The link is there but the MSM wants to suppress it. They wouldn’t be able to if the Bush people had a clue on how these reports should be handled. The biggest cause of this war’s unpopularity is the administration’s inability to justi…

Mr Obama’s entire campaign rests on his pre-war and pre-access to senate intel assesment that this war was not worth fighting. He cannot change his tune. He is fully invested in this storyline.

Actually I think moxie is saying that the left is trying to use a nearly 2 year old article to refute something from this week.

Precisely. It is clear to my way of thinking that the whole story has been already written, facts be damned.

Once large segments of our society have invested themselves in a storyline and it is unimaginable for them to rethink what they’ve already said.

It takes person of strong intellecual honesty (Eric Blair/George Orwell) to come around and refute previously held positions or positions which are not popular.

Orwell talked about the “pansy left.” And part of what is rolled up in that characterization is the intellectual dishonesty of some for their failure to speak the truth once it was known. (Soviet Union/the communist pograms in Spain against the anarchists…etc..)

In fact, Christopher Hitchens has spoken at some length about this issue.

The MSM/left consistently argues that the left can’t be held to the same standards as the right because, well, they don’t HAVE any standards.

Now, it’s become so accepted, that when someone on the left lies about you, if you don’t adequately defend yourself (using the leftist MSM to do so, miraculously), the lie becomes YOUR fault.

Might as well go home boys and girls, if you’re accepted that premise than it doesn’t matter who wins the election, the left has won the field.

How about the LIARS being held responsible for their LIES, for once, or is that “just not the way the system works?”

Forgive me if I’m sick of watching the free pass the left/MSM gets when they spew lies like projectile vomit.

Allow them to “buy” their way back into good grace by publishing corrections with headlines as large as the original article and with the same prominence as the original article.

That’s just one idea. The key point is that something must be done about the media outlets we have who are taking advantage of there being no downside for false or biased reporting. Who watches the watchers – and can “prosecute”
misdeeds?

I actually called the White House press office tonight for a comment for a piece I am working on and when I asked them about this report I got “Ughh…..Ummmm…..Ughhh…..”
“………..” (Pause)(15 seconds of silence)
“Call the Pentagon”
I said “does that mean you have no comment?”
“Call the Pentagon”
and that was it. These people can’t be this incapable of defending themselves can they?

Del,

Good to hear from you once again. Different format than what we had at CQ, but still gives us a forum for communication and sharing of ideas. I have always enjoyed watching as you destroy mindless trolls.

Cheers…

Keemo on March 15, 2008 at 5:35 PM

Thanks for the kind words. Don’t know whether moxie is a mindless troll, though. If you click on his name, it takes you to a car maintenance site. Actually I think moxie is saying that the left is trying to use a nearly 2 year old article to refute something from this week.

Good to hear from you once again. Different format than what we had at CQ, but still gives us a forum for communication and sharing of ideas. I have always enjoyed watching as you destroy mindless trolls.

Cheers…

The left’s refutation of Stephen Hayes’ take on the report.

http://mediamatters.org/items/200609210001

moxie_neanderthal on March 15, 2008 at 1:30 PM

Really? Your link leads to a story from 2006.

The information has been there all along. But it doesn’t fit the narrative of the Press and the Analysts, and most other people have been taught not to think seriously and critically about things.

On the one hand, it saddens me to see Fox News running garbage about celebrity murders for over half their hours and preempting programs for vapid ‘live’ coverage of hurricanes. On the other hand, if that is the only way to get them to watch a ‘conservative’ news station, there may be a repugnant strategic value in it.

Seixon on March 15, 2008 at 1:45 PM

That is a perfect summation of the corrupt news media worldwide but particularly right here in the United States. The dishonest news media has done nothing but bring aid and comfort to the evil doers of the world.

Exactly the same thing happened with the Volcker report on the UN’s Oil for Food scandal. They reported that a few Scandinavian companies were involved, and largely ignored all the important facts, the bread and butter, of the report.

Why? Because they couldn’t be bothered with reporting the forest for the trees. The trees were incompatible with their previous reporting, and thus had to be ignored.

By Warren P. Strobel | McClatchy Newspapers
Posted on Friday, March 7, 2008 email | print tool nameclose
tool goes here
WASHINGTON — If he’s elected president, Barack Obama promises to bring a new tone and more inclusive approach to American foreign policy, reaching out to adversaries and giving greater weight to the views of U.S. allies.

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/staff/warren_strobel/story/29766.html

http://mediamatters.org/items/200609210001

Pentagon cancels release of controversial Iraq report
By Warren P. Strobel | McClatchy Newspapers
Posted on Wednesday, March 12, 2008 email | print tool nameclose
tool goes here
WASHINGTON — The Pentagon on Wednesday canceled plans for broad public release of a study that found no pre-Iraq war link between late Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and the al Qaida terrorist network.

Rather than posting the report online and making officials available to discuss it, as had been planned, the U.S. Joint Forces Command said it would mail copies of the document to reporters — if they asked for it. The report won’t be posted on the Internet.

The reversal highlighted the politically sensitive nature of its conclusions, which were first reported Monday by McClatchy.

In making their case for invading Iraq in 2002 and 2003, President Bush and his top national security aides claimed that Saddam’s regime had ties to Osama bin Laden’s al Qaida terrorist network.

But the study, based on more than 600,000 captured documents, including audio and video files, found that while Saddam sponsored terrorism, particularly against opponents of his regime and against Israel, there was no evidence of an al Qaida link.

The study comes at a difficult time for the Bush administration. The fifth anniversary of the Iraq war is approaching on March 19, and Bush is attempting to hold support for a continued large U.S. troop presence there following a report from his on-the-ground commander, Army Gen. David Petraeus, in early April.

Navy Capt. Dennis Moynihan, a spokesman for the Norfolk, Va.-based Joint Forces Command, said, “We’re making the report available to anyone who wishes to have it, and we’ll send it out via CD in the mail.”

Moynihan declined further comment.

Bryan Whitman, a Pentagon spokesman, referred questions to Joint Forces Command.

An executive summary of the study says that Saddam’s regime had interaction with terrorist groups, including Palestinian terror organizations and some pan-Islamic groups.

But “the predominant targets of Iraqi state terror operations were Iraqi citizens, both inside and outside of Iraq,” says the summary, posted online by ABC News.

That confirms what many experts on Saddam’s Iraq have long argued: that his security services were dedicated mainly to fighting threats to his rule.

The summary says that Saddam’s secular regime increased cooperation with — and attempts to manipulate — Islamic fundamentalists after the 1991 Persian Gulf War, despite being leery of the Islamists. Iraqi leaders “concluded that in some cases, the benefits of associations outweighed the risks,” it says.

…and the corrupt and/or incompetent DeMSM grossly misrepresent its findings –
The headline from ABC News: “Report Shows No Link Between Saddam and al Qaeda”
From the NY Times: “Oh, By the Way, There Was No Al Qaeda Link”
From CNN: “The U.S. mi…

Wouldn’t that be great? I thought with talk radio, Fox News and the internet, we’d have gotten past this by now. But the fight goes on. Thank God (and Michelle) for HotAir!

I think the White House bears a large chunk of the responsibility b/c they have totally abdicated the telling of the story to the opposition. They never fought for the truth in a spirited way and rather than be disagreeable simply left the field. This is really unconscionable.

I think Kenneth Timmerman’s book would have been better served with a less shrill title. Having said that, he does a remarkable job of naming names within the govt and media that specifically used their positions to undermine the president and often misled or outright lied to achieve their desired ends.

In his book he produces Valerie Plame’s actual email in which she suggests her husband for the Niger trip.

Goes over all of the New York Times leaks of our covert efforts to track/locate terrorists.

Here is a pretty good summary of Timmerman’s book.
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=64cd41af-03b3-45af-bb77-dfdbbee2af2a

http://www.amazon.com/Shadow-Warriors-Traitors-Saboteurs-Surrender/dp/0307352099

http://www.amazon.com/Disinformation-Media-Myths-Undermine-Terror/dp/0895260069

So, those of us who have been paying even a little attention over the past six years already know that Saddam Hussein was in with the Islamists up to his eyeballs. The Pentagon released a report, painstakingly written, that reviewed well over half a mi…