Devastating book on Moore

I don't much care for NewsMax's strident presentation, but sometimes they carry stories that no one else seems to carry. Today they have a story about the new book, "Michael Moore is a Big, Fat, Stupid White Man". link It appears this book may destroy what little credibility Michael Moore has left. (Even Ed Koch and Christopher Hitchens have excoriated Moore for his "documentary" Farenheit 9/11.) For example, Moore has consistently portrayed himself as the son of a blue collar worker from Flint, Michigan, who as royally screwed by the big, bad, General Motors Corporation. The only problem is, Moore can from the lily white, wealthy town of Davison, Michigan. The book is apparently a tour of Moore's lies, replete with ironic twists that revel him for the true, disgusting shadow of a man that he is.

Will the mainstream press cover this book like they have all the anti-Bush screeds that have been toted out this year? Don't hold your breath!

Allawi corrects Brokaw on Sadaam - al Qaeda ties

You have to read this interview to believe it. Brokaw tries hard to maintain the party line (no ties between al Qaeda and Sadaam), but Allawi corrects him. link The next few interviews with Allawi (by American media) should be very interesting.

Wonder why the news from Iraq is so negative?

This is an incredibly damning story from someone who was an eyewitness to the "quality" of reporting of the Washington Post's Baghdad bureau. link. I won't try to summarize the editorial. Read it for yourself.

More good news from Iraq

The Washington Times has an article today about the Iraqi school system link that discusses the improvements that have been made and what still needs to be done.

The good news you never hear

Andrew Sullivan provides a pointer to Arthur Chrenkoff's blog, where he has posted a four part (so far) article on what's going on in Iraq that you won't read in your paper or see on the TV news (basically anything that's positive.) Along with what the media distorts and what the media lies about, they also portray a distorted picture by not telling you anything at all about what is going right. What Arthur writes about is far too extensive to quote here, so I will just provide you with the links. Suffice it to say that you will come away with quite a different view of what's going on in Iraq than you may have now as a result of reading or watching the mainstream media news outlets.

• Part 1


• Part 2


• Part 3


• Part 4

The burning question the media should answer is why the average American has to spend hours and hours using search engines to track down positive information about Iraq. Why isn't the media telling this story? You don't suppose they have an agenda, do you?

More on the Iraqi-al Qaeda ties

Am I the only one who thinks that Al Gore must be in a time warp of some kind? He makes a speech on global warming, in New York, in a driving rain, on a colder than usual day, and now, after the media is beginning to admit that there were actually ties between Sadaam and al Qaeda after all, he plans to make a "major policy speech" insisting that there weren't any. link. What planet is this guy on?

Rather than wasting a lot of time on the details, it should be sufficient to post one link - to the indictment of Osama bin Laden by the Clinton administration's Justice Department on November 6, 1998. Either Al Gore is lying now or he's senile and has completely forgotten what happened during his time in office.

Here's a quote from the relevant count of the indictment, but you can read the whole thing yourself. (Remember, an indictment contains charges that the government believes it can prove in a court of law.)

"4. Al Qaeda also forged alliances with the National Islamic Front in the Sudan and with the government of Iran and its associated terrorist
group Hezballah for the purpose of working together against their perceived common enemies in the West, particularly the United States.
In addition, al Qaeda reached an understanding with the government of Iraq that al Qaeda would not work against
that government and that on particular projects, specifically including weapons development, al Qaeda would work cooperatively with the
Government of Iraq."

Another glaring error by the Dallas Morning News

On Sunday, June 20, the Dallas Morning News published an article entitled "GP officer's killer had terminal cancer" link. The first sentence reads, "The cancer had spread through his lungs and back, and doctors told him he wouldn't live past March. In the end, retired Navy Senior Chief Petty Officer Timothy "T.J." Irwin used pain pills to get through the day, family and friends said." The article ran on the front page of the Metro section (section B.)

The only problem is, the man who killed a Grand Prairie police officer, Timothy Irwin, did not have terminal cancer. We learned that today when the Grand Prairie police announced the results of his autopsy. So were the "family and friends" lying? Did Mr. Irwin lie to his family and friends? Or did the Dallas Morning News simply extrapolate the conclusion from a statement the killer made to his family?

The story has a very odd sequence of statements:

"He was in so much pain at the end; I don't think he wanted to suffer anymore," said his father, Ed Irwin, a veteran of the U.S. Army and Air Force.

Was this pain caused by something psychological that lead to the fatal shootout? It certainly wasn't cancer.

"We're just sorry that officer was killed," said Ruby Irwin, his mother.

On Wednesday, T.J. Irwin, 42, told his parents he would never see them again and left in the van he had borrowed months ago in New Mexico from his former brother-in-law.

"He had us under the illusion that he was going to look for a job in another state," the elder Mr. Irwin said.

If T.J. was dying of terminal cancer, as the News quotes his father saying, then why did the father say he thought his son was "going to look for a job in another state"? Shouldn't that have alerted the reporter to dig further? Shouldn't it have raised suspicion? (In hindsight, his telling his parents he would never see them again was because he knew what he was about to do, not because he was dying of cancer.)

Further fueling suspicion that the News simply got it wrong (or made it up) is another false statement in the story.

"After the shootout and six-hour standoff ended that afternoon, officers found Mr. Irwin in the van, apparently shot to death by Officer Seix. The suspect may have been dead for hours, authorities said."

The Associated Press carried the story as well link. It reads, in part, "When officers entered, they found the man dead inside. Brimmer said he appeared to have been wounded by one of the shots fired by Seix." This explains where the News reporter got the idea that Irwin was killed by the police, but the reporter is jumping to conclusions from the speculative statement of an officer that Irwin "may" have been wounded by Officer Seix and stating that the officer's bullet "apparently" killed him as fact. However, the AP story ran on Friday, June 18. The News story ran on Sunday, June 20. The reporter had at least 36 additional hours to get the story right before going to press.

Today we also learned that Mr. Irwin killed himself.

One has to begin wondering if the Dallas Morning News does any fact checking at all before "reporting" a story.

READERS NOTE: As of this evening, the local press is still reporting that Irwin was killed by Officer Seiz. I called the Grand Prairie PD, but I was unable to contact anyone in the department that could definitively answer the controversy. Since Officer Hunter's funeral is tomorrow, I was told to call back on Thursday and talk to "CID" (presumably Criminal Investigations Division) to get an official answer.

More refutation of the false assertions by the press

Fox has an article this evening arguing forcefully that not only did the 9-11 Commission get it wrong (about ties between Sadaam and al-Qaeda), but they assigned the wrong man to generate the report, almost guaranteeing that any ties would be understated or misrepresented. 9/11 Commission Fails to Connect Terror Dots

This article references another article, by Andrew McCarthy link in National Review that points out even more problems with the commission's conclusions and provides extensive discussion of evidence previously evinced about an Iraq-al Qaeda connection. And in what has to be ironic timing, the AP released a story today link that reports that Russian Prime Minister Vladamir Putin's intelligence agencies provided the US with information, after 9/11, that Sadaam was planning terrorist attacks on US interests.

I wonder how much smoke you have to find before the media will report a fire?

The Dallas Morning News joins the chorus of lies

In a June 17th front page article, entitled "Both coasts originally targeted; link between al-Qaeda, Iraq rejected", the Dallas Morning News printed outright lies, joining many other media outlets in a campaign of deceipt. The article reads, in part, "And, in a conclusion that could prove damaging to the Bush administration, the panel rejected long-standing assertions of ties between al-Qaeda and Sadaam Hussein." Incredibly, in the very next paragraph, the News proves it has lied by quoting the commission directly - "We have no credible evidence that Iraq and al-Qaeda cooperated in attacks against the United States."

There is a vast difference between no "ties between al-Qaeda and Sadaam Hussein" and "no credible evidence that Iraq and al-Qaeda cooperated in attacks on the United States." If the News, or any of the media, cared about the truth, they would see and point out that difference, but alas, no such conscience can be found in the modern media. In fact, the commission not only found ties between al-Qaeda and Sadaam, they documented several meetings between bin Laden and Iraqi intelligence officials, as well as ongoing contacts and overtures between the two parties. The News completely ignores those findings and then rephrases the commissions true findings to fit their agenda.

Even more telling is the complete silence of the entire American media regarding the intelligence memo, a copy of which is in the possession of the London Telegraph, which places Mohammed Atta, the leader of the 9-11 attacks, in Baghdad, just two months before the 9-11 outrage, meeting with the head of the Mukhabarat. The memo discussed Atta's meeting with Habbush and stated that Atta had demonstrated his ability to lead the team that would be (and I'm quoting the memo here) "responsible for attacking the targets that we have agreed to destroy". One has to wonder why both the American media and the 9-11 Commission have ignored this memo, publicized in the London Telegraph over six months ago!

The lie continues

FoxNews, in discussing the ongoing "controversy" over whether or not the Bush administration lied about connections between Sadaam and al Qaeda makes the following statement: "The independent Sept. 11 commission said Wednesday that no evidence exists that Al Qaeda had strong ties to Saddam Hussein." link Interestingly, at the end of the report, there is a clarification: "The Associated Press contributed to this report." Apparently the Associated Press will not only not admit that they lied, but they continue to insist that the lie is true.

Here's what the commission actually said in their Commission Statement 15, entitled "Overview of the Enemy" link

Page 3: With al Qaeda as its foundation, Bin Ladin sought to build a broader Islamic army that also included terrorist groups from Egypt, Libya, Algeria, Saudi Arabia and Oman, Tunisia, Jordan, Iraq, Lebanon, Morocco, Somalia, and Eritrea. Not all groups from these states agreed to join, but at least one from each did.

Page 5: Bin Ladin also explored possible cooperation with Iraq during his time in Sudan, despite his opposition to Hussein’s secular regime. Bin Ladin had in fact at one time sponsored anti-Saddam Islamists in Iraqi Kurdistan. The Sudanese, to protect their own ties with Iraq, reportedly persuaded Bin Ladin to cease this support and arranged for contacts between Iraq and al Qaeda. A senior Iraqi intelligence officer reportedly made three visits to Sudan, finally meeting Bin Ladin in 1994. Bin Ladin is said to have requested space to establish training camps, as well as assistance in procuring weapons, but Iraq apparently never responded. There have been reports that contacts between Iraq and al Qaeda also occurred after Bin Ladin had returned to Afghanistan, but they do not appear to have resulted in a collaborative relationship. Two senior Bin Ladin associates have adamantly denied that any ties existed between al Qaeda and Iraq. We have no credible evidence that Iraq and al Qaeda cooperated on attacks against the United States.

We now know that Mohammed Atta met with the head of Iraqi intelligence just two months before the 9-11 attacks. Why didn't the commission pursue that lead?

Nowhere did the commission say, "no evidence exists that Al Qaeda had strong ties to Saddam Hussein", yet this lie keeps getting repeated. Nowhere did the commission say, "There were no ties between Sadaam and al Qaeda", yet this lie keeps getting repeated. And the evidence that there were ties keeps getting ignored. It's been six months! since Allawi's interview with the London Telegraph, and yet the mainstream press has never discussed that story or made the American public aware of its existence. Not CBS. Not NBC. Not ABC. Not FOX. Not CNN. Not MSNBC. Not API. No one!

What would it take for a mainstream American media organization to print the truth? Do they have any interest at all in reporting? Or are they simply propaganda machines for the views of their editors and owners?

Associated Press lies about Sadaam-al Qaeda ties

The Associated Press released an article today link that claims that the 9-11 commission has refuted the Bush administration's claims of a link between Sadaam and al Qaeda. The article begins, "Bluntly contradicting the Bush administration, the commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks reported Wednesday there was "no credible evidence" that Saddam Hussein had ties with al-Qaida."

Yet, the report itself reads, in part, "The Sudanese, to protect their own ties with Iraq, reportedly persuaded Bin Ladin to cease [support for anti-Saddam Islamists in Northern Iraq] and arranged for contacts between Iraq and al Qaeda."

"A senior Iraqi intelligence officer reportedly made three visits to Sudan, finally meeting Bin Ladin in 1994. Bin Ladin is said to have requested space to establish training camps, as well as assistance in procuring weapons, but Iraq apparently never responded."

This is what AP defines as "bluntly contradicting" the administration's claims? Apparently the AP has a different standard of truth than normal people do.

The report further states, "There have been reports that contacts between Iraq and al Qaeda also occurred after Bin Ladin had returned to Afghanistan, but they do not appear to have resulted in a collaborative relationship."

and

"Two senior Bin Ladin associates have adamantly denied that any ties existed between al Qaeda and Iraq"

However, Iyad Allawi, the new Prime Minister of Iraq is on record in the London Telegraph link stating, "We are uncovering evidence all the time of Saddam's involvement with al-Qaeda."

The AP makes no mention of this in their report. One can only wonder why. Is it just incredibly sloppy journalism? Or deliberate deception?

Allawi also states, in reference to a recently uncovered Iraqi intelligence document that places hijacker Mohammed Atta in Baghdad two months before 9/11, "This is the most compelling piece of evidence that we have found so far. It shows that not only did Saddam have contacts with al-Qaeda, he had contact with those responsible for the September 11 attacks."

The Telegraph also reports, "In the memo, Habbush reports that Atta "displayed extraordinary effort" and demonstrated his ability to lead the team that would be "responsible for attacking the targets that we have agreed to destroy"."

Further putting the lie to the AP story, what the commission report actually says is, "We have no credible evidence that Iraq and al Qaeda cooperated on attacks against the United States."

So from "no credible evidence that Iraq and al Qaeda cooperated on attackes against the United States", AP gets "there was 'no credible evidence' that Saddam Hussein had ties with al-Qaida." Note that the only thing AP quotes is "no credible evidence", but they take it out of context and fabricate a outright falsehood from it.

This is what passes for "reporting" these days. Journalism schools should be ashamed of themselves for having produced such abject failures as those who work at AP.

THe Associated Press is clearly a propaganda organization, not a news organization.

Good news has no legs

Recent headlines from Iraq have focused on the many car bombings that have taken place. It seems there is nothing good at all going on in Iraq. Today's news is that the Iraqis were chanting "Down with USA" while dancing around a charred body, evoking images of the incident in Fallujah earlier this year. Yet this story, about Iraqi troops saving a US Marine's life, gets no attention whatsoever from the media. What more evidence do we need of the constant negative bias of the media? How are we, as Americans, supposed to make intelligent decisions about who should lead us in the war on terror when all the media gives us is bad news?

Is there no one in the major media with any principles at all?

Reporting? Or editorializing?

The Associated Press released an article today link about Hamad Karzai's visit to Washington. The article closes with this paragraph:

"Karzai seemed to hint at being weary of the heavy U.S. military presence in his country. As a helicopter flew overhead, prompting Karzai to interrupt his opening remarks, he said with a smile while pointing to the sky, 'You see that too often in Afghanistan.' "

This isn't reporting. It's editorializing. The reporter had two professional choices; ask for clarification or report the remarks without comment and allow the readers to draw their own conclusions about their meaning. Instead, the reporter chose to interject his/her personal opinion into the article.

At the same press conference, according to AP, "[Karzai] said he was satisfied that the U.S. government has remained focused on its commitment to help Afghanistan establish a national government and to rebuild from years of war.

'We would not be having a specific request for more U.S. troops in Afghanistan,' he said. 'The United States is already busy in Afghanistan helping us in reconstruction and helping us fight terrorism and helping us secure our borders.' "

So what is the "reporter's" point? THe Chomskite/liberal view of America is that it is an imperialistic, war-mongering society and the rest of the world wants us to get our troops out of their country and leave them alone. THe reporter's editorial comment is meant to subtly reinforce that view, irregardless of the facts.

karzai said, "I thank you and the people of this great country for your generosity and commitment to our people," Karzai said. "You have supported us with your resources, with your leadership in the world community and, most importantly, with the precious lives of your soldiers."

Does that sound like someone who is "weary of the heavy U.S. military presence in his country"? Not hardly. Yet even in the presence of clearly contradictory evidence, the reporter chose to insert his/her opinion of "the truth".

Selective media discomfort

Dan Rather is bothered by the massive press coverage given to Ronald Reagan this week. He complains about the "herd" mentality of the press and how they have spent far too much time on Ronald Reagan's death and the attendant ceremonies. link While I agree with Rather's complaints about the herd mentality of the press and the almost obsessive focus with stories, I wonder why Rather didn't complain during the Abu Ghraib story's lengthy run. The Abu Ghraib story displayed many of the same elements (over-coverage, obsessive focus, herd mentality, etc.) as the Reagan story, yet no one in the press seemed to be bothered by that. Perhaps the press will take this lesson to heart, but I won't be holding my breath.

Lying about weapons of mass destruction

The Dallas Morning News has an article today entitled Many Ask If Tenet Is The Fall Guy For Iraq (requires annoying "subscription" to read). This assumes, of course, that a fall guy is needed for Iraq, which is arguable, but since the headline expresses other people's opinions, it passes inspection.

What fails inspection in the story is the list of reasons why Tenet may have been sacked. Interestingly, the online version softens the charge. It reads:
"Continuing fallout of the prewar intelligence reports that said Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was harboring chemical, biological and nuclear weapons; no such stockpiles have been found." This is correct. Stockpiles have not been found.

The print version, however, includes an inset that reads:
"Weapons of Mass Destruction: CIA Director George Tenet reportedly assured President Bush that his agency had 'slam-dunk' evidence showing Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. Such weapons have not been found." This is false. Both mustard gas and sarin gas filled artillery shells were recently found in Iraq.

So why does the press keep telling this lie? Because if you repeat a lie often enough it becomes truth? (It certainly has for many people who were pre-disposed to oppose the war.)

When you think about it, it's fascinating how the press will add disclaimers when they want to and completely ignore them when they don't want to. For example, when it comes to the deaths of American troops in Iraq, the press held on, for a long time, to the disclaimer "x number of troops have died in Iraq since President Bush declared an end to combat". (Of course what he really said was major combat, and I doubt anyone would intelligently argue that the "insurgency" would be classified as "major combat".) The press used this line as a way of constantly pointing out that they believed that the President was lying or incorrect.

So why don't we see the disclaimer "Although some chemical weapons have been found, the major stockpiles that were expected have not been" or words to that effect? Because it doesn't help their cause, which is to portray the administration in the worst light possible. To keep repeating the party line as much as possible.

"Fair and balanced"?

The Center for Media and Public Affairs has an article entitled "Bush Whacked", in which they state, "During the 11 days of the 9/11 Commission--headlined by the testimonies of Richard Clarke and Condoleeza Rice on Capitol Hill--every opinion aired about President Bush on the nightly newscasts was negative.

This contrasts sharply with the 57 percent favorable coverage given to Bush during the Iraq war and the 31 percent favorable coverage in the six-months after the “Mission: Accomplished” end of major combat operations."

Readers should note that the 57 percent favorable coverage during the war was due to the embedded reporters. The press has since roundly criticized the embedded reporting claiming that it was "shameful" among other things. Apparently "fair and balanced" means "no more than one third positive".

When the results aren't what you want, accentuate the negative

CBS published the results of a poll today, but the results obviously weren't what they were looking for, so they had to temper their enthusiasm. CBS Poll The title of the article is "CBS Poll: Vets Favor Bush", but the very first paragraph reads "Veterans' evaluations of the war in Iraq are slightly more optimistic than those of the American public overall -- although even veterans question how well things are going for the U.S. in Iraq and whether the war is worth the costs, a CBS News poll finds. "

Here's some what the poll revealed. Among veterans:

• President's approval rating - veterans = 51%, public = 41%
  
• President's handling of the war on terror - veterans = 65%, public = 51%
  
• Vote for President? - veterans = 54%, public - 41%
  
• On whether or not the Iraqi war was a mistake - 51% no, 46% yes - this is exactly the reverse of the overal public opinion, according to CBS
  

What's interesting about this poll is that veterans give Bush more positive ratings in every category¹ than what the general public does, yet CBS doesn't point that out. Instead they state the veterans' evaluations.....are "slightly more optimistic" than the public. Clearly CBS knows what will be quoted most frequently - the headline plus the first paragraph, and they make sure that what they want to have remembered about the poll will be.

1) except was Iraq worth the cost, where troops are less inclined to think it was than the general public

No one fact checks any more

Today the Associated Press had to retract an earlier story about a meteor hitting southwestern Washington state. link. There are several elements of this story that are typical of the incompetence (or laziness) of today's media.

First, the article states "The original story, which AP released at 7:03 a.m. EST, stated that someone identified as Bradley Hammermaster, and purported to be a University of Washington astronomy instructor, had told KIRO Radio in Seattle that a piece of meteor "about the size of a small car" had hit just before 3 a.m. PST."

You wouldn't even have to use a telephone to check the veracity of "Mr. Hammermaster"'s claim to be an astronomy instructor at UWash. Just go to the university's web page and search for his name. You can either use the Faculty Directory or simply go to the Astronomy home page and look at all the faculty there, and you will quickly discover that there is no "Hammermaster" on faculty. The entire search took me less than five minutes, yet AP couldn't even do that before publishing the story.

You can get a hint as to why the story ran without fact checking from this - "The bogus report followed genuine reports of bright lights being seen along a 60-mile stretch of the Puget Sound, which National Weather Service and U.S. Coast Guard officials were investigating as either a streaking meteor or other outer space activity, AP reported."

So someone at AP is making supposedly logical inferences based on previous reports and running the story without doing any fact checking. This is what passes for "reporting" these days. Even five minute Internet searches are too much work in the rush to be "first" with the story!

But there's a "fact" in the original story that should have set off alarms almost immediately. The caller to the radio station stated that the meteorite was "the size of a small car". A meteorite that large would cause extensive damage of a huge area. I know this without even asking an astronomer. Why wouldn't a reporter ask this simple question - What would the effect of a meteorite that large be?

A simple web search, and about five minutes time spent, results in this web page and the estimate that a meteor the size of a small car (5 meters in diameter) could create a crater 175 meters in diameter, depending upon the speed at impact. Gee, I wonder if anyone would notice a crater the size of a football field? Without doing any further research, I would guesstimate that there would be severe damage some distance from the crater, including fires, blunt force damage of particles separated at impact, deaths of animals and people within a wide area surrounding the crater, a huge explosion and noise at impact....Yeah, I'm pretty sure someone in the area would have noticed it.

So, why not call the mayor of Chehalis? Or the airport? Or Katie's Candies? Or the Centralia Chronicle, for crying out loud. They're all listed on the Internet.

Is this really the best the press can do? Rush a story to print and then retract it later when the facts are known? Is this what our universities teach as "journalism"?

One of the troubling aspects of this story is "This version was picked up by dozens of news sites, most of which later deleted the Hammermaster references." This is typical in today's "news" environment. The big, international agencies run a story and lots of local outlets pick it up and run with it. The local outlets are trusting the major outlets to get the story right, so they do no fact checking either. The story runs, and pretty soon it goes worldwide, and no one is the wiser that the story is completely false. AP later prints a retraction, but many of the same outlets that ran the original story never see nor run the retraction.

How is anyone supposed to make sense out of this? How in the world can news organizations expect the "average person" to believe anything they say? Does anyone in the media even care?

Why we went to war in Iraq

Sometimes the press fails to ask the obvious questions. If you read the text of the Joint Resolution of Congress link (House Joint Resolution 114), you discover that, according to Congress, the reasons we went to war with Iraq are:

• weapons of mass destruction


• material violation of UN resolutions


• repressing the Iraqi people


• refusing to account for missing foreign nationals, including a US serviceman


• failing to return Kuwaiti property wrongly seized


• hostility toward and willingness to attack the US


• harboring and aiding al Qaeda terrorists as well as other terrorists

James Woolsey, during a Nighline interview, (link) put it this way:

"Well, I think the heart of the matter was really in the strategy statement that the Administration put out late last summer/early fall, which essentially said that it's the nexus of the brutality of a dictatorship, the relationship to weapons of mass destruction that it has or is working on, and its support for terrorism, that leads to the necessity, sometimes, to preempt or to take action before there is a smoking gun. How many countries in the world have chemical weapons?

Well, it's probably a couple of dozen. And you're not going to go attack all of them. That's not entirely right. State craft is a matter of judgment. It's not a matter of litmus tests. And I think the Administration, although different parts of it have emphasized different aspects of this from time to time, I think it's those three things together. Brutal dictatorships, rogue states, weapons of mass destruction, and ties of one kind or another to terrorist groups."

Ted Koppel then responded with this question:

"There seems to be a certain convenience factor, however, to the fact that as we no longer are able to make quite as much of a case for the weapons of mass destruction, they haven't been found yet, maybe they still will be, this new argument now is surfacing. Why not make that argument before? If this was to be an object lesson, and again, I stress that. Why couldn't you make that argument beforehand?"

Apparently, Koppel either didn't do his homework or conveniently ignored the fact that, at one time, a solid majority of Congress agreed on these points. (House - 296-133, Senate - 77-23) Now that's it's an election year, the Democrats suddenly have amnesia. Yet the press has a duty to point this out, do they not? When Democrats make these claims, shouldn't the press be questioning them on their sudden change of heart?

So why do we continue to hear that weapons of mass destruction were the raison d'etre behind the war and the press remains silent?

The media ignores the voice of experience

Chrenkoff has a translation of an interview with Marek Edelman, who helped lead the Jewish uprising in the Warsaw Ghetto. link. When the voice of experience speaks, one would think the media would listen. Instead they ignore it completely and continue to pump out distortion after distortion.

Eye witness refutation of the media

I've mentioned Fallujah before, but here is even more proof that the media lied about what went on in Fallujah. link. According to a reporter who was there, the media got the story completely wrong.

He states, "What really happened in Fallujah was a great deal different from what was portrayed in the news media". No kidding!

Oddly, he blames the Bush administration for not publicizing the truth. That seems a bit naive to me. Bush couldn't even get the media to cover his policy speech the other day, which is the first time, in my memory, that a sitting President has been completely ignored by the major television media when giving a foreign policy speech. I wonder what the writer thinks Bush could do to get the media's attention on Fallujah? It's a certainty that, if they would televise it, they would label it "cheerleading" and say it doesn't reflect the "reality" of the situation.

It's amazing that anyone bothers to watch tv news any more.