and avoid the whole unpleasantness of ending the war.
"Then," the New York Times continues, "there is the endless soap opera that is one day supposed to produce a fair share-out of Iraqi oil revenues. The Bush administration prematurely popped champagne corks in February when Mr. Maliki's cabinet agreed on a preliminary draft. Now, in May, there is no share-out, no legislation and even the preliminary agreement is starting to unravel. The leading Sunni Arab party in Mr. Maliki's cabinet is now threatening to withdraw its ministers, declaring that it has 'lost hope' that the Iraqi leader will deal seriously with Sunni concerns."
"Share-out" is a stock market term meaning "hand over the damn oil." The adjective "fair" in this instance is used to mean "handed over primarily to white English-speaking Christians."
There is nothing "soft" about the bigotry that allows the belief that Iraqis cannot best run their own country and manage their own resources.
The Times' editorial concludes: "Mr. Bush, by contrast, sees 'signs of hope' in the Baghdad security situation, urges Americans to give his failed policies more time and seems offended that Congress wants to impose accountability on Baghdad and the White House. The final version of the spending bill should include explicit benchmarks and timetables for the Iraqis, even if Mr. Bush won't let Congress back them up with a clear timetable for America's withdrawal. If Mr. Maliki and Mr. Bush still don't get it, Congress will have to enact new means of enforcement, and back that up with a veto-proof majority."
Again, this is not true. If Congress passes only bills to end the war, and no bills providing new money to extend it, the war will eventually end (following the illegal use of other funds, impeachment, and removal from office) whether the bill is signed or not.
Monday, May 07, 2007
David Sirota dissects the "Media OBJECTIVITY" scam...
As with David Sirota, we respect Leslie Stahl. Here at MediaWhoresUSA we recall a Leslie Stahl storyline in a Bill Moyers documentary series on the power and influence of media in American politics. Leslie recounted how, working for CBS news during the Reagan administration, she had written a piece highly critical of President Reagan's budget priorities. In one specific example, Leslie wrote a scathing article about Reagan slashing the budget funding for senior assisted living facilities, which she read in a voice-over (narration) of a video of Reagan attending the grand opening of one of the last such facilities to survive his own budget slashings. Back at her offices in Washington just after the story aired on CBS news, Stahl's producer told her that someone from the White House was on the phone. Leslie recounted how, as soon as she picked up the phone, she started apologizing for her story - only to be surprised that the senior White House official on the other end (Reagan communications advisor Michael Deaver?) cheerfully told her not to worry: The White House LOVED the story and were happy that it ran. "But," Leslie sputtered "my entire commentary was critical of President Reagan - I detailed how many thousands of seniors would be denied any assistance by the Reagan budget cuts!"
"Not to worry!" said the White House official "No one paid attention to your comments - all they saw was Reagan looking presidential in front of the building, as the red, white and blue ballons were released to soar into the sky."
That is, two entire decades ago the Reagan administration mastered the art of FORM over SUBSTANCE - image over content, appearance over hard reporting, and two decades later, the entire "mainstream media" - even competent reporters such as Leslie Stahl - have had their entire careers and profession SUBORDINATED to the "conventional wisdom" of the major media NARRATIVE - as if THEY inject NO SUBJECTIVITY into their reporting - even half-a-decade after attacking an entire nation that had NOTHING TO DO with 9-11!
And on economic or domestic issues, David Sirota is one of the few reporters out their consistently taking on and confronting the "major media narrative" that JOB OUTSOURCING, and "PRIVATIZING government" are healthy, productive, or desirable policies - even competent journalists and professional reporters such as Leslie Stahl seem to be completely overwhelmed by the "Privatization, outsourcing, income disparity, and wage-and-benefits SLASHINGS" agenda that are the accepted wisdom of the "major media."
========================================================
Lou Dobbs Challenges The Great Objectivity Scam
David Sirota
05.07.2007
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-sirota/lou-dobbs-challenges-the-_b_47832.html
CBS 60 Minutes' piece on Lou Dobbs last night told us a lot more about traditional journalism's biases than it did Dobbs' on any given issue he covers. Throughout the interview, CBS correspondent Lesley Stahl (who I actually think is quite a decent reporter) seems appalled at the entire concept of "advocacy" journalism, essentially asserting that a reporter having any opinion whatsoever offends the Principles of Journalism sent down from Mt.
Olympus. Not only does her surprise display a stunning lack of basic education about the history of the very journalism profession she works in (Lesley -- please Google the terms "muckraker" and "penny press"), her own 60 Minutes piece about Dobbs displays her own very subjective opinions. The only difference is that while Dobbs is honest and admits to his biases, Stahl -- and other traditional journalists -- mask their very subjective world views in the veneer of objectivity, making their own advocacy far more devious than Dobbs could ever be.
Take, for instance, this line in the 60 Minutes piece, delivered as an authoritative, nonpartisan, objective fact:
"Dobbs is full of contradictions: he's pro-abortion rights, but against gun control; a fiscal conservative who supports government regulation."
Stahl would have us believe that believing the consistent libertarianism inherent in the dual beliefs that government shouldn't dictate decisions between a woman and her doctor nor decisions about who should own a gun is a "contradiction." She would also have us believe that being a fiscal conservative (aka. for less government spending and balanced budgets) is a "contradiction" for someone who supports government regulation (aka. consumer protections, environmental laws, etc.). She offers no proof of these claims. Factually, of course, they are absurd, meaning at best such claims are Stahl's own (very odd) opinions. Yet, her opinion is portrayed as non-partisan objective fact akin to stating that water is wet.
Same thing with the entire frame of the piece. Stahl decides to focus almost the entire piece on Dobbs' crusade against illegal immigration, to the exclusion of the other major issues Dobbs covers, such as free trade, job outsourcing, corporate crime and America's narcotics problem. While it is certainly true that illegal immigration has been an important and controversial issue for Dobbs, Stahl would have us believe that is the only thing Dobbs really covers, when in fact one of the most important stories about the rise of Lou Dobbs Tonight is its position as the only show on corporate-owned television that consistently questions Corporate America on a whole host of economic issues. But because that's not what's interesting in Stahl's personal opinion (or, perhaps, that's not a topic area that's looked on kindly at the Viacom-owned CBS network), the 60 Minutes piece is framed narrowly to create a distorted picture.
This Great Objectivity Scam -- the assumption that traditional reporting is automatically "objective" while advocacy journalism is automatically not -- joins other omniscient and equally dishonest Establishment-backed assumptions like the Great Education Myth and the Great Labor Shortage Lie that I have written about in the past. In the same way we all laugh at Fox News's claim to being "fair and balanced," we all know that there simply is no such thing as real "objectivity" -- even in the highest echelons of Establishment journalism. From the moment a writer starts reporting a story, their subjective opinions on what is and is not important are affecting their stories.
You can see it at the media-wide level, below merely the most brazen examples of typical Beltway-centric, power-worshiping bias, and down near the more root foundation of editorial decisions. For example, most of the Beltway press makes a subjective decision to focus much of its attention on "stories" about haircut prices and campaign plane gossip rather than on real issues that affect millions of Americans. Such a decision is not "objective" -- it's the personal preference of lazy reporters who don't feel like doing real "reporting"; opportunistic editors who know that such topic areas require a minimum amount of expense and labor; and biased media owners who often have a financial stake in making sure major issues such as corporate power and kitchen table economics are not covered.
You can also see this subjectivity on the individual story level, where, for instance, trade reporters have refused to ask basic questions about Corporate America's hypocrisy in pushing to stop unions from demanding enforcement of labor laws at the same time business wants to be able to legally demand enforcement of intellectual property laws. Apparently, these reporters feel that asking such questions are either unimportant or unacceptable -- but the decision not to ask such questions when the issue is front and center during what could be the most important trade negotiations in a generation is a decision that flies in the face of objectivity.
Regardless of how you feel about Lou Dobbs or his positions on given issues, at least he's not trying to pretend he has no opinions. You know where he's coming from, and he doesn't try to hide it. I'd say that's far more straightforward than many traditional reporters, who are equally as opinionated, only less honest about the fact that they are often pushing a very subjective agenda.
Send to a friendPost a CommentPrint PostRead all posts by David Sirota
"Not to worry!" said the White House official "No one paid attention to your comments - all they saw was Reagan looking presidential in front of the building, as the red, white and blue ballons were released to soar into the sky."
That is, two entire decades ago the Reagan administration mastered the art of FORM over SUBSTANCE - image over content, appearance over hard reporting, and two decades later, the entire "mainstream media" - even competent reporters such as Leslie Stahl - have had their entire careers and profession SUBORDINATED to the "conventional wisdom" of the major media NARRATIVE - as if THEY inject NO SUBJECTIVITY into their reporting - even half-a-decade after attacking an entire nation that had NOTHING TO DO with 9-11!
And on economic or domestic issues, David Sirota is one of the few reporters out their consistently taking on and confronting the "major media narrative" that JOB OUTSOURCING, and "PRIVATIZING government" are healthy, productive, or desirable policies - even competent journalists and professional reporters such as Leslie Stahl seem to be completely overwhelmed by the "Privatization, outsourcing, income disparity, and wage-and-benefits SLASHINGS" agenda that are the accepted wisdom of the "major media."
========================================================
Lou Dobbs Challenges The Great Objectivity Scam
David Sirota
05.07.2007
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-sirota/lou-dobbs-challenges-the-_b_47832.html
CBS 60 Minutes' piece on Lou Dobbs last night told us a lot more about traditional journalism's biases than it did Dobbs' on any given issue he covers. Throughout the interview, CBS correspondent Lesley Stahl (who I actually think is quite a decent reporter) seems appalled at the entire concept of "advocacy" journalism, essentially asserting that a reporter having any opinion whatsoever offends the Principles of Journalism sent down from Mt.
Olympus. Not only does her surprise display a stunning lack of basic education about the history of the very journalism profession she works in (Lesley -- please Google the terms "muckraker" and "penny press"), her own 60 Minutes piece about Dobbs displays her own very subjective opinions. The only difference is that while Dobbs is honest and admits to his biases, Stahl -- and other traditional journalists -- mask their very subjective world views in the veneer of objectivity, making their own advocacy far more devious than Dobbs could ever be.
Take, for instance, this line in the 60 Minutes piece, delivered as an authoritative, nonpartisan, objective fact:
"Dobbs is full of contradictions: he's pro-abortion rights, but against gun control; a fiscal conservative who supports government regulation."
Stahl would have us believe that believing the consistent libertarianism inherent in the dual beliefs that government shouldn't dictate decisions between a woman and her doctor nor decisions about who should own a gun is a "contradiction." She would also have us believe that being a fiscal conservative (aka. for less government spending and balanced budgets) is a "contradiction" for someone who supports government regulation (aka. consumer protections, environmental laws, etc.). She offers no proof of these claims. Factually, of course, they are absurd, meaning at best such claims are Stahl's own (very odd) opinions. Yet, her opinion is portrayed as non-partisan objective fact akin to stating that water is wet.
Same thing with the entire frame of the piece. Stahl decides to focus almost the entire piece on Dobbs' crusade against illegal immigration, to the exclusion of the other major issues Dobbs covers, such as free trade, job outsourcing, corporate crime and America's narcotics problem. While it is certainly true that illegal immigration has been an important and controversial issue for Dobbs, Stahl would have us believe that is the only thing Dobbs really covers, when in fact one of the most important stories about the rise of Lou Dobbs Tonight is its position as the only show on corporate-owned television that consistently questions Corporate America on a whole host of economic issues. But because that's not what's interesting in Stahl's personal opinion (or, perhaps, that's not a topic area that's looked on kindly at the Viacom-owned CBS network), the 60 Minutes piece is framed narrowly to create a distorted picture.
This Great Objectivity Scam -- the assumption that traditional reporting is automatically "objective" while advocacy journalism is automatically not -- joins other omniscient and equally dishonest Establishment-backed assumptions like the Great Education Myth and the Great Labor Shortage Lie that I have written about in the past. In the same way we all laugh at Fox News's claim to being "fair and balanced," we all know that there simply is no such thing as real "objectivity" -- even in the highest echelons of Establishment journalism. From the moment a writer starts reporting a story, their subjective opinions on what is and is not important are affecting their stories.
You can see it at the media-wide level, below merely the most brazen examples of typical Beltway-centric, power-worshiping bias, and down near the more root foundation of editorial decisions. For example, most of the Beltway press makes a subjective decision to focus much of its attention on "stories" about haircut prices and campaign plane gossip rather than on real issues that affect millions of Americans. Such a decision is not "objective" -- it's the personal preference of lazy reporters who don't feel like doing real "reporting"; opportunistic editors who know that such topic areas require a minimum amount of expense and labor; and biased media owners who often have a financial stake in making sure major issues such as corporate power and kitchen table economics are not covered.
You can also see this subjectivity on the individual story level, where, for instance, trade reporters have refused to ask basic questions about Corporate America's hypocrisy in pushing to stop unions from demanding enforcement of labor laws at the same time business wants to be able to legally demand enforcement of intellectual property laws. Apparently, these reporters feel that asking such questions are either unimportant or unacceptable -- but the decision not to ask such questions when the issue is front and center during what could be the most important trade negotiations in a generation is a decision that flies in the face of objectivity.
Regardless of how you feel about Lou Dobbs or his positions on given issues, at least he's not trying to pretend he has no opinions. You know where he's coming from, and he doesn't try to hide it. I'd say that's far more straightforward than many traditional reporters, who are equally as opinionated, only less honest about the fact that they are often pushing a very subjective agenda.
Send to a friendPost a CommentPrint PostRead all posts by David Sirota
Sunday, May 06, 2007
Sally Quinn shows her Washington ho-Post credentials....
WaPo's Sally Quinn calls Barack Obama "Boy"
Submitted by lambert on Sun, 2007-05-06
http://www.correntewire.com/wapos_sally_quinn_calls_barack_obama_boy
Department of What is WRONG with These People? Barack Obama Sally Quinn
In the nicest possible way, of course.
But she certainly lets Barack know that he’s going to be dealing with His Betters if he ever makes it up to the big house. Quinn doesn’t work nearly as fast as Modo, and she only slips in the shiv ten paragraphs down. The money quote:
The biggest problem that Obama has is this: We don’t know who he is. Who are his people? Whom does he surround himself with? Whom does he listen to? Who gives him advice? He’s so new to the national political scene that he hasn’t had time to choose the team that would be with him in the White House. The more we see him in action, he’s still just campaigning. He still has the quality of an unknown. And as attractive and likable as Obama is, we still need references.
What you mean “we,” Sally? Or is another bootlicker in Versailles on the Potomac presuming to speak for the American people again?
The guy’s a United States Senator, and you don’t know “Who he is?” WTF? I keep being told that D.C. is really a small town; doesn’t everybody know each other in a small town?
There’s a history here, of course; Ben Bradley’s wife is a fully paid-up member of the Beltway Aristrocracy and wrote the famous piece explaining how those vulgar enough to be actually elected need to comport themselves in the presence of Their Betters back in 1998:
“This beautiful capital,” President Clinton said in his first inaugural address, “is often a place of intrigue and calculation. Powerful people maneuver for position and worry endlessly about who is in and who is out, who is up and who is down, forgetting those people whose toil and sweat sends us here and pays our way.” With that, the new president sent a clear challenge to an already suspicious Washington Establishment.
They can’t handle the truth. Then or now.
Actually, it wasn’t extraordinary. When Establishment Washingtonians of all persuasions gather to support their own, they are not unlike any other small community in the country.
But this particular community happens to be in the nation’s capital. And the people in it are the so-called Beltway Insiders — the high-level members of Congress, policymakers, lawyers, military brass, diplomats and journalists who have a proprietary interest in Washington and identify with it.
“Proprietary interest” is rich, isn’t it?
They call the capital city their “town.”
Not our town, note well.
“[Clinton] came in here and he trashed the place,” says Washington Post columnist David Broder, “and it’s not his place.”
No, it wasn’t, was it? And not ours either. What we have in the Beltway is a permanent ruling class that’s gradually morphing into an aristocracy to support a government that’s rapidly changing into an authoritarian regime.
This column from Quinn is a warning shot to Obama. The message is two-fold: (1) We own Washington, not you, and (2) when you get elected, give us control of your administration if you know what’s good for you.
Of course, these people are always wrong about everything (except getting big bucks to write drivel and go on TV).
So it’s an excellent sign for Barack that Quinn is taking shots at him now. In fact, it’s the best reason I’ve heard to vote for the man.
NOTE Via Kevin Drum who gives Quinn far more credit for intellectual honesty than she deserves.
Submitted by lambert on Sun, 2007-05-06
http://www.correntewire.com/wapos_sally_quinn_calls_barack_obama_boy
Department of What is WRONG with These People? Barack Obama Sally Quinn
In the nicest possible way, of course.
But she certainly lets Barack know that he’s going to be dealing with His Betters if he ever makes it up to the big house. Quinn doesn’t work nearly as fast as Modo, and she only slips in the shiv ten paragraphs down. The money quote:
The biggest problem that Obama has is this: We don’t know who he is. Who are his people? Whom does he surround himself with? Whom does he listen to? Who gives him advice? He’s so new to the national political scene that he hasn’t had time to choose the team that would be with him in the White House. The more we see him in action, he’s still just campaigning. He still has the quality of an unknown. And as attractive and likable as Obama is, we still need references.
What you mean “we,” Sally? Or is another bootlicker in Versailles on the Potomac presuming to speak for the American people again?
The guy’s a United States Senator, and you don’t know “Who he is?” WTF? I keep being told that D.C. is really a small town; doesn’t everybody know each other in a small town?
There’s a history here, of course; Ben Bradley’s wife is a fully paid-up member of the Beltway Aristrocracy and wrote the famous piece explaining how those vulgar enough to be actually elected need to comport themselves in the presence of Their Betters back in 1998:
“This beautiful capital,” President Clinton said in his first inaugural address, “is often a place of intrigue and calculation. Powerful people maneuver for position and worry endlessly about who is in and who is out, who is up and who is down, forgetting those people whose toil and sweat sends us here and pays our way.” With that, the new president sent a clear challenge to an already suspicious Washington Establishment.
They can’t handle the truth. Then or now.
Actually, it wasn’t extraordinary. When Establishment Washingtonians of all persuasions gather to support their own, they are not unlike any other small community in the country.
But this particular community happens to be in the nation’s capital. And the people in it are the so-called Beltway Insiders — the high-level members of Congress, policymakers, lawyers, military brass, diplomats and journalists who have a proprietary interest in Washington and identify with it.
“Proprietary interest” is rich, isn’t it?
They call the capital city their “town.”
Not our town, note well.
“[Clinton] came in here and he trashed the place,” says Washington Post columnist David Broder, “and it’s not his place.”
No, it wasn’t, was it? And not ours either. What we have in the Beltway is a permanent ruling class that’s gradually morphing into an aristocracy to support a government that’s rapidly changing into an authoritarian regime.
This column from Quinn is a warning shot to Obama. The message is two-fold: (1) We own Washington, not you, and (2) when you get elected, give us control of your administration if you know what’s good for you.
Of course, these people are always wrong about everything (except getting big bucks to write drivel and go on TV).
So it’s an excellent sign for Barack that Quinn is taking shots at him now. In fact, it’s the best reason I’ve heard to vote for the man.
NOTE Via Kevin Drum who gives Quinn far more credit for intellectual honesty than she deserves.
Saturday, May 05, 2007
Whores at CNN pimp hate-radio blowhard Glenn Beck jihad vs Global Warming awareness....
Oh, what can we say- the executives who run CNN are PAID PROFESSIONAL LYING WHORES, who have SOLD THEIR SOULS - and DAILY SELL THEIR COUNTRY - down the river for a few (million) shiny pieces of silver.
IN case the execs at CNN are too ignorant or impoverished to know: almost EVERY GLACIER ON PLANET EARTH is in massive retreat, with the glacier at Glaceir National Park now some 1/2 mile from where it was just a decade or two ago.
Yet even so, the LYING WHORES at CNN give Beck their blessing to trumpet his "Eco-Nazis!" smear job.
(note: concurrently with this the above "Glenn Back bashes Al Gore's Global Warming" story is this story out of Italy: the nation's largest river, the Po River, is drying up due to a long, hot, and extended drought.)
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20070504.witaly04/BNStory/International/home
==========================================
Climate Crisis Update: Is Glenn Beck Going John-Hickley-Jr.?
7 Vital Stories CNN Could Have Aired Instead of Indulging
in Glenn Beck's Eco-Nazi Conspiracy Theory
By Richard Power
5-4-07
http://words-of-power.blogspot.com/2007/05/climate-crisis-update-5-4-07-is-glenn.html
By the end of 2007, Al Gore will have won both an Oscar (already on the mantle) and the Nobel Peace Prize (decision due in December). And, hopefully, by then, Glenn Beck will no longer have his own show on CNN Headlines or appear regularly on ABC’s Good Morning America.
Of course, the odds on Al Gore winning this year’s Peace Prize are much better than the odds of Beck getting Imused. The Nobel Committee is reality-based, the US mainstream news media is not.
Beck is beginning to take on the look of a stalker or a lone gunman.
He is obsessed with Al Gore.
Beck mentioned Al Gore 32 times in on his piece entitled “Expose: Climate of Fear,” which aired on CNN without rebuttal or disclaimer.
On a recent radio broadcast, Beck equated Al Gore and his awareness campaign on global warming with the Nazis and their use of eugenics as a rationale for genocide against the Jews of Europe.
According to Beck, Al Gore’s hidden agenda is globalization and one world government. No, I am not exaggerating Beck’s comments, or taking them out of context. Think Progress, 5-4-05
Is Glenn Beck going John Hinckley, Jr. on us?
Perhaps it is safer that he vents his illness on the public’s airwaves than allows them to fester in the isolation of his troubled mind. He is starting to sound like Marc David Chapman.
In one way, it is absurd to dwell on Beck.
It feels as if I am engaged in a dialogue with an escaped mental patient who wants to argue that air is not air or that blue is really red, while looking over his shoulder I can see women and children pleading for rescue from the windows of a burning building.
But Beck really is dangerous. More accurately, the world-view and mind-set he engenders and personifies is really dangerous.
And his access to the public’s airwaves raises a much larger question than that of his mental and emotional fitness, i.e., why do CNN and ABC give him that access?
Here are seven news stories highlighting important issues related to climate change. They all appeared in the same news cycle as Beck’s diatribe about what he sees as Al Gore’s Eco-Nazi plot to control the world. Any one of these stories would have been worthy of debate and could have better filled the airtime given to Beck’s delusional, life-negating denial.
1. Credible numbers on the economic costs of coming to grips with global warming:
IPCC reports that “costs of cutting greenhouse gases range between less than 3 percent of world gross domestic product in 2030, with the stiffest curbs, to a small 0.2 percent boost to growth with an easier goal.
The economic impact is spread over many years. The strictest goal, limiting concentrations of greenhouse gases to 445 parts per million of the atmosphere, would brake annual GDP growth rates by less than 0.12 percent a year. Reuters, 5-4-07
2. Health-related side-benefits of coming to grips with greenhouse gas emissions:
Burning cleaner fuels can yield immediate health benefits that save lives and money, world health experts say. … governments should consider how much they will save in medical costs by adopting policies that minimize heat waves, disease and water scarcity resulting from rising temperatures, the scientists said. Big developing countries like China and India can play a huge role in improving health by expanding their use of cleaner energy sources, said Diarmid Campbell-Lendrum, an expert on global environmental change and health at the World Health Organization. "The policy options that you choose to try to cut (carbon dioxide) emissions also have very important health effects," he said from the agency's headquarters in Geneva. "If you choose the right ones, then you can certainly have a win-win at cutting CO2 emissions and directly benefiting health." Associated Press, 5-3-07
3. The potential role of nuclear power for good and ill:
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) meeting in Bangkok said tackling global warming was both technologically and financially feasible as long as action was taken promptly, and that nuclear power could be in the arsenal.
"It is common sense. What else is there for most of electricity generation that is carbon free," Ian Hore-Lacy of the World Nuclear Association said.
"If you have a major technology that is capable of being deployed on a larger scale than now that emits no carbon, you don't need a Phd (doctorate) to work out that it has got an awful lot of potential," he told Reuters in London.
The civil nuclear industry, which saw its future evaporating after the reactor explosion at Chernobyl in 1986 sent a pall of radioactive dust across Europe, has seen its prospects improve dramatically in the hunt for a solution to global warming. Reuters, 5-4-07
4. What world agency should oversee planetary response to climate change:
A diplomatic tussle over which world agency should tackle global warming sees France demanding a new U.N. agency with broad powers, while others say time is short and existing U.N. bodies must rise to the challenge.
U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon wants to reform the array of U.N. bodies affected by climate change, whose impact will be felt across the board, leading to upheavals in the security, social, environmental, health and education sectors.
France and others argue no existing body is really equipped to tackle the crisis and a new one should be created.
"We have no problem with a new agency that can speak at cabinet level and has the power to knock a few heads together," said Gordon Shepherd, policy head at WWF International. "But it must not be used as an excuse for governments to do nothing in the meantime." Reuters, 5-4-07
5. Whether the Kyoto Protocol's Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) is effective or deceptive:
CDM and two other emissions trading schemes created by the Kyoto Protocol, the Joint Implementation and Emissions Trading, have helped to develop a worldwide carbon market with emissions rights. In 2006 this market accounted for transactions worth 30 billion dollars, according to figures released by the World Bank this week in Cologne.
Such development has led international environmental policy advisors and financial and corporate analysts alike to call the market with carbon emissions rights a big success. ...
But others believe that the carbon trading scheme has become a goldmine for private corporations without really helping reduce greenhouse gases emissions.
They say the carbon market has developed into just another financial market, in which a virtual commodity is dealt with, apparently disconnected from the real world. Inter Press Service, 5-4-07
6. The impact of rising sea levels on life in Thailand and Bangladesh:
The sound of waves from the nearby sea is no comfort for the chief abbot of the Buddhist temple in this fishing village in the Gulf of Thailand. …
Visible from the entrance of the decaying temple is a stark image that affirms his fears are not out of place. Rows of telephone and electricity poles stick out of the waters and disappear into the distance along the coast as testimony to there having once been a road that ran through this village. The sea began to swallow it more than two decades ago. …
Thailand's 2,666 km-long coastline on the Gulf of Thailand in the east and along the Andaman Sea on the west has 30 such environmental ‘'hot spots,'' says Thanawat Jarupongsakul, an associate professor in the department of geology at Bangkok's Chulalongkorn University. ‘'Of these there are 22 in the Gulf of Thailand, and the Khun Samutchine area is the worst-hit.'' Inter Press Service, 5-3-07
Bangladesh is among the most densely populated countries in the world, where more than 140 million people live in a space less than half the size of Germany. The majority of the country is made up of the massive estuary delta of the Ganges, Brahmaputra and Meghna Rivers. Any rise in ocean levels represents a grave danger to the country.
Many parts of Bangladesh are acutely threatened by flooding. More than 10 million people are estimated to live in regions that lie less than one meter above sea level. According to findings by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Bangladesh will lose more than one-fifth of its area if sea levels rise by just one meter. The IPCC predicts that sea levels will rise between 18 and 59 centimeters before 2100 -- and this without including Greenland's melting continental ice in the prognosis.
With a sea level increase of just 40 centimeters, the number of people effected by floods each year will rise from 13 to 94 million, according to Uno. Additionally, a London study indicates that one-third of the world's cities lie directly in areas endangered by climate change.
According to climate prognoses, average rainfall in Bangladesh will change drastically. The IPCC predicts that by 2050, rice production will decrease by 10 percent, and wheat production by one-third -- which means increased risk of famine. Der Spiegal, 5-2-07
7. The inefficacy of the G-8 over the last seven years, the vital nature of the G-8's role, and how different it would have been if Gore had been sworn into the office he was elected to in 2000:
The eight most industrialised countries and the five big developing ones must "send a clear signal" this year that they want agreement on a new international framework for tackling global warming, the world's leading policy advisor on climate change said here Wednesday.
The industrialised G8 countries (the United States, Canada, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and Russia) and the five strongest developing countries (China, India, Brazil, South Africa and Mexico) together account for more than 80 percent of all human-made greenhouse gas emissions. …
Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the United Nations United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), says that this year represents a "make or break" situation for designing a worldwide binding policy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from 2013, after the end of the Kyoto Protocol's validity in 2012.
"We need a strong international framework to be in place by 2010 to ensure that there is no gap between the end of the first commitment period in 2012 and the entry into force of a future regime," De Boer said at a press conference. Inter Press Service, 5-2-07
Want to wake people up to the US mainstream news media's complicity in misinforming the public on global warming and climate change? Click here for Media Matters' compilation of "Myths and Falsehoods about Global Warming".
Want to participate in the effort to mitigate the impact of global warming? Download "Ten Things You Can Do"
There is a powerful magic in personal commitment.
IN case the execs at CNN are too ignorant or impoverished to know: almost EVERY GLACIER ON PLANET EARTH is in massive retreat, with the glacier at Glaceir National Park now some 1/2 mile from where it was just a decade or two ago.
Yet even so, the LYING WHORES at CNN give Beck their blessing to trumpet his "Eco-Nazis!" smear job.
(note: concurrently with this the above "Glenn Back bashes Al Gore's Global Warming" story is this story out of Italy: the nation's largest river, the Po River, is drying up due to a long, hot, and extended drought.)
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20070504.witaly04/BNStory/International/home
==========================================
Climate Crisis Update: Is Glenn Beck Going John-Hickley-Jr.?
7 Vital Stories CNN Could Have Aired Instead of Indulging
in Glenn Beck's Eco-Nazi Conspiracy Theory
By Richard Power
5-4-07
http://words-of-power.blogspot.com/2007/05/climate-crisis-update-5-4-07-is-glenn.html
By the end of 2007, Al Gore will have won both an Oscar (already on the mantle) and the Nobel Peace Prize (decision due in December). And, hopefully, by then, Glenn Beck will no longer have his own show on CNN Headlines or appear regularly on ABC’s Good Morning America.
Of course, the odds on Al Gore winning this year’s Peace Prize are much better than the odds of Beck getting Imused. The Nobel Committee is reality-based, the US mainstream news media is not.
Beck is beginning to take on the look of a stalker or a lone gunman.
He is obsessed with Al Gore.
Beck mentioned Al Gore 32 times in on his piece entitled “Expose: Climate of Fear,” which aired on CNN without rebuttal or disclaimer.
On a recent radio broadcast, Beck equated Al Gore and his awareness campaign on global warming with the Nazis and their use of eugenics as a rationale for genocide against the Jews of Europe.
According to Beck, Al Gore’s hidden agenda is globalization and one world government. No, I am not exaggerating Beck’s comments, or taking them out of context. Think Progress, 5-4-05
Is Glenn Beck going John Hinckley, Jr. on us?
Perhaps it is safer that he vents his illness on the public’s airwaves than allows them to fester in the isolation of his troubled mind. He is starting to sound like Marc David Chapman.
In one way, it is absurd to dwell on Beck.
It feels as if I am engaged in a dialogue with an escaped mental patient who wants to argue that air is not air or that blue is really red, while looking over his shoulder I can see women and children pleading for rescue from the windows of a burning building.
But Beck really is dangerous. More accurately, the world-view and mind-set he engenders and personifies is really dangerous.
And his access to the public’s airwaves raises a much larger question than that of his mental and emotional fitness, i.e., why do CNN and ABC give him that access?
Here are seven news stories highlighting important issues related to climate change. They all appeared in the same news cycle as Beck’s diatribe about what he sees as Al Gore’s Eco-Nazi plot to control the world. Any one of these stories would have been worthy of debate and could have better filled the airtime given to Beck’s delusional, life-negating denial.
1. Credible numbers on the economic costs of coming to grips with global warming:
IPCC reports that “costs of cutting greenhouse gases range between less than 3 percent of world gross domestic product in 2030, with the stiffest curbs, to a small 0.2 percent boost to growth with an easier goal.
The economic impact is spread over many years. The strictest goal, limiting concentrations of greenhouse gases to 445 parts per million of the atmosphere, would brake annual GDP growth rates by less than 0.12 percent a year. Reuters, 5-4-07
2. Health-related side-benefits of coming to grips with greenhouse gas emissions:
Burning cleaner fuels can yield immediate health benefits that save lives and money, world health experts say. … governments should consider how much they will save in medical costs by adopting policies that minimize heat waves, disease and water scarcity resulting from rising temperatures, the scientists said. Big developing countries like China and India can play a huge role in improving health by expanding their use of cleaner energy sources, said Diarmid Campbell-Lendrum, an expert on global environmental change and health at the World Health Organization. "The policy options that you choose to try to cut (carbon dioxide) emissions also have very important health effects," he said from the agency's headquarters in Geneva. "If you choose the right ones, then you can certainly have a win-win at cutting CO2 emissions and directly benefiting health." Associated Press, 5-3-07
3. The potential role of nuclear power for good and ill:
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) meeting in Bangkok said tackling global warming was both technologically and financially feasible as long as action was taken promptly, and that nuclear power could be in the arsenal.
"It is common sense. What else is there for most of electricity generation that is carbon free," Ian Hore-Lacy of the World Nuclear Association said.
"If you have a major technology that is capable of being deployed on a larger scale than now that emits no carbon, you don't need a Phd (doctorate) to work out that it has got an awful lot of potential," he told Reuters in London.
The civil nuclear industry, which saw its future evaporating after the reactor explosion at Chernobyl in 1986 sent a pall of radioactive dust across Europe, has seen its prospects improve dramatically in the hunt for a solution to global warming. Reuters, 5-4-07
4. What world agency should oversee planetary response to climate change:
A diplomatic tussle over which world agency should tackle global warming sees France demanding a new U.N. agency with broad powers, while others say time is short and existing U.N. bodies must rise to the challenge.
U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon wants to reform the array of U.N. bodies affected by climate change, whose impact will be felt across the board, leading to upheavals in the security, social, environmental, health and education sectors.
France and others argue no existing body is really equipped to tackle the crisis and a new one should be created.
"We have no problem with a new agency that can speak at cabinet level and has the power to knock a few heads together," said Gordon Shepherd, policy head at WWF International. "But it must not be used as an excuse for governments to do nothing in the meantime." Reuters, 5-4-07
5. Whether the Kyoto Protocol's Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) is effective or deceptive:
CDM and two other emissions trading schemes created by the Kyoto Protocol, the Joint Implementation and Emissions Trading, have helped to develop a worldwide carbon market with emissions rights. In 2006 this market accounted for transactions worth 30 billion dollars, according to figures released by the World Bank this week in Cologne.
Such development has led international environmental policy advisors and financial and corporate analysts alike to call the market with carbon emissions rights a big success. ...
But others believe that the carbon trading scheme has become a goldmine for private corporations without really helping reduce greenhouse gases emissions.
They say the carbon market has developed into just another financial market, in which a virtual commodity is dealt with, apparently disconnected from the real world. Inter Press Service, 5-4-07
6. The impact of rising sea levels on life in Thailand and Bangladesh:
The sound of waves from the nearby sea is no comfort for the chief abbot of the Buddhist temple in this fishing village in the Gulf of Thailand. …
Visible from the entrance of the decaying temple is a stark image that affirms his fears are not out of place. Rows of telephone and electricity poles stick out of the waters and disappear into the distance along the coast as testimony to there having once been a road that ran through this village. The sea began to swallow it more than two decades ago. …
Thailand's 2,666 km-long coastline on the Gulf of Thailand in the east and along the Andaman Sea on the west has 30 such environmental ‘'hot spots,'' says Thanawat Jarupongsakul, an associate professor in the department of geology at Bangkok's Chulalongkorn University. ‘'Of these there are 22 in the Gulf of Thailand, and the Khun Samutchine area is the worst-hit.'' Inter Press Service, 5-3-07
Bangladesh is among the most densely populated countries in the world, where more than 140 million people live in a space less than half the size of Germany. The majority of the country is made up of the massive estuary delta of the Ganges, Brahmaputra and Meghna Rivers. Any rise in ocean levels represents a grave danger to the country.
Many parts of Bangladesh are acutely threatened by flooding. More than 10 million people are estimated to live in regions that lie less than one meter above sea level. According to findings by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Bangladesh will lose more than one-fifth of its area if sea levels rise by just one meter. The IPCC predicts that sea levels will rise between 18 and 59 centimeters before 2100 -- and this without including Greenland's melting continental ice in the prognosis.
With a sea level increase of just 40 centimeters, the number of people effected by floods each year will rise from 13 to 94 million, according to Uno. Additionally, a London study indicates that one-third of the world's cities lie directly in areas endangered by climate change.
According to climate prognoses, average rainfall in Bangladesh will change drastically. The IPCC predicts that by 2050, rice production will decrease by 10 percent, and wheat production by one-third -- which means increased risk of famine. Der Spiegal, 5-2-07
7. The inefficacy of the G-8 over the last seven years, the vital nature of the G-8's role, and how different it would have been if Gore had been sworn into the office he was elected to in 2000:
The eight most industrialised countries and the five big developing ones must "send a clear signal" this year that they want agreement on a new international framework for tackling global warming, the world's leading policy advisor on climate change said here Wednesday.
The industrialised G8 countries (the United States, Canada, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and Russia) and the five strongest developing countries (China, India, Brazil, South Africa and Mexico) together account for more than 80 percent of all human-made greenhouse gas emissions. …
Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the United Nations United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), says that this year represents a "make or break" situation for designing a worldwide binding policy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from 2013, after the end of the Kyoto Protocol's validity in 2012.
"We need a strong international framework to be in place by 2010 to ensure that there is no gap between the end of the first commitment period in 2012 and the entry into force of a future regime," De Boer said at a press conference. Inter Press Service, 5-2-07
Want to wake people up to the US mainstream news media's complicity in misinforming the public on global warming and climate change? Click here for Media Matters' compilation of "Myths and Falsehoods about Global Warming".
Want to participate in the effort to mitigate the impact of global warming? Download "Ten Things You Can Do"
There is a powerful magic in personal commitment.
Thursday, May 03, 2007
Bill O'Reilly, Rupert Murdoch's pet worker-hating, democracy smearing blowhard, uses derogatory terms once every SEVEN SECONDS!
God Bless! After over a dozen years of right-wing ATTACKS on all those who do not fit into their "neo-segregation, neo-imperialism" vision of America (aka "bring back the good old days of the Roaring Twenties and gross income disparity, as we can witness every single day in South America today), America's "liberal," progressive, and Democratic Party activists are finally starting to DISTILL and COMPILE the lies, smears, slanders, insinuations, and intimidations of the Right-Wing propaganda machine.
Aritcle #1. in our exposition - Rupert Murdoch's over-paid SMEAR-MONGER hiding behind an oh-so-respectable good Catholic upper-middle-class smile: BILL O'REILLY, who, it turns out, can not go SEVEN SECONDS without using DEROGATORY TERMS.
-----------------------------------------------
STUDY: Bill O’Reilly Uses Derogatory Names ‘More Than Once Every Seven Seconds’
Think Progress recount of University of Indiana media study
April 3, 2007
http://thinkprogress.org/2007/05/02/oreilly-derogatory/
A new study by Indiana University media researchers finds that Fox News host Bill O’Reilly calls “a person or a group a derogatory name once every 6.8 seconds, on average, or nearly nine times every minute during the editorials that open his program each night.”
The study documented six months worth, or 115 episodes, of O’Reilly’s “Talking Points Memo” editorials “using propaganda analysis techniques made popular after World War I.” Researchers found that O’Reilly “was prone to inject fear into his commentaries and quick to resort to name-calling. He also frequently assigned roles or attributes — such as ‘villians’ or downright ‘evil’ — to people and groups.
Some findings from the study:
– Fear was used in more than half (52.4 percent) of the commentaries, and O’Reilly almost never offered a resolution to the threat. For example, in a commentary on “left-wing” media unfairly criticizing Attorney Gen. Alberto Gonzales for his role in the Abu Ghraib scandal, O’Reilly considered this an example of America “slowly losing freedom and core values,” and added, “So what can be done? Unfortunately, not much.”
– The researchers identified 22 groups of people that O’Reilly referenced in his commentaries, and while all 22 were described by O’Reilly as bad at some point, the people and groups most frequently labeled bad were the political left — Americans as a group and the media (except those media considered by O’Reilly to be on the right).
– Left-leaning media (21.6 percent) made up the largest portion of bad people/groups, and media without a clear political leaning was the second largest (12.2 percent). When it came to evil people and groups, illegal aliens (26.8 percent) and terrorists (21.4 percent) were the largest groups.
The techniques used by Indiana University researchers to study O’Reilly were also “used during the late 1930s to study another prominent voice in a war-era, Father Charles Coughlin. His sermons evolved into a darker message of anti-Semitism and fascism, and he became a defender of Hitler and Mussolini.” The researchers note, “O’Reilly is a heavier and less-nuanced user of the propaganda devices than Coughlin.”
UPDATE: O’Reilly, 2/27/06: “I don’t do personal attacks here.”
Aritcle #1. in our exposition - Rupert Murdoch's over-paid SMEAR-MONGER hiding behind an oh-so-respectable good Catholic upper-middle-class smile: BILL O'REILLY, who, it turns out, can not go SEVEN SECONDS without using DEROGATORY TERMS.
-----------------------------------------------
STUDY: Bill O’Reilly Uses Derogatory Names ‘More Than Once Every Seven Seconds’
Think Progress recount of University of Indiana media study
April 3, 2007
http://thinkprogress.org/2007/05/02/oreilly-derogatory/
A new study by Indiana University media researchers finds that Fox News host Bill O’Reilly calls “a person or a group a derogatory name once every 6.8 seconds, on average, or nearly nine times every minute during the editorials that open his program each night.”
The study documented six months worth, or 115 episodes, of O’Reilly’s “Talking Points Memo” editorials “using propaganda analysis techniques made popular after World War I.” Researchers found that O’Reilly “was prone to inject fear into his commentaries and quick to resort to name-calling. He also frequently assigned roles or attributes — such as ‘villians’ or downright ‘evil’ — to people and groups.
Some findings from the study:
– Fear was used in more than half (52.4 percent) of the commentaries, and O’Reilly almost never offered a resolution to the threat. For example, in a commentary on “left-wing” media unfairly criticizing Attorney Gen. Alberto Gonzales for his role in the Abu Ghraib scandal, O’Reilly considered this an example of America “slowly losing freedom and core values,” and added, “So what can be done? Unfortunately, not much.”
– The researchers identified 22 groups of people that O’Reilly referenced in his commentaries, and while all 22 were described by O’Reilly as bad at some point, the people and groups most frequently labeled bad were the political left — Americans as a group and the media (except those media considered by O’Reilly to be on the right).
– Left-leaning media (21.6 percent) made up the largest portion of bad people/groups, and media without a clear political leaning was the second largest (12.2 percent). When it came to evil people and groups, illegal aliens (26.8 percent) and terrorists (21.4 percent) were the largest groups.
The techniques used by Indiana University researchers to study O’Reilly were also “used during the late 1930s to study another prominent voice in a war-era, Father Charles Coughlin. His sermons evolved into a darker message of anti-Semitism and fascism, and he became a defender of Hitler and Mussolini.” The researchers note, “O’Reilly is a heavier and less-nuanced user of the propaganda devices than Coughlin.”
UPDATE: O’Reilly, 2/27/06: “I don’t do personal attacks here.”
Tuesday, May 01, 2007
Media Whores' FELLATIO over "Mission Accomplished" - CHRIS MATHEWS owes 3,000+ families an apology...
(click our headline link for just a fraction of the media's absurdly ignorant, pathetic, sycophantic comments in the hours and days of "Mission Accomplished!" May 1, 2003.)
Could CHRIS MATHEWS really be THAT STUPID?
Could he truly be THAT SYCOPHANTIC?
Could he truly be that incompetent, unawares, ill-informed, and (to repeat ourselves) STUPID, and STILL be considered a "Media PROFESSIONAL"?
In the "Grand Canyon was made just 6,000 years ago - and we can force professional park service geologists and rangers to say so!" through-the-looking-glass era that is America 2007, apparently so.
Conservatives - in religious institutions, in big business, in government - can WITHHOLD FAMILY PLANNING funding that will saves THOUSANDS upon MILLIONS of lives of children and infants and innocents across the world - children who die of PREVENTABLE malaria and dysentery because major pharmaceutical corporations WITHHOLD their precious PATENTED drugs (to extract American-level profits from poverty-stricken natives - often for drugs created by US government research); Conservatives can WITHHOLD sexual education and anti-AIDS programs because the State Department is a SLAVE to the Bush administration's Right-Wing toadies (who, we learned this past week,, have engaged in $300-hour escort-services prostitutes in the comfort of luxury DC hotels); conservatives WITHHOLD sex education and sexually-transmitted disease prevention (STD) funding here in America because "ABORTION IS A SIN akin TO MURDER!" - (Even though "god" - the creator - has been killing children and infants by the score due to natural and violent causes since the dawn of humanity.)
Well, the answer to how such right-wing reactionary LUNACY is now COMMONPLACE in America, the nation that, more than any other nation, benefited from the great leaps in science and technology that wrecked havoc on most of the rest of the industrialized world - (most of Europe, China, and Japan, and much of Asia and North Africa, were laid waist by the industrialized bombs and guns of WWII, including the V2 rockets that slammed London and Antwerp, and the A-bombs that incinerated Hiroshima and Nagasaki.) -
- the best illustration of how such religious, reactionary, self-righteous, 'moral values' INSANITY is now commonplace and taken as THE NORM or standard in America today, is contained in these grotesquely STUPID quotes by CHRIS MATHEWS, uttered by the sputtering Mathews in an especially, grotesquely sycophantic moment just short of four years ago today:
"What's he going to talk about a year from now, the fact that the war went too well and it's over? I mean, don't these things sort of lose their--Isn't there a fresh date on some of these debate points?"
(MSNBC's Chris Matthews, speaking about Howard Dean--4/9/03)
"Why don't the damn Democrats give the president his day? He won today. He did well today."
(MSNBC's Chris Matthews, 4/9/03)
"We're proud of our president. Americans love having a guy as president, a guy who has a little swagger, who's physical, who's not a complicated guy like Clinton or even like Dukakis or Mondale, all those guys, McGovern. They want a guy who's president. Women like a guy who's president. Check it out. The women like this war. I think we like having a hero as our president. It's simple. We're not like the Brits."
(MSNBC's Chris Matthews, 5/1/03)
Click our here or on our headline link for a huge (but by no means comprehensive) list of quotes of the American media's GROTESQUE STUPIDITY and SYCOPHANTIC narrative of four years ago today.
http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=2842
Could CHRIS MATHEWS really be THAT STUPID?
Could he truly be THAT SYCOPHANTIC?
Could he truly be that incompetent, unawares, ill-informed, and (to repeat ourselves) STUPID, and STILL be considered a "Media PROFESSIONAL"?
In the "Grand Canyon was made just 6,000 years ago - and we can force professional park service geologists and rangers to say so!" through-the-looking-glass era that is America 2007, apparently so.
Conservatives - in religious institutions, in big business, in government - can WITHHOLD FAMILY PLANNING funding that will saves THOUSANDS upon MILLIONS of lives of children and infants and innocents across the world - children who die of PREVENTABLE malaria and dysentery because major pharmaceutical corporations WITHHOLD their precious PATENTED drugs (to extract American-level profits from poverty-stricken natives - often for drugs created by US government research); Conservatives can WITHHOLD sexual education and anti-AIDS programs because the State Department is a SLAVE to the Bush administration's Right-Wing toadies (who, we learned this past week,, have engaged in $300-hour escort-services prostitutes in the comfort of luxury DC hotels); conservatives WITHHOLD sex education and sexually-transmitted disease prevention (STD) funding here in America because "ABORTION IS A SIN akin TO MURDER!" - (Even though "god" - the creator - has been killing children and infants by the score due to natural and violent causes since the dawn of humanity.)
Well, the answer to how such right-wing reactionary LUNACY is now COMMONPLACE in America, the nation that, more than any other nation, benefited from the great leaps in science and technology that wrecked havoc on most of the rest of the industrialized world - (most of Europe, China, and Japan, and much of Asia and North Africa, were laid waist by the industrialized bombs and guns of WWII, including the V2 rockets that slammed London and Antwerp, and the A-bombs that incinerated Hiroshima and Nagasaki.) -
- the best illustration of how such religious, reactionary, self-righteous, 'moral values' INSANITY is now commonplace and taken as THE NORM or standard in America today, is contained in these grotesquely STUPID quotes by CHRIS MATHEWS, uttered by the sputtering Mathews in an especially, grotesquely sycophantic moment just short of four years ago today:
"What's he going to talk about a year from now, the fact that the war went too well and it's over? I mean, don't these things sort of lose their--Isn't there a fresh date on some of these debate points?"
(MSNBC's Chris Matthews, speaking about Howard Dean--4/9/03)
"Why don't the damn Democrats give the president his day? He won today. He did well today."
(MSNBC's Chris Matthews, 4/9/03)
"We're proud of our president. Americans love having a guy as president, a guy who has a little swagger, who's physical, who's not a complicated guy like Clinton or even like Dukakis or Mondale, all those guys, McGovern. They want a guy who's president. Women like a guy who's president. Check it out. The women like this war. I think we like having a hero as our president. It's simple. We're not like the Brits."
(MSNBC's Chris Matthews, 5/1/03)
Click our here or on our headline link for a huge (but by no means comprehensive) list of quotes of the American media's GROTESQUE STUPIDITY and SYCOPHANTIC narrative of four years ago today.
http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=2842
Media whores IGNORING "Halliburton DEALING WITH IRAN past 6 years" story!
Despite coverage by C-SPAN yesterday of the Senate investigation into HALLIBURTON's DEALINGS WITH IRAN over the past 6 years, the "major media" is IGNORING the story - buried WELL OFF THE FRONT PAGES of the New York Times, CNN, ABC, and other "news" organizations - and ENTIRELY VANISHED from the WASHINGTON POST's coverage of national news and Washington political news!
Ever since 9-11, George W. Bush and Dick Cheney have made "THE AXIS OF EVIL" the centerpiece and spearpoint of their foreign policy - how the United States deals with other nations and potential adversaries overseas.
Yet even as the Bush-Cheney has been increasingly attempting to portray (with significant success) that Iran is the new Iraq - the new THREAT TO AMERICA's VERY SECURITY - we now learn that HALLIBURTON HAS BEEN DEALING WITH IRAN for the entire 6 years since the Bush-Cheney administration gained office!
This week we are reassured (by Halliburton's minority/African-American VP of Govt. Affairs - nice PR touch) that Halliburton is NOW SEVERING those ties.
In previous weeks we learned that the Bush-Cheney administration approved of the sale of entire US port operations to a Dubai, UAE conglomerate owned and run by billionaires with dictatorial powers in that nation, and then we learned that the Cheney-Bush administration is providing support for Halliburton's announced move of its headquarters to - Dubai, also in the United Arab Emirates!
The WASHINGTON POST, NEW YORK TIMES, CNN, and other whore media organizations have their marching orders: PORTRAY IRAN AS 'the enemy' - AT EVERY OPPORTUNITY, in a verbatim repeat of the Bush-Cheney administration's march to war in Iraq.
These WHORE media organizations have NO INTEREST, NO CURIOUSITY, that the Bush-Cheney administration HAS BEEN ALLOWING HALLIBURTON TO DEAL WITH IRAN these past 6 years??!
============================================
In 2004 Vice Presidential debate, Vice President Cheney SPECIFICALLY SUPPORTS the SANCTIONS on IRAN - except, it turns out, for the company that HE STILL HOLDS SHARES IN:
https://www.gwu.edu/~action/2004/deb04main/ohdebtrq8.html
IFILL: Mr. Vice President, in June of 2000 when you were still CEO of Halliburton, you said that U.S. businesses should be allowed to do business with Iran because, quote, "Unilateral sanctions almost never work."
After four years as vice president now, and with Iran having been declared by your administration as part of the "Axis of Evil," do you still believe that we should lift sanctions on Iran?
CHENEY: No, I do not. And, Gwen, at the time, I was talking specifically about this question of unilateral sanctions.
=================================================
ABC news:
Halliburton says no longer working in Iran
Apr 9, 2007
http://abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStory?id=3022938
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Halliburton Co on Monday said all of its commitments in Iran have been completed and it is no longer working in the country.
In January 2005, the company decided it would not accept new work in Iran but would complete its existing contracts there.
================================================
Senators Question Halliburton Executive About Dealings in Iran
By MICHAEL LUO
Published: May 1, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/01/washington/01halliburton.html
WASHINGTON, April 30 — A Halliburton executive, facing withering criticism from Democratic lawmakers during a Senate hearing on Monday about the company’s business dealings in Iran, insisted that the firm had not broken any laws.
The official, Sherry Williams, a Halliburton vice president and corporate secretary, said the company had consulted several law firms in 1995 after sanctions were imposed on Iran. Officials of the company, which recently announced it was moving its chief executive from Houston to Dubai and establishing a corporate headquarters there, determined that it was legal for independent foreign subsidiaries of United States companies to do business there, she said.
“We have followed U.S. law,” she said. “We will continue to follow U.S. law.”
Although the three Democratic senators on hand repeatedly suggested broader concerns than strict legality should have prompted the company to halt its business in Iran, Ms. Williams expressed no regret for the firm’s work there.
From 1995 to 2000, Vice President Dick Cheney was Halliburton’s chairman; at the time he spoke out against sanctions on Iran.
Halliburton announced recently that it had completed its outstanding contracts in Iran and was leaving the country, fulfilling a promise it made in 2005 to wrap up its work there.
Senator Frank R. Lautenberg, a New Jersey Democrat who has helped lead the investigation into the company’s work in Iran, said Halliburton effectively financed terrorism by doing business there.
“Companies that help terrorist states generate revenues that are helping fund terrorist operations,” he said. “It’s that simple.”
Senator Byron L. Dorgan, chairman of the Senate subcommittee that convened the hearing, was similarly blunt.
“Was there any discussion about whether from a values standpoint doing business through a foreign subsidiary with a prohibited country like Iran was in fact helping the terrorists?” he asked Ms. Williams.
Ms. Williams said she was “not a part of those discussions.” She cited an array of factors driving the decision to leave Iran, including the difficulty of working in the country and diminishing business there.
Senator Sherrod Brown, an Ohio Democrat, said he was incredulous that the reasons did not include “anything to do with patriotism or anything to do with the values that I think our country holds dear.”
In 2004, the Department of Justice began an investigation of the company’s work in Iran, which Ms. Williams said she believed was continuing.
Federal law generally prohibits United States companies from doing business with countries, like Iran, that are on a State Department list as sponsors of terrorism. But a gap in the law when it comes to Iran allows foreign subsidiaries of American corporations to do business there as long as they operate independently.
Halliburton’s work in Iran was carried out under the name of a subsidiary registered in the Cayman Islands with headquarters in Dubai: Halliburton Products and Services Limited.
Mr. Lautenberg has introduced legislation to close the loophole for foreign subsidiaries. Meanwhile, Mr. Brown and Mr. Dorgan have introduced a bill to prohibit the awarding of government contracts to any company doing business with state sponsors of terrorism.
The senators pressed Ms. Williams about whether Halliburton’s subsidiary in Iran was truly independent of the parent company, citing a “60 Minutes” report in 2004 that found the Cayman Islands address for the subsidiary was little more than a mail drop and that in Dubai it shared office space, phone and fax lines with a division of Halliburton.
But Ms. Williams said the Cayman Islands registration was “perfectly appropriate under the law.” She noted that Halliburton itself was registered in Delaware, even though it has no offices there.
As for the Dubai office, she said that work for the subsidiary actually took place at a different location. Even the telephone number for the subsidiary listed in the phone book “is actually incorrect,” she said. She described the address visited by “60 Minutes” as a “registration office” that the subsidiary used when it was changing its names at one point.
But Mr. Lautenberg produced documents from an Iranian oil subsidiary that were addressed to the Halliburton subsidiary at the same address in Dubai, which he said cast doubt on her statements.
William C. Thompson Jr., the New York City comptroller who runs several city pension funds that invest in Halliburton, has pressed vigorously in the past few years for the company and others to stop doing business in Iran.
“Unfortunately, it’s become clear over a period of years that while things may be legal, it doesn’t mean that they are ethical,” he said at the hearing. “And I believe that unless you close the loophole, companies will continue to attempt to do business in backdoor fashions.”
Ever since 9-11, George W. Bush and Dick Cheney have made "THE AXIS OF EVIL" the centerpiece and spearpoint of their foreign policy - how the United States deals with other nations and potential adversaries overseas.
Yet even as the Bush-Cheney has been increasingly attempting to portray (with significant success) that Iran is the new Iraq - the new THREAT TO AMERICA's VERY SECURITY - we now learn that HALLIBURTON HAS BEEN DEALING WITH IRAN for the entire 6 years since the Bush-Cheney administration gained office!
This week we are reassured (by Halliburton's minority/African-American VP of Govt. Affairs - nice PR touch) that Halliburton is NOW SEVERING those ties.
In previous weeks we learned that the Bush-Cheney administration approved of the sale of entire US port operations to a Dubai, UAE conglomerate owned and run by billionaires with dictatorial powers in that nation, and then we learned that the Cheney-Bush administration is providing support for Halliburton's announced move of its headquarters to - Dubai, also in the United Arab Emirates!
The WASHINGTON POST, NEW YORK TIMES, CNN, and other whore media organizations have their marching orders: PORTRAY IRAN AS 'the enemy' - AT EVERY OPPORTUNITY, in a verbatim repeat of the Bush-Cheney administration's march to war in Iraq.
These WHORE media organizations have NO INTEREST, NO CURIOUSITY, that the Bush-Cheney administration HAS BEEN ALLOWING HALLIBURTON TO DEAL WITH IRAN these past 6 years??!
============================================
In 2004 Vice Presidential debate, Vice President Cheney SPECIFICALLY SUPPORTS the SANCTIONS on IRAN - except, it turns out, for the company that HE STILL HOLDS SHARES IN:
https://www.gwu.edu/~action/2004/deb04main/ohdebtrq8.html
IFILL: Mr. Vice President, in June of 2000 when you were still CEO of Halliburton, you said that U.S. businesses should be allowed to do business with Iran because, quote, "Unilateral sanctions almost never work."
After four years as vice president now, and with Iran having been declared by your administration as part of the "Axis of Evil," do you still believe that we should lift sanctions on Iran?
CHENEY: No, I do not. And, Gwen, at the time, I was talking specifically about this question of unilateral sanctions.
=================================================
ABC news:
Halliburton says no longer working in Iran
Apr 9, 2007
http://abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStory?id=3022938
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Halliburton Co on Monday said all of its commitments in Iran have been completed and it is no longer working in the country.
In January 2005, the company decided it would not accept new work in Iran but would complete its existing contracts there.
================================================
Senators Question Halliburton Executive About Dealings in Iran
By MICHAEL LUO
Published: May 1, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/01/washington/01halliburton.html
WASHINGTON, April 30 — A Halliburton executive, facing withering criticism from Democratic lawmakers during a Senate hearing on Monday about the company’s business dealings in Iran, insisted that the firm had not broken any laws.
The official, Sherry Williams, a Halliburton vice president and corporate secretary, said the company had consulted several law firms in 1995 after sanctions were imposed on Iran. Officials of the company, which recently announced it was moving its chief executive from Houston to Dubai and establishing a corporate headquarters there, determined that it was legal for independent foreign subsidiaries of United States companies to do business there, she said.
“We have followed U.S. law,” she said. “We will continue to follow U.S. law.”
Although the three Democratic senators on hand repeatedly suggested broader concerns than strict legality should have prompted the company to halt its business in Iran, Ms. Williams expressed no regret for the firm’s work there.
From 1995 to 2000, Vice President Dick Cheney was Halliburton’s chairman; at the time he spoke out against sanctions on Iran.
Halliburton announced recently that it had completed its outstanding contracts in Iran and was leaving the country, fulfilling a promise it made in 2005 to wrap up its work there.
Senator Frank R. Lautenberg, a New Jersey Democrat who has helped lead the investigation into the company’s work in Iran, said Halliburton effectively financed terrorism by doing business there.
“Companies that help terrorist states generate revenues that are helping fund terrorist operations,” he said. “It’s that simple.”
Senator Byron L. Dorgan, chairman of the Senate subcommittee that convened the hearing, was similarly blunt.
“Was there any discussion about whether from a values standpoint doing business through a foreign subsidiary with a prohibited country like Iran was in fact helping the terrorists?” he asked Ms. Williams.
Ms. Williams said she was “not a part of those discussions.” She cited an array of factors driving the decision to leave Iran, including the difficulty of working in the country and diminishing business there.
Senator Sherrod Brown, an Ohio Democrat, said he was incredulous that the reasons did not include “anything to do with patriotism or anything to do with the values that I think our country holds dear.”
In 2004, the Department of Justice began an investigation of the company’s work in Iran, which Ms. Williams said she believed was continuing.
Federal law generally prohibits United States companies from doing business with countries, like Iran, that are on a State Department list as sponsors of terrorism. But a gap in the law when it comes to Iran allows foreign subsidiaries of American corporations to do business there as long as they operate independently.
Halliburton’s work in Iran was carried out under the name of a subsidiary registered in the Cayman Islands with headquarters in Dubai: Halliburton Products and Services Limited.
Mr. Lautenberg has introduced legislation to close the loophole for foreign subsidiaries. Meanwhile, Mr. Brown and Mr. Dorgan have introduced a bill to prohibit the awarding of government contracts to any company doing business with state sponsors of terrorism.
The senators pressed Ms. Williams about whether Halliburton’s subsidiary in Iran was truly independent of the parent company, citing a “60 Minutes” report in 2004 that found the Cayman Islands address for the subsidiary was little more than a mail drop and that in Dubai it shared office space, phone and fax lines with a division of Halliburton.
But Ms. Williams said the Cayman Islands registration was “perfectly appropriate under the law.” She noted that Halliburton itself was registered in Delaware, even though it has no offices there.
As for the Dubai office, she said that work for the subsidiary actually took place at a different location. Even the telephone number for the subsidiary listed in the phone book “is actually incorrect,” she said. She described the address visited by “60 Minutes” as a “registration office” that the subsidiary used when it was changing its names at one point.
But Mr. Lautenberg produced documents from an Iranian oil subsidiary that were addressed to the Halliburton subsidiary at the same address in Dubai, which he said cast doubt on her statements.
William C. Thompson Jr., the New York City comptroller who runs several city pension funds that invest in Halliburton, has pressed vigorously in the past few years for the company and others to stop doing business in Iran.
“Unfortunately, it’s become clear over a period of years that while things may be legal, it doesn’t mean that they are ethical,” he said at the hearing. “And I believe that unless you close the loophole, companies will continue to attempt to do business in backdoor fashions.”
Monday, April 30, 2007
CIA ex-Director Tenet pleads "I WAS USED by the President and Vice President to SELL THE WAR!" - media whores pretend not to notice...
Yet MORE evidence that George W. Bush and Dick Cheney LIED AMERICA INTO THE IRAQ WAR, yet still the "major media narrative" of the Bush White House is one of ABJECT FAILURE TO ASK THE TOUGH QUESTIONS...
As the six former CIA officers explain in their letter (below), former CIA Director George Tenet has a hell of a lot of nerve to whimper that he was used by the president and vice president to sell their war - HE was in a position TO DO SOMETHING MEANINGFUL to derail or at least slow down the rush to war - like RESIGN from his office in protest.
Mr. Tenet is a PROFILE IN DERELICTION OF DUTY to the American people to provide unbiased, unhyped intelligence at a crucial time in America's history, just as every day the MEDIA WHORES are PROFILES IN COWARDICE and DERELICTION OF DUTY for FAILING to ask the hard and obvious questions.
Clearly, the media whores long for the good old days of the Clinton administration, when they could serve up "LINCOLN BEDROOM SCANDAL!" as a national crisis, with no more effort or risk than waiting like bunny rabbits for the latest GOP talking points.
-----------------------------------------------------------
Former CIA Officers: Ex-CIA chief Tenet a 'failed' leader
April 29, 2007
http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/04/29/tenet.letter/index.html
(CNN) -- In a letter written Saturday to former CIA Director George Tenet, six former CIA officers described their former boss as "the Alberto Gonzales of the intelligence community," and called his book "an admission of failed leadership."
The writers said Tenet has "a moral obligation" to return the Medal of Freedom he received from President Bush.
They also called on him to give more than half the royalties he gets from book, "At the Center of the Storm," to U.S. soldiers wounded in Iraq and families of the dead. (Watch Sec. of State Condoleezza Rice talk about Tenet's book)
The letter, signed by Phil Giraldi, Ray McGovern, Larry Johnson, Jim Marcinkowski, Vince Cannistraro and David MacMichael, said Tenet should have resigned in protest rather than take part in the administration's buildup to the war. (Read the full letter)
Johnson is a former CIA intelligence official and registered Republican who voted for Bush in 2000. McGovern is a former CIA analyst.
Cannistraro is former head of the CIA's counterterrorism division and was head of intelligence for the National Security Council in the late 1980s.
The writers said they agree that Bush administration officials took the nation to war "for flimsy reasons," and that it has proved "ill-advised and wrong-headed."
But, they added, "your lament that you are a victim in a process you helped direct is self-serving, misleading and, as head of the intelligence community, an admission of failed leadership.
"You were not a victim. You were a willing participant in a poorly considered policy to start an unnecessary war and you share culpability with Dick Cheney and George Bush for the debacle in Iraq."
Tenet's 'lack of courage'
The writers accused Tenet of having helped send "very mixed signals" to Americans and their legislators prior to the war.
"CIA field operatives produced solid intelligence in September 2002 that stated clearly there was no stockpile of any kind of WMD in Iraq.
"This intelligence was ignored and later misused."
The letter said CIA officers learned later that month Iraq had no contact with Osama bin Laden and that then-President Saddam Hussein considered the al Qaeda leader to be an enemy. Still, Tenet "went before Congress in February 2003 and testified that Iraq did indeed have links to al Qaeda.
"You showed a lack of leadership and courage in January of 2003 as the Bush administration pushed and cajoled analysts and managers to let them make the bogus claim that Iraq was on the verge of getting its hands on uranium.
"You signed off on Colin Powell's presentation to the United Nations. And, at his insistence, you sat behind him and visibly squandered CIA's most precious asset - credibility."
The letter described Tenet as "one of the bullies."
"You helped set the bar very low for reporting that supported favored White House positions, while raising the bar astronomically high when it came to raw intelligence that did not support the case for war being hawked by the president and vice president.
"It now turns out that you were the Alberto Gonzales of the intelligence community -- a grotesque mixture of incompetence and sycophancy shielded by a genial personality."
The letter said Tenet's failure to resist pressures from Cheney and then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld helped build public support for a war that has cost more than 3,000 American lives and many times that among Iraqis.
"You betrayed the CIA officers who collected the intelligence that made it clear that Saddam did not pose an imminent threat. You betrayed the analysts who tried to withstand the pressure applied by Cheney and Rumsfeld.
"Most importantly and tragically, you failed to meet your obligations to the people of the United States."
Tenet's memoir, to be published Monday, covers his tenure as director from July 1997 to July 2004.
In an interview to air Sunday on CBS News' "60 Minutes," Tenet expressed outrage that senior officials including Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice have used his "slam dunk" reference in discussing Bush's decision to go to war in Iraq over its weapons of mass destruction, which turned out not to exist. (Read full story)
"They never let it go. I mean, I became campaign talk. I was a talking point. 'Look at the idiot who told us and we decided to go to war.' Well, let's not be so disingenuous ... Let's everybody just get up and tell the truth.
Tell the American people what really happened."
As the six former CIA officers explain in their letter (below), former CIA Director George Tenet has a hell of a lot of nerve to whimper that he was used by the president and vice president to sell their war - HE was in a position TO DO SOMETHING MEANINGFUL to derail or at least slow down the rush to war - like RESIGN from his office in protest.
Mr. Tenet is a PROFILE IN DERELICTION OF DUTY to the American people to provide unbiased, unhyped intelligence at a crucial time in America's history, just as every day the MEDIA WHORES are PROFILES IN COWARDICE and DERELICTION OF DUTY for FAILING to ask the hard and obvious questions.
Clearly, the media whores long for the good old days of the Clinton administration, when they could serve up "LINCOLN BEDROOM SCANDAL!" as a national crisis, with no more effort or risk than waiting like bunny rabbits for the latest GOP talking points.
-----------------------------------------------------------
Former CIA Officers: Ex-CIA chief Tenet a 'failed' leader
April 29, 2007
http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/04/29/tenet.letter/index.html
(CNN) -- In a letter written Saturday to former CIA Director George Tenet, six former CIA officers described their former boss as "the Alberto Gonzales of the intelligence community," and called his book "an admission of failed leadership."
The writers said Tenet has "a moral obligation" to return the Medal of Freedom he received from President Bush.
They also called on him to give more than half the royalties he gets from book, "At the Center of the Storm," to U.S. soldiers wounded in Iraq and families of the dead. (Watch Sec. of State Condoleezza Rice talk about Tenet's book)
The letter, signed by Phil Giraldi, Ray McGovern, Larry Johnson, Jim Marcinkowski, Vince Cannistraro and David MacMichael, said Tenet should have resigned in protest rather than take part in the administration's buildup to the war. (Read the full letter)
Johnson is a former CIA intelligence official and registered Republican who voted for Bush in 2000. McGovern is a former CIA analyst.
Cannistraro is former head of the CIA's counterterrorism division and was head of intelligence for the National Security Council in the late 1980s.
The writers said they agree that Bush administration officials took the nation to war "for flimsy reasons," and that it has proved "ill-advised and wrong-headed."
But, they added, "your lament that you are a victim in a process you helped direct is self-serving, misleading and, as head of the intelligence community, an admission of failed leadership.
"You were not a victim. You were a willing participant in a poorly considered policy to start an unnecessary war and you share culpability with Dick Cheney and George Bush for the debacle in Iraq."
Tenet's 'lack of courage'
The writers accused Tenet of having helped send "very mixed signals" to Americans and their legislators prior to the war.
"CIA field operatives produced solid intelligence in September 2002 that stated clearly there was no stockpile of any kind of WMD in Iraq.
"This intelligence was ignored and later misused."
The letter said CIA officers learned later that month Iraq had no contact with Osama bin Laden and that then-President Saddam Hussein considered the al Qaeda leader to be an enemy. Still, Tenet "went before Congress in February 2003 and testified that Iraq did indeed have links to al Qaeda.
"You showed a lack of leadership and courage in January of 2003 as the Bush administration pushed and cajoled analysts and managers to let them make the bogus claim that Iraq was on the verge of getting its hands on uranium.
"You signed off on Colin Powell's presentation to the United Nations. And, at his insistence, you sat behind him and visibly squandered CIA's most precious asset - credibility."
The letter described Tenet as "one of the bullies."
"You helped set the bar very low for reporting that supported favored White House positions, while raising the bar astronomically high when it came to raw intelligence that did not support the case for war being hawked by the president and vice president.
"It now turns out that you were the Alberto Gonzales of the intelligence community -- a grotesque mixture of incompetence and sycophancy shielded by a genial personality."
The letter said Tenet's failure to resist pressures from Cheney and then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld helped build public support for a war that has cost more than 3,000 American lives and many times that among Iraqis.
"You betrayed the CIA officers who collected the intelligence that made it clear that Saddam did not pose an imminent threat. You betrayed the analysts who tried to withstand the pressure applied by Cheney and Rumsfeld.
"Most importantly and tragically, you failed to meet your obligations to the people of the United States."
Tenet's memoir, to be published Monday, covers his tenure as director from July 1997 to July 2004.
In an interview to air Sunday on CBS News' "60 Minutes," Tenet expressed outrage that senior officials including Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice have used his "slam dunk" reference in discussing Bush's decision to go to war in Iraq over its weapons of mass destruction, which turned out not to exist. (Read full story)
"They never let it go. I mean, I became campaign talk. I was a talking point. 'Look at the idiot who told us and we decided to go to war.' Well, let's not be so disingenuous ... Let's everybody just get up and tell the truth.
Tell the American people what really happened."
Friday, April 27, 2007
Exxon-Mobile profits, GAS PRICES UP - DESPITE LOWER PRICES for crude oil & natural gas!
Here is the "majory corporate media" in all of its glory: We American consumers are led to believe that the reason gas prices at the pumps ARE RISING every year at this time - the late spring and early summer months - is because of higher crude oil and natural gas prices. Needless to say, the "major media" is happy to trumpet "HIGHER PROFITS!" but gives NO journalistic inquiry as to why gas prices are up and over $3.00 per gallon when crude oil prices are lower.
_________________________________________________
Exxon Mobil 1Q profit up 10 percent
By John Porretto, AP Business Writer
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070427/ap_on_bi_ge/earns_oil;_ylt=Aq6rCfPz9uUc4lsjtagbYlPMWM0F
NEW YORK - Oil giant Exxon Mobil Corp. kicked off 2007 with a 10 percent rise in profits, its best-ever first quarter, as higher margins on refining and chemical operations offset lower prices for crude oil and natural gas.
Exxon Mobil, the world's largest publicly traded oil company, said Thursday it earned $9.3 billion in the January-March period, beating Wall Street expectations, even as revenue slipped and fell well short of analysts' forecasts.
_________________________________________________
Exxon Mobil 1Q profit up 10 percent
By John Porretto, AP Business Writer
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070427/ap_on_bi_ge/earns_oil;_ylt=Aq6rCfPz9uUc4lsjtagbYlPMWM0F
NEW YORK - Oil giant Exxon Mobil Corp. kicked off 2007 with a 10 percent rise in profits, its best-ever first quarter, as higher margins on refining and chemical operations offset lower prices for crude oil and natural gas.
Exxon Mobil, the world's largest publicly traded oil company, said Thursday it earned $9.3 billion in the January-March period, beating Wall Street expectations, even as revenue slipped and fell well short of analysts' forecasts.
Thursday, April 26, 2007
Another lying slime-ball at the Washington Post: Dean of DC scumbags David Broder...
David Broder is the DEAN of Washington DC whore media pundits. He may not be quite as whiny or despotic as fellow Post whore GEORGE WILL, but then Broder is all the more egregious for pretending that he is less partisan, less right-leaning, than Will.. who has an overtly right-wing CONCENTRATION OF WEALTH AND POWER, "whip-and-flog the peons for daring to presume they live in a democracy" agenda.
Which is exactly what is so despicable about Dave Broder - he, like the other DC pundits, joined in cluck-clucking about the "WHITE HOUSE TRASHING SCANDAL!" - WITHOUT DOING ANY RESEARCH TO CONFIRM that there was any substance to his own paper's screaming headlines.
Which is to say, DAVID BRODER IS A PAID, PROFESSIONAL LIAR, for well over 6 years, and counting. Here former Clinton White House official Paul Begala lays out a slightly more objective discussion of Broder's reading off the Fox 'news'/Karl Rove fax-machine talking points.
==========================
David Broder Is a Gasbag
by Paul Begala
April 26, 2007
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/paul-begala/david-broder-is-a-gasbag_b_46923.html
One of the few regrets I have in life is that I allowed Ann Devroy of the Washington Post to talk me into apologizing for calling David Broder "a gasbag" in 1995. My admiration for Devroy trumped my contempt for Broder. Ann, sadly, is gone, but Broder remains. She was everything Broder is not: fearless, intellectually honest, scrupulously fair, and suspicious of power.
Broder, of course, is a gasbag. The Hindenburg of pundits. But my respect for Ann knew no bounds, and she thought I was being unfair. In retrospect I was being unfair. To gasbags.
Mr. Broder has been foaming at the mouth these days. A man generally given to soporific prose, Broder has been downright venomous lately. And what has put the Benzedrine in Mr. Broder's Ovaltine? Not the fact that President Bush continues to lie about "progress" in the war in Iraq. Or that Dick Cheney continues to lie about pre-invasion links between al Qaeda and Iraq. Or that the Bush Administration has neglected our wounded warriors, ignored the victims of Katrina, potentially obstructed justice by firing US Attorneys who were pursuing GOP wrongdoing. Not even that the Bush Administration lied to the families of Pat Tillman and Jessica Lynch, cynically using their blood to distract from their own incompetence and dishonesty.
No, none of this raises Dean Broder's hackles.
He reserves his vitriol for Harry Reid.
Why Reid? Because Reid has been one of the few politicians with the courage to speak the plain, unvarnished truth to power, and the hallmark of Mr. Broder's career has been to suck up to power. Reid calls Bush a liar. Broder can't handle the truth.
In a radio interview Monday, Broder blasted Reid, calling him "bumbling," saying he's an embarrassment, and breaking the news that, "at some point down the road the Democrats are gonna have to have a little caucus and decide how much further they want to carry Harry Reid."
Really? And on what did the self-styled dean of the Washington press corps, base this bombshell? Nothing. Zip. Zilch. Nada. Broder just made it up. That's not journalism, it's bloviating - aka Broderizing. In fact, real reporters on Capitol Hill chased down the Broder charge, actually interviewing Democratic senators and their staffs. They found universal support for Reid.
Lord knows we're all capable of making fools of ourselves on the radio, so when Broder let loose this screamer I bit my tongue. But now he's taken quill in hand and committed his rant against Reid to paper. In his column today, Broder actually tries to equate Reid's courageous truth-telling with Alberto Gonzales's inartful mendacity. In an unfortunate bit of timing for Mr. Broder, his attack on Reid comes on the same day the Wall Street Journal-NBC News poll says the American people agree with Reid on the war. 55% of Americans believe victory in Iraq isn't possible. Reid is right. Bush-Broder are wrong.
And so Mr. Broder lashes out at Reid, smearing and sneering at the man he calls "the leading light of Searchlight, Nev."
Mr. Broder has moved with ease from the elite comfort of the University of Chicago to the smug confines of Arlington, Virginia. And so he looks down at a man who rose from among the hard-rock miners and hard-luck hookers of Searchlight, Nevada to be the most consequential senator of his time. While David Broder was thinking great thoughts at his elite university, Harry Reid was working his way through Utah State. While David Broder was pontificating, Harry Reid was working his way through law school as a cop on Capitol Hill.
His arrogant, elitist, condescending attack on Reid is just the latest Broderian baloney. As Eric Alterman points out in What Liberal Media? "Back in 1968 [Broder] felt the anti-war activities of the likes of Robert Kennedy and Gene McCarthy were 'degrading...to those involved.'" Prof. Alterman further notes that Broder "frequently dressed down" the critics of Ronald Reagan as "quick-lipped liberals" who "pop off in opposition."
Broder heaped scorn on President Clinton, telling Sally Quinn, "He came in here and he trashed the place. And it's not his place." In Broder's mind Washington is Broder's place. The Establishment's place. And the man from Hope with a heart as big as Texas just didn't know his place. Hysterically, he said Clinton's marital infidelity was worse than Watergate.
But at the end of a career of sucking up to warmongers and Republicans, Mr. Broder has found his true hero in George W. Bush. Where others see a mush-mouthed semi-literate, Broder sees FDR: "As a counterpuncher to criticism and as a doubt-free exponent of his own beliefs, the current president is right up there with the inventor of the New Deal."
While others were shocked at Bush's callous disregard for the lives of his fellow Americans during Hurricane Katrina, Broder wrote Katrina, "opens new opportunities for [Bush] to regain his standing with the public." (Or at least those members of the public who did not drown due to Bush's incompetence and inaction.)
In February of this year, when the Bush collapse was evident for all to see, the visionary Mr. Broder saw something else. "President Bush is poised for a political comeback," he wrote.
When asked recently if Bush was the worst President in history - a view shared by many eminent historians, including Sean Wilentz of Princeton, Broder replied, "I would not venture at this point whether President Bush will leave the country in better or worse shape than he found it. Internationally, the U.S. suffered setbacks during the Carter administration...." Jimmy Carter, of course, started no wars, invaded no countries, and got our hostages out of Iran alive. But this winner of the Nobel Peace Prize is compared to George W. Bush.
Perhaps Broder's bed-wetting tantrum against Reid was spurred by the certain knowledge that while Harry Reid has been telling hard truths, Mr. Broder has been falling hard for transparent lies.
Whereas Reid called for Donald Rumsfeld's dismissal long ago, Broder vouched for Rummy, writing, "Overall, Rumsfeld left me with the impression that he is aware of the risks of war with Iraq, but confident they can be handled."
While Reid has called for investigations into allegations Karl Rove broke the law, Broder vouches for Rove: "Let me disclose my own bias in this matter. I like Karl Rove.... I have eaten quail at his table and admired the splendid Hill Country landscape from the porch of [Rove's] historic cabin...." Mighty cozy in Karl's cabin, isn't it, Mr. Broder?
I doubt very seriously that Harry Reid is bothered by Broder's comments. Reid has faced down Vegas mobsters who planted a bomb in his family car. He's unlikely to be intimidated by George W. Bush's housebroken lap-dog.
My guess is that Give 'Em Hell Harry is going to keep telling them the truth, and Mr. Broder is going to keep thinking it's hell. As George Orwell said, "In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act."
Which is exactly what is so despicable about Dave Broder - he, like the other DC pundits, joined in cluck-clucking about the "WHITE HOUSE TRASHING SCANDAL!" - WITHOUT DOING ANY RESEARCH TO CONFIRM that there was any substance to his own paper's screaming headlines.
Which is to say, DAVID BRODER IS A PAID, PROFESSIONAL LIAR, for well over 6 years, and counting. Here former Clinton White House official Paul Begala lays out a slightly more objective discussion of Broder's reading off the Fox 'news'/Karl Rove fax-machine talking points.
==========================
David Broder Is a Gasbag
by Paul Begala
April 26, 2007
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/paul-begala/david-broder-is-a-gasbag_b_46923.html
One of the few regrets I have in life is that I allowed Ann Devroy of the Washington Post to talk me into apologizing for calling David Broder "a gasbag" in 1995. My admiration for Devroy trumped my contempt for Broder. Ann, sadly, is gone, but Broder remains. She was everything Broder is not: fearless, intellectually honest, scrupulously fair, and suspicious of power.
Broder, of course, is a gasbag. The Hindenburg of pundits. But my respect for Ann knew no bounds, and she thought I was being unfair. In retrospect I was being unfair. To gasbags.
Mr. Broder has been foaming at the mouth these days. A man generally given to soporific prose, Broder has been downright venomous lately. And what has put the Benzedrine in Mr. Broder's Ovaltine? Not the fact that President Bush continues to lie about "progress" in the war in Iraq. Or that Dick Cheney continues to lie about pre-invasion links between al Qaeda and Iraq. Or that the Bush Administration has neglected our wounded warriors, ignored the victims of Katrina, potentially obstructed justice by firing US Attorneys who were pursuing GOP wrongdoing. Not even that the Bush Administration lied to the families of Pat Tillman and Jessica Lynch, cynically using their blood to distract from their own incompetence and dishonesty.
No, none of this raises Dean Broder's hackles.
He reserves his vitriol for Harry Reid.
Why Reid? Because Reid has been one of the few politicians with the courage to speak the plain, unvarnished truth to power, and the hallmark of Mr. Broder's career has been to suck up to power. Reid calls Bush a liar. Broder can't handle the truth.
In a radio interview Monday, Broder blasted Reid, calling him "bumbling," saying he's an embarrassment, and breaking the news that, "at some point down the road the Democrats are gonna have to have a little caucus and decide how much further they want to carry Harry Reid."
Really? And on what did the self-styled dean of the Washington press corps, base this bombshell? Nothing. Zip. Zilch. Nada. Broder just made it up. That's not journalism, it's bloviating - aka Broderizing. In fact, real reporters on Capitol Hill chased down the Broder charge, actually interviewing Democratic senators and their staffs. They found universal support for Reid.
Lord knows we're all capable of making fools of ourselves on the radio, so when Broder let loose this screamer I bit my tongue. But now he's taken quill in hand and committed his rant against Reid to paper. In his column today, Broder actually tries to equate Reid's courageous truth-telling with Alberto Gonzales's inartful mendacity. In an unfortunate bit of timing for Mr. Broder, his attack on Reid comes on the same day the Wall Street Journal-NBC News poll says the American people agree with Reid on the war. 55% of Americans believe victory in Iraq isn't possible. Reid is right. Bush-Broder are wrong.
And so Mr. Broder lashes out at Reid, smearing and sneering at the man he calls "the leading light of Searchlight, Nev."
Mr. Broder has moved with ease from the elite comfort of the University of Chicago to the smug confines of Arlington, Virginia. And so he looks down at a man who rose from among the hard-rock miners and hard-luck hookers of Searchlight, Nevada to be the most consequential senator of his time. While David Broder was thinking great thoughts at his elite university, Harry Reid was working his way through Utah State. While David Broder was pontificating, Harry Reid was working his way through law school as a cop on Capitol Hill.
His arrogant, elitist, condescending attack on Reid is just the latest Broderian baloney. As Eric Alterman points out in What Liberal Media? "Back in 1968 [Broder] felt the anti-war activities of the likes of Robert Kennedy and Gene McCarthy were 'degrading...to those involved.'" Prof. Alterman further notes that Broder "frequently dressed down" the critics of Ronald Reagan as "quick-lipped liberals" who "pop off in opposition."
Broder heaped scorn on President Clinton, telling Sally Quinn, "He came in here and he trashed the place. And it's not his place." In Broder's mind Washington is Broder's place. The Establishment's place. And the man from Hope with a heart as big as Texas just didn't know his place. Hysterically, he said Clinton's marital infidelity was worse than Watergate.
But at the end of a career of sucking up to warmongers and Republicans, Mr. Broder has found his true hero in George W. Bush. Where others see a mush-mouthed semi-literate, Broder sees FDR: "As a counterpuncher to criticism and as a doubt-free exponent of his own beliefs, the current president is right up there with the inventor of the New Deal."
While others were shocked at Bush's callous disregard for the lives of his fellow Americans during Hurricane Katrina, Broder wrote Katrina, "opens new opportunities for [Bush] to regain his standing with the public." (Or at least those members of the public who did not drown due to Bush's incompetence and inaction.)
In February of this year, when the Bush collapse was evident for all to see, the visionary Mr. Broder saw something else. "President Bush is poised for a political comeback," he wrote.
When asked recently if Bush was the worst President in history - a view shared by many eminent historians, including Sean Wilentz of Princeton, Broder replied, "I would not venture at this point whether President Bush will leave the country in better or worse shape than he found it. Internationally, the U.S. suffered setbacks during the Carter administration...." Jimmy Carter, of course, started no wars, invaded no countries, and got our hostages out of Iran alive. But this winner of the Nobel Peace Prize is compared to George W. Bush.
Perhaps Broder's bed-wetting tantrum against Reid was spurred by the certain knowledge that while Harry Reid has been telling hard truths, Mr. Broder has been falling hard for transparent lies.
Whereas Reid called for Donald Rumsfeld's dismissal long ago, Broder vouched for Rummy, writing, "Overall, Rumsfeld left me with the impression that he is aware of the risks of war with Iraq, but confident they can be handled."
While Reid has called for investigations into allegations Karl Rove broke the law, Broder vouches for Rove: "Let me disclose my own bias in this matter. I like Karl Rove.... I have eaten quail at his table and admired the splendid Hill Country landscape from the porch of [Rove's] historic cabin...." Mighty cozy in Karl's cabin, isn't it, Mr. Broder?
I doubt very seriously that Harry Reid is bothered by Broder's comments. Reid has faced down Vegas mobsters who planted a bomb in his family car. He's unlikely to be intimidated by George W. Bush's housebroken lap-dog.
My guess is that Give 'Em Hell Harry is going to keep telling them the truth, and Mr. Broder is going to keep thinking it's hell. As George Orwell said, "In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act."
Wednesday, April 25, 2007
Media whores cower in their million-dollar penthouses, as US troops pay the price for their LIES, incompetence, and rah-rah-for-war propaganda....
Media whores Tom Friedman, Bill Kristol, Roger Ailes, Charles Krauthammer, Judith Miller, and William Safire all had a chance to appear in Bill Moyer's documentary of the media's role in transmitting and amplifying the Bush-Cheney administration's "LIES-TO-WAR," but they all refused - cowering behind their multi-million dollar NYC and Washington, DC penthouse apartments, paid for in the currency of big media lies and administration sanctioned big business propaganda.
==========================================
'Devastating' Bill Moyers Probe of Press and Iraq Coming This Week
By Greg Mitchell
Published: April 21, 2007
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003574260
NEW YORK The most powerful indictment of the news media for falling down in its duties in the run-up to the war in Iraq will appear on April 25, a 90-minute PBS broadcast called "Buying the War," which marks the return of "Bill Moyers Journal." E&P was sent a preview DVD and a draft transcript for the program this week
While much of the evidence of the media's role as cheerleaders for the war presented here is not new, it is skillfully assembled, with many fresh quotes from interviews (with the likes of Tim Russert and Walter Pincus) along with numerous embarrassing examples of past statements by journalists and pundits that proved grossly misleading or wrong. Several prominent media figures, prodded by Moyers, admit the media failed miserably, though few take personal responsibility.
The war continues today, now in its fifth year, with the death toll for Americans and Iraqis rising again -- yet Moyers points out, "the press has yet to come to terms with its role in enabling the Bush Administration to go to war on false pretenses."
Among the few heroes of this devastating film are reporters with the Knight Ridder/McClatchy bureau in D.C. Tragically late, Walter Isaacson, who headed CNN, observes, "The people at Knight Ridder were calling the colonels and the lieutenants and the people in the CIA and finding out, you know, that the intelligence is not very good. We should've all been doing that."
At the close, Moyers mentions some of the chief proponents of the war who refused to speak to him for this program, including Thomas Friedman, Bill Kristol, Roger Ailes, Charles Krauthammer, Judith Miller, and William Safire.
But Dan Rather, the former CBS anchor, admits, "I don't think there is any excuse for, you know, my performance and the performance of the press in general in the roll up to the war…We didn't dig enough. And we shouldn't have been fooled in this way." Bob Simon, who had strong doubts about evidence for war, was asked by Moyers if he pushed any of the top brass at CBS to "dig deeper," and he replies, "No, in all honesty, with a thousand mea culpas….nope, I don't think we followed up on this."
Instead he covered the marketing of the war in a "softer" way, explaining to Moyers: "I think we all felt from the beginning that to deal with a subject as explosive as this, we should keep it, in a way, almost light – if that doesn't seem ridiculous."
Moyers replies: "Going to war, almost light."
Walter Isaacson is pushed hard by Moyers and finally admits, "We didn't question our sources enough." But why? Isaacson notes there was "almost a patriotism police" after 9/11 and when the network showed civilian casualties it would get phone calls from advertisers and the administration and "big people in corporations were calling up and saying, 'You're being anti-American here.'"
Moyers then mentions that Isaacson had sent a memo to staff, leaked to the Washington Post, in which he declared, "It seems perverse to focus too much on the casualties or hardship in Afghanistan" and ordered them to balance any such images with reminders of 9/11. Moyers also asserts that editors at the Panama City (Fla.) News-Herald received an order from above, "Do not use photos on Page 1A showing civilian casualties. Our sister paper has done so and received hundreds and hundreds of threatening emails."
Walter Pincus of the Washington Post explains that even at his paper reporters "do worry about sort of getting out ahead of something." But Moyers gives credit to Charles J. Hanley of The Associated Press for trying, in vain, to draw more attention to United Nations inspectors failing to find WMD in early 2003.
The disgraceful press reaction to Colin Powell's presentation at the United Nations seems like something out of Monty Python, with one key British report cited by Powell being nothing more than a student's thesis, downloaded from the Web -- with the student later threatening to charge U.S. officials with "plagiarism."
Phil Donahue recalls that he was told he could not feature war dissenters alone on his MSNBC talk show and always had to have "two conservatives for every liberal." Moyers resurrects a leaked NBC memo about Donahue's firing that claimed he "presents a difficult public face for NBC in a time of war. At the same time our competitors are waving the flag at every opportunity."
Moyers also throws some stats around: In the year before the invasion William Safire (who predicted a "quick war" with Iraqis cheering their liberators) wrote "a total of 27 opinion pieces fanning the sparks of war." The Washington Post carried at least 140 front-page stories in that same period making the administration's case for attack. In the six months leading to the invasion the Post would "editorialize in favor of the war at least 27 times."
Of the 414 Iraq stories broadcast on NBC, ABC and CBS nightly news in the six months before the war, almost all could be traced back to sources solely in the White House, Pentagon or State Dept., Moyers tells Russert, who offers no coherent reply.
The program closes on a sad note, with Moyers pointing out that "so many of the advocates and apologists for the war are still flourishing in the media." He then runs a pre-war clip of President Bush declaring, "We cannot wait for the final proof: the smoking gun that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud." Then he explains: "The man who came up with it was Michael Gerson, President Bush's top speechwriter.
"He has left the White House and has been hired by the Washington Post as a columnist."
***
Greg Mitchell recalls his appearance with Moyers in April 2003 during the U.S. invasion: "Moyers and Me"
A recent column on civilian casualties in Iraq: "Sorry We Shot Your Kid, But Here's $500"
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Greg Mitchell (gmitchell@editorandpublisher.com) is editor and author of seven books on politics and history, including two for Random House, "The Campaign of the Century" and "Tricky Dick and the Pink Lady."
==========================================
'Devastating' Bill Moyers Probe of Press and Iraq Coming This Week
By Greg Mitchell
Published: April 21, 2007
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003574260
NEW YORK The most powerful indictment of the news media for falling down in its duties in the run-up to the war in Iraq will appear on April 25, a 90-minute PBS broadcast called "Buying the War," which marks the return of "Bill Moyers Journal." E&P was sent a preview DVD and a draft transcript for the program this week
While much of the evidence of the media's role as cheerleaders for the war presented here is not new, it is skillfully assembled, with many fresh quotes from interviews (with the likes of Tim Russert and Walter Pincus) along with numerous embarrassing examples of past statements by journalists and pundits that proved grossly misleading or wrong. Several prominent media figures, prodded by Moyers, admit the media failed miserably, though few take personal responsibility.
The war continues today, now in its fifth year, with the death toll for Americans and Iraqis rising again -- yet Moyers points out, "the press has yet to come to terms with its role in enabling the Bush Administration to go to war on false pretenses."
Among the few heroes of this devastating film are reporters with the Knight Ridder/McClatchy bureau in D.C. Tragically late, Walter Isaacson, who headed CNN, observes, "The people at Knight Ridder were calling the colonels and the lieutenants and the people in the CIA and finding out, you know, that the intelligence is not very good. We should've all been doing that."
At the close, Moyers mentions some of the chief proponents of the war who refused to speak to him for this program, including Thomas Friedman, Bill Kristol, Roger Ailes, Charles Krauthammer, Judith Miller, and William Safire.
But Dan Rather, the former CBS anchor, admits, "I don't think there is any excuse for, you know, my performance and the performance of the press in general in the roll up to the war…We didn't dig enough. And we shouldn't have been fooled in this way." Bob Simon, who had strong doubts about evidence for war, was asked by Moyers if he pushed any of the top brass at CBS to "dig deeper," and he replies, "No, in all honesty, with a thousand mea culpas….nope, I don't think we followed up on this."
Instead he covered the marketing of the war in a "softer" way, explaining to Moyers: "I think we all felt from the beginning that to deal with a subject as explosive as this, we should keep it, in a way, almost light – if that doesn't seem ridiculous."
Moyers replies: "Going to war, almost light."
Walter Isaacson is pushed hard by Moyers and finally admits, "We didn't question our sources enough." But why? Isaacson notes there was "almost a patriotism police" after 9/11 and when the network showed civilian casualties it would get phone calls from advertisers and the administration and "big people in corporations were calling up and saying, 'You're being anti-American here.'"
Moyers then mentions that Isaacson had sent a memo to staff, leaked to the Washington Post, in which he declared, "It seems perverse to focus too much on the casualties or hardship in Afghanistan" and ordered them to balance any such images with reminders of 9/11. Moyers also asserts that editors at the Panama City (Fla.) News-Herald received an order from above, "Do not use photos on Page 1A showing civilian casualties. Our sister paper has done so and received hundreds and hundreds of threatening emails."
Walter Pincus of the Washington Post explains that even at his paper reporters "do worry about sort of getting out ahead of something." But Moyers gives credit to Charles J. Hanley of The Associated Press for trying, in vain, to draw more attention to United Nations inspectors failing to find WMD in early 2003.
The disgraceful press reaction to Colin Powell's presentation at the United Nations seems like something out of Monty Python, with one key British report cited by Powell being nothing more than a student's thesis, downloaded from the Web -- with the student later threatening to charge U.S. officials with "plagiarism."
Phil Donahue recalls that he was told he could not feature war dissenters alone on his MSNBC talk show and always had to have "two conservatives for every liberal." Moyers resurrects a leaked NBC memo about Donahue's firing that claimed he "presents a difficult public face for NBC in a time of war. At the same time our competitors are waving the flag at every opportunity."
Moyers also throws some stats around: In the year before the invasion William Safire (who predicted a "quick war" with Iraqis cheering their liberators) wrote "a total of 27 opinion pieces fanning the sparks of war." The Washington Post carried at least 140 front-page stories in that same period making the administration's case for attack. In the six months leading to the invasion the Post would "editorialize in favor of the war at least 27 times."
Of the 414 Iraq stories broadcast on NBC, ABC and CBS nightly news in the six months before the war, almost all could be traced back to sources solely in the White House, Pentagon or State Dept., Moyers tells Russert, who offers no coherent reply.
The program closes on a sad note, with Moyers pointing out that "so many of the advocates and apologists for the war are still flourishing in the media." He then runs a pre-war clip of President Bush declaring, "We cannot wait for the final proof: the smoking gun that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud." Then he explains: "The man who came up with it was Michael Gerson, President Bush's top speechwriter.
"He has left the White House and has been hired by the Washington Post as a columnist."
***
Greg Mitchell recalls his appearance with Moyers in April 2003 during the U.S. invasion: "Moyers and Me"
A recent column on civilian casualties in Iraq: "Sorry We Shot Your Kid, But Here's $500"
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Greg Mitchell (gmitchell@editorandpublisher.com) is editor and author of seven books on politics and history, including two for Random House, "The Campaign of the Century" and "Tricky Dick and the Pink Lady."
Tuesday, April 24, 2007
Fox 'news' no more than a PR organ of the Republican Party
As this screen-grab shows, the Republican National Senate Committee needs go no further than - Fox 'news' - to come up with campaign-friendly biographies and talking points for Republican Senators gearing up for election 2008.
FOX 'news' IS AN ORGANIZATION DEDICATED ENTIRELY to electing Republican candidates and maintaining Republican dominance of the US government - and not only do the Democrats have NO ANSWER to Fox 'news,' but the Democrats aren't even able to demand fairness or objectivity from the rest of the "major media" talk-shows and newscasts in covering life-and-death issues from the Iraq occupation to the abject corruption of FEMA, America's goverment disaster response agency that is treated by the Republican administration as a slush-fund dumping ground for party hacks and incompetent, unqualified, partisan officials.
---------------------------------------------------------------
National GOP Multimedia Web Page Is ... Entirely Fox 'News' Video Clips
By Eric Kleefeld
http://electioncentral.tpmcafe.com/blog/electioncentral/2007/apr/23/national_gop_multimedia_web_page_is_fox_news_video_clips
Great Moments In Fox News Dept. If there was any doubt left that Fox News is just a media organ of the Republican Party, then take a look at this screen capture of the National Republican Senatorial Committee's multimedia page. You might think the term "multimedia" would imply that it's a collection of stuff from various news organizations, plus in-house content from the NRSC. It turns out, though, that it's nothing but ... a collection of Fox News video clips. Every clip in the NRSC's "multimedia" section is from Fox:
Sunday, April 22, 2007
Frank Rich, NYT: Washington's "AMMORAL CULTURE" (and media whoring) have ENABLED the DECEIT of the Bush administration....
(note: Even the New York Times, like a broken clock, has to be right every so often. In this case, former "lifestyle" editor and writer FRANK RICH almost singlehandedly makes up for the serial and systematic lies of not just "the DC press corps," but of the New York Times as well, which in days gone by joined the Republican Party in making "LINCOLN BEDROOM!" and "White House TRASHING!" into synonyms for scandal - with NO 'there' THERE!) Would that the worst crisis facing America today were entirely FABRICATED, New York Times AMPLIFIED, fake scandals!
<< What's being lost in the Beltway uproar [the latest media farces of Paul Wolfowitz'a crony corruption at the World Bank, and Alberton Gonzales' even more farcical servility at the Department of Justice] is the extent to which THE LYING, CRONYISM, and ARROGANCE showcased by the current scandals are of a piece with the LYING, CRONYISM, and ARROGANCE, that led to all the military funerals that Mr. Bush dares not attend. Having slept through the fraudulent selling of the war, WASHINGTON [i.e. THE MAJOR MEDIA/press whores] is [/are] still having trouble confronting the big picture of the Bush White House. Its dense web of DECEIT is the deliberate product of its AMMORAL CULTURE, not a haphazard potpourri of individual blunders. >>
==============================================
Frank Rich looks at the problems that await the Bush Cabal as their little Neo-Con fantasy world slowly melts down.
--The New York Times, April 22, 2007
President Bush has skipped the funerals of the troops he sent to Iraq. He took his sweet time to get to Katrina-devastated New Orleans. But last week he raced to Virginia Tech with an alacrity not seen since he hustled from Crawford to Washington to sign a bill interfering in Terri Schiavo's end-of-life medical care. Mr. Bush assumes the role of mourner in chief on a selective basis, and, as usual with the decider, the decisive factor is politics. Let Walter Reed erupt in scandal, and he'll take six weeks to show his face - and on a Friday at that, to hide the story in the Saturday papers. The heinous slaughter in Blacksburg, Va., by contrast, was a rare opportunity for him to ostentatiously feel the pain of families whose suffering cannot be blamed on the administration.
But he couldn't inspire the kind of public acclaim that followed his post-9/11 visit to ground zero or the political comeback that buoyed his predecessor after Oklahoma City. The cancer on the Bush White House, Iraq, is now spreading too fast. The president had barely returned to Washington when the empty hope of the "surge" was hideously mocked by a one-day Baghdad civilian death toll more than five times that of Blacksburg's. McClatchy Newspapers reported that the death rate for American troops over the past six months was at its all-time high for this war.
At home, the president is also hobbled by the Iraq cancer's metastasis - the twin implosions of Alberto Gonzales and Paul Wolfowitz. Technically, both men have been pilloried for sins unrelated to the war. The attorney general has repeatedly been caught changing his story about the extent of his involvement in purging eight federal prosecutors. The Financial Times caught the former deputy secretary of defense turned World Bank president privately dictating the extravagant terms of a State Department sinecure for a crony (a k a romantic partner) that showers her with more take-home pay than Condoleezza Rice.
Yet each man's latest infractions, however serious, are mere misdemeanors next to their roles in the Iraq war. What's being lost in the Beltway uproar is the extent to which the lying, cronyism and arrogance showcased by the current scandals are of a piece with the lying, cronyism and arrogance that led to all the military funerals that Mr. Bush dares not attend. Having slept through the fraudulent selling of the war, Washington is still having trouble confronting the big picture of the Bush White House. Its dense web of deceit is the deliberate product of its amoral culture, not a haphazard potpourri of individual blunders.
Mr. Gonzales's politicizing of the Justice Department is a mere bagatelle next to his role as White House counsel in 2002, when he helped shape the administration's legal argument to justify torture. That paved the way for Abu Ghraib, the episode that destroyed America's image and gave terrorists a moral victory. But his efforts to sabotage national security didn't end there. In a front-page exposé lost in the Imus avalanche two Sundays ago, The Washington Post uncovered Mr. Gonzales's reckless role in vetting the nomination of Bernard Kerik as secretary of homeland security in December 2004.
Mr. Kerik, you may recall, withdrew from consideration for that cabinet post after a week of embarrassing headlines. Back then, the White House ducked any culpability for the mess by attributing it to a single legal issue, a supposedly undocumented nanny, and by pinning it on a single, nonadministration scapegoat, Mr. Kerik's longtime patron, Rudy Giuliani. The president's spokesman at the time, Scott McClellan, told reporters that the White House had had "no reason to believe" that Mr. Kerik lied during his vetting process and that it would be inaccurate to say that process had been rushed.
Thanks to John Solomon and Peter Baker of The Post, we now know that Mr. McClellan's spin was no more accurate than his exoneration of Karl Rove and Scooter Libby in the Wilson leak case. The Kerik vetting process was indeed rushed - by Mr. Gonzales - and the administration had every reason to believe that it was turning over homeland security to a liar. Mr. Gonzales was privy from the get-go to a Kerik dossier ablaze with red flags pointing to "questionable financial deals, an ethics violation, allegations of mismanagement and a top deputy prosecuted for corruption," not to mention a "friendship with a businessman who was linked to organized crime." Yet Mr. Gonzales and the president persisted in shoving Mr. Kerik into the top job of an already troubled federal department encompassing 22 agencies, 180,000 employees and the very safety of America in the post-9/11 era.
Mr. Kerik may soon face federal charges, and at a most inopportune time for the Giuliani presidential campaign. But it's as a paradigm of the Bush White House's waging of the Iraq war that the Kerik case is most telling. The crucial point to remember is this: Even had there been no alleged improprieties in the former police chief's New York résumé, there still would have been his public record in Iraq to disqualify him from any administration job.
The year before Mr. Kerik's nomination to the cabinet, he was dispatched by the president to take charge of training the Iraqi police - and completely failed at that mission. As Rajiv Chandrasekaran recounts in his invaluable chronicle of Green Zone shenanigans, "Imperial Life in the Emerald City," Mr. Kerik slept all day and held only two staff meetings, one upon arrival and one for the benefit of a Times reporter doing a profile. Rather than train Iraqi police, Mr. Kerik gave upbeat McCain-esque appraisals of the dandy shopping in Baghdad's markets.
Had Mr. Kerik actually helped stand up an Iraqi police force instead of hastening its descent into a haven for sectarian death squads, there might not now be extended tours for American troops in an open-ended escalation of the war. But in the White House's priorities, rebuilding Iraq came in a poor third to cronyism and domestic politics. Mr. Kerik's P.R. usefulness as a symbol of 9/11 was particularly irresistible to an administration that has exploited the carnage of 9/11 in ways both grandiose (to gin up the Iraq invasion) and tacky (in 2004 campaign ads).
Mr. Kerik was an exploiter of 9/11 in his own right: he had commandeered an apartment assigned to ground zero police and rescue workers to carry out his extramarital tryst with the publisher Judith Regan. The sex angle of Mr. Wolfowitz's scandal is a comparable symptom of the hubris that warped the judgment of those in power after 9/11. Not only did he help secure Shaha Riza her over-the-top raise in 2005, but as The Times reported, he also helped get her a junket to Iraq when he was riding high at the Pentagon in 2003. No one seems to know what she actually accomplished there, but the bill was paid by a Defense Department contractor that has since come under official scrutiny for its noncompetitive contracts and poor performance. So it went with the entire Iraq fiasco.
You don't have to be a cynic to ask if the White House's practice of bestowing better jobs on those who bungled the war might be a form of hush money. Mr. Wolfowitz was promoted to the World Bank despite a Pentagon record that included (in part) his prewar hyping of bogus intelligence about W.M.D. and a nonexistent 9/11-Saddam connection; his assurance to the world that Iraq's oil revenues would pay for reconstruction; and his public humiliation of Gen. Eric Shinseki after the general dared tell Congress (correctly) that several hundred thousand troops would be needed to secure Iraq after the invasion. Once the war began, Mr. Wolfowitz cited national security to bar businesses from noncoalition countries (like Germany) from competing for major contracts in Iraq. That helped ensure the disastrous monopoly of Halliburton and other White House-connected companies, including the one that employed Ms. Riza.
Had Iraqi reconstruction, like the training of Iraqi police, not been betrayed by politics and cronyism, the Iraq story might have a different ending. But maybe not all that different. The cancer on the Bush White House connects and contaminates all its organs. It's no surprise that one United States attorney fired without plausible cause by the Gonzales Justice Department, Carol Lam, was in hot pursuit of defense contractors with administration connections. Or that another crony brought by Mr. Wolfowitz to the World Bank was caught asking the Air Force secretary to secure a job for her brother at a defense contractor while she was overseeing aspects of the Air Force budget at the White House. A government with values this sleazy couldn't possibly win a war.
Like the C.I.A. leak case, each new scandal is filling in a different piece of the elaborate White House scheme to cover up the lies that took us into Iraq and the failures that keep us mired there. As the cover-up unravels and Congress steps up its confrontation over the war's endgame, our desperate president is reverting to his old fear-mongering habit of invoking 9/11 incessantly in every speech. The more we learn, the more it's clear that he's the one with reason to be afraid.
<< What's being lost in the Beltway uproar [the latest media farces of Paul Wolfowitz'a crony corruption at the World Bank, and Alberton Gonzales' even more farcical servility at the Department of Justice] is the extent to which THE LYING, CRONYISM, and ARROGANCE showcased by the current scandals are of a piece with the LYING, CRONYISM, and ARROGANCE, that led to all the military funerals that Mr. Bush dares not attend. Having slept through the fraudulent selling of the war, WASHINGTON [i.e. THE MAJOR MEDIA/press whores] is [/are] still having trouble confronting the big picture of the Bush White House. Its dense web of DECEIT is the deliberate product of its AMMORAL CULTURE, not a haphazard potpourri of individual blunders. >>
==============================================
Frank Rich looks at the problems that await the Bush Cabal as their little Neo-Con fantasy world slowly melts down.
--The New York Times, April 22, 2007
President Bush has skipped the funerals of the troops he sent to Iraq. He took his sweet time to get to Katrina-devastated New Orleans. But last week he raced to Virginia Tech with an alacrity not seen since he hustled from Crawford to Washington to sign a bill interfering in Terri Schiavo's end-of-life medical care. Mr. Bush assumes the role of mourner in chief on a selective basis, and, as usual with the decider, the decisive factor is politics. Let Walter Reed erupt in scandal, and he'll take six weeks to show his face - and on a Friday at that, to hide the story in the Saturday papers. The heinous slaughter in Blacksburg, Va., by contrast, was a rare opportunity for him to ostentatiously feel the pain of families whose suffering cannot be blamed on the administration.
But he couldn't inspire the kind of public acclaim that followed his post-9/11 visit to ground zero or the political comeback that buoyed his predecessor after Oklahoma City. The cancer on the Bush White House, Iraq, is now spreading too fast. The president had barely returned to Washington when the empty hope of the "surge" was hideously mocked by a one-day Baghdad civilian death toll more than five times that of Blacksburg's. McClatchy Newspapers reported that the death rate for American troops over the past six months was at its all-time high for this war.
At home, the president is also hobbled by the Iraq cancer's metastasis - the twin implosions of Alberto Gonzales and Paul Wolfowitz. Technically, both men have been pilloried for sins unrelated to the war. The attorney general has repeatedly been caught changing his story about the extent of his involvement in purging eight federal prosecutors. The Financial Times caught the former deputy secretary of defense turned World Bank president privately dictating the extravagant terms of a State Department sinecure for a crony (a k a romantic partner) that showers her with more take-home pay than Condoleezza Rice.
Yet each man's latest infractions, however serious, are mere misdemeanors next to their roles in the Iraq war. What's being lost in the Beltway uproar is the extent to which the lying, cronyism and arrogance showcased by the current scandals are of a piece with the lying, cronyism and arrogance that led to all the military funerals that Mr. Bush dares not attend. Having slept through the fraudulent selling of the war, Washington is still having trouble confronting the big picture of the Bush White House. Its dense web of deceit is the deliberate product of its amoral culture, not a haphazard potpourri of individual blunders.
Mr. Gonzales's politicizing of the Justice Department is a mere bagatelle next to his role as White House counsel in 2002, when he helped shape the administration's legal argument to justify torture. That paved the way for Abu Ghraib, the episode that destroyed America's image and gave terrorists a moral victory. But his efforts to sabotage national security didn't end there. In a front-page exposé lost in the Imus avalanche two Sundays ago, The Washington Post uncovered Mr. Gonzales's reckless role in vetting the nomination of Bernard Kerik as secretary of homeland security in December 2004.
Mr. Kerik, you may recall, withdrew from consideration for that cabinet post after a week of embarrassing headlines. Back then, the White House ducked any culpability for the mess by attributing it to a single legal issue, a supposedly undocumented nanny, and by pinning it on a single, nonadministration scapegoat, Mr. Kerik's longtime patron, Rudy Giuliani. The president's spokesman at the time, Scott McClellan, told reporters that the White House had had "no reason to believe" that Mr. Kerik lied during his vetting process and that it would be inaccurate to say that process had been rushed.
Thanks to John Solomon and Peter Baker of The Post, we now know that Mr. McClellan's spin was no more accurate than his exoneration of Karl Rove and Scooter Libby in the Wilson leak case. The Kerik vetting process was indeed rushed - by Mr. Gonzales - and the administration had every reason to believe that it was turning over homeland security to a liar. Mr. Gonzales was privy from the get-go to a Kerik dossier ablaze with red flags pointing to "questionable financial deals, an ethics violation, allegations of mismanagement and a top deputy prosecuted for corruption," not to mention a "friendship with a businessman who was linked to organized crime." Yet Mr. Gonzales and the president persisted in shoving Mr. Kerik into the top job of an already troubled federal department encompassing 22 agencies, 180,000 employees and the very safety of America in the post-9/11 era.
Mr. Kerik may soon face federal charges, and at a most inopportune time for the Giuliani presidential campaign. But it's as a paradigm of the Bush White House's waging of the Iraq war that the Kerik case is most telling. The crucial point to remember is this: Even had there been no alleged improprieties in the former police chief's New York résumé, there still would have been his public record in Iraq to disqualify him from any administration job.
The year before Mr. Kerik's nomination to the cabinet, he was dispatched by the president to take charge of training the Iraqi police - and completely failed at that mission. As Rajiv Chandrasekaran recounts in his invaluable chronicle of Green Zone shenanigans, "Imperial Life in the Emerald City," Mr. Kerik slept all day and held only two staff meetings, one upon arrival and one for the benefit of a Times reporter doing a profile. Rather than train Iraqi police, Mr. Kerik gave upbeat McCain-esque appraisals of the dandy shopping in Baghdad's markets.
Had Mr. Kerik actually helped stand up an Iraqi police force instead of hastening its descent into a haven for sectarian death squads, there might not now be extended tours for American troops in an open-ended escalation of the war. But in the White House's priorities, rebuilding Iraq came in a poor third to cronyism and domestic politics. Mr. Kerik's P.R. usefulness as a symbol of 9/11 was particularly irresistible to an administration that has exploited the carnage of 9/11 in ways both grandiose (to gin up the Iraq invasion) and tacky (in 2004 campaign ads).
Mr. Kerik was an exploiter of 9/11 in his own right: he had commandeered an apartment assigned to ground zero police and rescue workers to carry out his extramarital tryst with the publisher Judith Regan. The sex angle of Mr. Wolfowitz's scandal is a comparable symptom of the hubris that warped the judgment of those in power after 9/11. Not only did he help secure Shaha Riza her over-the-top raise in 2005, but as The Times reported, he also helped get her a junket to Iraq when he was riding high at the Pentagon in 2003. No one seems to know what she actually accomplished there, but the bill was paid by a Defense Department contractor that has since come under official scrutiny for its noncompetitive contracts and poor performance. So it went with the entire Iraq fiasco.
You don't have to be a cynic to ask if the White House's practice of bestowing better jobs on those who bungled the war might be a form of hush money. Mr. Wolfowitz was promoted to the World Bank despite a Pentagon record that included (in part) his prewar hyping of bogus intelligence about W.M.D. and a nonexistent 9/11-Saddam connection; his assurance to the world that Iraq's oil revenues would pay for reconstruction; and his public humiliation of Gen. Eric Shinseki after the general dared tell Congress (correctly) that several hundred thousand troops would be needed to secure Iraq after the invasion. Once the war began, Mr. Wolfowitz cited national security to bar businesses from noncoalition countries (like Germany) from competing for major contracts in Iraq. That helped ensure the disastrous monopoly of Halliburton and other White House-connected companies, including the one that employed Ms. Riza.
Had Iraqi reconstruction, like the training of Iraqi police, not been betrayed by politics and cronyism, the Iraq story might have a different ending. But maybe not all that different. The cancer on the Bush White House connects and contaminates all its organs. It's no surprise that one United States attorney fired without plausible cause by the Gonzales Justice Department, Carol Lam, was in hot pursuit of defense contractors with administration connections. Or that another crony brought by Mr. Wolfowitz to the World Bank was caught asking the Air Force secretary to secure a job for her brother at a defense contractor while she was overseeing aspects of the Air Force budget at the White House. A government with values this sleazy couldn't possibly win a war.
Like the C.I.A. leak case, each new scandal is filling in a different piece of the elaborate White House scheme to cover up the lies that took us into Iraq and the failures that keep us mired there. As the cover-up unravels and Congress steps up its confrontation over the war's endgame, our desperate president is reverting to his old fear-mongering habit of invoking 9/11 incessantly in every speech. The more we learn, the more it's clear that he's the one with reason to be afraid.
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