Right Wing Nut House

As the quest to unravel the mystery surrounding Captain Jamil Hussein as a source for approximately 61 AP stories originating from Iraq continues, several critics from the left have weighed in to denounce the effort - most by using the curious logic that it doesn’t really matter, that things are so bad in Iraq what’s the difference if a couple of stories turn out to be created out of whole cloth by the enemy?

Things are bad in Iraq as every blogger who has taken an interest in this story has been constrained to point out. And in the grand scheme of things, whether or not the AP has been a tool for enemy propaganda - willing or unwilling - is not the point either. For myself, I assume that the AP is in the same boat as other western news outlets when it comes to reporting from Iraq, albeit given their extensive contacts and experience in the region, probably not as beholden to “stringers” for getting the facts for a story as others.

What is at issue here and why the stakes are so high is so simple that one would think that both left and right could agree on the vital importance of getting to the bottom of the Captain Hussein mystery; to discover the facts of the matter.

Will this discovery alter the outcome of the war? Of course not. Will it ruin AP if it is discovered that Hussein is either an insurgent plant or a non-existent source, a Jayson Blaired construct without flesh and bones, existing as a convenient catch-all pseudonymous source for particularly ghastly rumored attacks on innocents? Probably not, although it might cause the AP to become a little more careful in the sourcing.

Why then?

Eric Boehlert thinks he has the answer:

The warbloggers’ strawman is built around the claim that if the AP hadn’t reported the Burned Alive story, which was no more than a few sentences within a larger here’s-the-carnage-from-Baghdad-today article, then Americans would still gladly support the war in Iraq. That it was somehow the contested Burned Alive story that swung public opinion on Iraq, not the three years’ worth of bad news.

Chasing the Burned Alive story down a rabbit’s hole, giddy warbloggers deliberately ignore the hundreds of Iraqi civilians who are killed each week, the thousands who are injured, and the tens of thousands who try to flee the disintegrating country. None of that matters. Only Burned Alive matters, as if an AP retraction would change a thing on the ground in Baghdad, where electricity remains scarce, but sectarian death squads roam freely.

Boehlert might want to rethink that first sentence. In fact, the burning Sunnis was the lead story in hundreds of newspapers around the world. It was headline news in dozens of prominent dailies here in the United States (including the Suburban Daily Herald in my neck of the woods). His contention that it was “no more than a few sentences” is absurd on its face and bespeaks either an extraordinary ignorance of the facts or a deliberate attempt to downplay how the story was disseminated.

But why the superficial, shallow, needlessly partisan, and, in the end, stupid charge that bloggers who are covering this story wish to discredit the AP in order to reverse the slide in public support for the war? What bloggers are after here is the same thing that bloggers wanted from CBS following the Dan Rather TANG documents scandal; an acknowledgement of error. The AP has relied on Captain Hussein as either an eyewitness source or as a knowledgeable spokesman for violent incidents in Iraq going back at least to April. Trying to get to the bottom of who or what Hussein is would seem to be a job tailor made for blogs - right or left.

The larger issues at play in this story should be of concern to every blogger, indeed every American who is a consumer of news. And at the top of the list of questions is does the AP really care if they get it right? It appears to me that their double checking on the accuracy of the story in question was cursory and designed to confirm what had been written rather than approach the story afresh in order to see if their sources were correct. We know now, for instance, that at least two of the mosques that were supposedly burned in the original AP story are still standing and still open - the only damage being some bullet holes in the facade.

And their interviewing of “new” witnesses to the atrocity was revealing; the AP swears that their stories were all consistent with the facts that were reported. I daresay that this should have set off a bunch of red flags to begin with; a first year journalism student knows that eyewitness testimony tends to vary wildly from person to person. And in this case - interviewing witnesses 4 days after the story broke and was featured on al-Jazeera as well as other Arab media - one wonders how much these eyewitnesses actually “witnessed” and how much they gleaned from broadcast media about the story. No word from the AP whether they even tried to determine if their “witnesses” were cross contaminated in this way.

But this is not central to either Boehlert’s argument nor my criticism of his ridiculously flawed and over-generalized piece. For instance, Boehlert links to this Bob Owen piece about the incident where the blogger asks a legitimate question:

This presents us with the unsettling possibility that the Associated Press has no idea how much of the news it has reported out of Iraq since the 2003 invasion is in fact real, and how much they reported was propaganda. they failure of accountability here is potentially of epic proportions.

When producer Mary Mapes and anchor Dan Rather ran faked Texas Air National Guard records on 60 Minutes, it was undoubtedly the largest news media scandal of 2004, and yet, it was an isolated scandal, identified within hours, affecting one network and one show in particular.

This developing Associated Press implosion may go back as far as two years, affecting as many as 60 stories from just this one allegedly fake policeman alone. And Jamil Hussein is just one of more than a dozen potentially fake Iraqi policemen used in news reports the AP disseminates around the world. This does not begin to attempt to account for non-offical sources which the AP will have an even harder time substantiating. Quite literally, almost all AP reporting from Iraq not verified from reporters of other news organizations is now suspect, and with good reason.

Why does Boehlert fail to mention that Captain Hussein is a featured source in more than 60 AP stories? Because it ruins his thesis that it is this one story pursued by conservative bloggers is just a question of “holding the AP accountable for questionable sourcing in an isolated incident…” Is Boehlert really this stupid or, like many in the media, is he simply lazy and won’t address the massive implications involved in generating fake news from a war zone?

At the risk of being redundant (something I feel constrained to do given the short attention span and limited reading skills of most of the lefties who visit this site), I will say again the unraveling of this mystery - even if it implicates the AP in years of selling the American public fake news - does not change anything on the ground in Iraq now and would not have changed the attitudes of the American public regarding the war. The people of the United States are a lot smarter than your average lefty and don’t need either enemy propaganda coming from the AP or liberals glorifying our mistakes and blunders in Iraq to know that we are failing there.

But Owens has hit the nail on the head; the only asset that the Associated Press has is its credibility. If it can be shown that Jamil Hussein is a fake or doesn’t exist, where does that leave AP’s coverage of the war over the last three years? How do you separate the facts from what might be propaganda? It’s a question Boehlert doesn’t even bother to address because his mission is to slime “warbloggers” as he calls them by over generalizing and ascribing non-existent motives to their efforts.

And in the process of pooh-poohing the efforts of those who are attempting to get the facts on Hussein, Boehlert also misses a story that would reveal the inner workings of the media and answer some fairly basic questions that absolutely no one connected with any major media outlet has deemed it important enough to answer. That is, the use of local “stringers” to gather the news that western reporters, due to the extraordinary danger of the war zone, cannot gather for themselves.

Boehlert rightly points out that we don’t give enough credit to the dangers faced by western reporters in Iraq. He highlights the death of an Associated Press Television News cameraman Aswan Ahmed Lutfallah, who was killed in Mosul while filming a gun battle between police and insurgents. Boehlert informs us that Mr. Lutfallah’s death brings the total of journalists and others associated with the media killed in Iraq to 129. Even for the locals, it is an incredibly dangerous place to work.

And, as I’ve written before during the Jill Carroll hostage story and in numerous other posts, the process of gathering facts, writing a story, vetting sources, and meeting a deadline is so hazardous that the media’s reliance on stringers is an absolute necessity. Otherwise, the only news we’d be getting would be from press releases by CENTCOM and the Iraqi government. No one wants that - despite Mr. Boehlert’s hysterically off-base arguments to the contrary.

But as citizens interested in the news, we have a right and, indeed, an obligation, to demand that media outlets using stringers answer a few basic questions about them. We can certainly understand why their real names can’t be used or why they would be withheld. But we can ask about their credentials, their experience, the vetting of sources by both the reporter on the scene and the editor back home, and a dozen other noteworthy issues that bloggers have raised about them.

Boehlert is so busy trashing conservative bloggers and trying to demonize their motives that he’s missing a great story that Captain Hussein is only a part. And writing for a publication that ostensibly deals with issues relating to the media, it is unbelievable that he dismisses the questions raised in the course of reporting on this story. They go to the heart of media credibility and believability and have nothing whatsoever to do with trying to place blame for the American public’s attitudes toward the war on the shoulders of the men and women trying to do an impossible job under the most trying of circumstances.

The incuriousness of Boehlert and the rest of the left regarding how news is collected and disseminated from the war zone is telling. Perhaps they are afraid that if they scratch too deep, some of their own cherished notions about the media and maybe even the war itself will have to change.

UPDATE

Michelle Malkin has the latest on who is Jamil Hussein.

The Baghdad-based CPATT officer says there is no “Sgt. Jamil Hussein” at Yarmouk, which contradicts what Marc Danziger’s contacts found. I have another military source on the ground who works with the Iraqi Army (separate and apart from the CPATT sources) and is checking into whether anyone named “Jamil Hussein” has ever worked at Yarmouk.

According to the CPATT officers, Captain Jamil Ghdaab Gulaim “denies ever speaking to the AP or any other media.” I retracted information to the contrary two days ago based on a single CPATT source who said he had erroneously stated that Gulaim had admitted being the source.

If I might venture a little informed speculation…

It is an extremely hazardous business, this transliteration of turning Arabic names into English. As a frequent reader of English language Arabic media sites including The Daily Star, Naharnet, Ya Libnan, al-Jazeera, and Palestine Times, it is amazing the different spellings one comes across for the same proper names and names of organizations.

One example is “Hizbullah.” This is the way that the Daily Star spells the name of the terrorist group. But look at the alternate spellings I’ve come across both in western and Arab media:

Hizbollah
Hezbollah
Hizballah
Hezballah
Hezb’allah
Hizb’allah

The same issues arises with the spelling of the Lebanese Prime Minister’s name:

Siniora
Seniora
Saniora

Is this entire issue a translation problem? I think Malkin has almost totally knocked that issue down although I think we should wait to see if AP has any response whatsoever to what Michelle has discovered. But I find it tantalizing that the spelling of the two names could be so close, even if the individual denies talking to the AP. There are numerous reasons why he might make such a denial, including the fact that he might be in hot water if he did speak to the press without authorization. But then why use his name in the stories?

The AP, of course, could solve this mystery by simply producing Captain/Mister/Sergeant Hussein. Since they haven’t so far, either they are unable to do so or won’t because doing so would place the man in danger (Again, then why publish his name in the first place?). Or, they’re just being stubborn and don’;t want to give in to a bunch of pajama clad bloggers.

UPDATE II

Allah roasts Boehlert slowly on a spit over a hot fire.

One would think that a “Media Critic” would want to, you know, criticize the media once and a while rather than attack his ideological opponents using so many strawmen that one would think the Scarecrow from the Wizard of Oz had gotten a hold of a Star Trek replicator and populated the countryside with copies of himself.

“Iraq needs a Pinochet” is the name of a column written by one of the supposed leading lights of the conservative movement, Jonah Goldberg. The sub-head is even better: The general was no saint, but he’s a better model to follow than Castro.

Saying that Pinochet was “no saint” is something akin to to saying that Genghis Khan had an anger management problem. There are more than 3,000 families in Chile whose loved ones were “disappeared” (a Pinochet gift of nomenclature to the English language) who might take issue with Goldberg’s milquetoast denunciation of truly one of the more brutal dictators of the late 20th century. And then there were the tens of thousands who were jailed and tortured - most of whom committed no crime save that they were to the left of Mr. Pinochet on the political spectrum. Considering that your average Short Haired Marmoset in Chile was to the left of Pinochet, it’s amazing that most of the country didn’t end up in one of the dictator’s torturing hospitality suites during his ignominious rein.

Here’s the gist of Goldberg’s argument regarding Pinochet being preferable to the soon to be mummified Castro:

I

THINK ALL intelligent, patriotic and informed people can agree: It would be great if the U.S. could find an Iraqi Augusto Pinochet. In fact, an Iraqi Pinochet would be even better than an Iraqi Castro.

Both propositions strike me as so self-evident as to require no explanation. But as I have discovered in recent days, many otherwise rational people can’t think straight when the names Fidel Castro and Augusto Pinochet come up.

Let’s put aside, at least for a moment, the question of which man was (or is) “worse.” Suffice it to say, both have more blood on their hands than a decent conscience should be able to bear. Still, if all you want to do is keep score, then Castro almost surely has many more bodies on his rap sheet. The Cuba Archive estimates that Castro is responsible for the deaths of at least 9,240 people, though the real number could be many times that, particularly if you include the estimate of nearly 77,000 men, women and children who have died trying to flee the “socialist

Frankly, I think that all “intelligent, patriotic and informed people” should throw a metaphorical pie in Goldberg’s face. This cutesy argument about body counts is meaningless - unless you’re a Cuban or a left wing Chilean who lived during the time of Pinochet’s tyrannical regime. On the International Thuggery Scale, both men rate around a 4 or 5 on a 10 point scale. Castro would be ranked slightly higher for being stupid enough to believe that not only Communism works, but that he should export that ideology to his reluctant neighbors.

Neither brute enters the truly sublime territory occupied by Mao, Stalin, Kruschev, or Pol Pot (in that order). But while we’re at it, why not make the argument that what Iraq really needs is a Mao? Now there was a guy who knew how to put down an insurgency! If a peasant from some village casts a sideways glance at the authority of the Chinese government, don’t bother with the dissident or his family. Wipe out the whole village and raze it to the ground.

Of course, Goldberg isn’t advocating that, is he?

But on the plus side, Pinochet’s abuses helped create a civil society. Once the initial bloodshed subsided, Chile was no prison. Pinochet built up democratic institutions and infrastructure. And by implementing free-market reforms, he lifted the Chilean people out of poverty. In 1988, he held a referendum and stepped down when the people voted him out. Yes, he feathered his nest from the treasury and took measures to protect himself from his enemies. His list of sins — both venal and moral — is long. But today Chile is a thriving, healthy democracy. Its economy is the envy of Latin America, and its literacy and infant mortality rates are impressive.

I ask you: Which model do you think the average Iraqi would prefer? Which model, if implemented, would result in future generations calling Iraq a success? An Iraqi Pinochet would provide order and put the country on the path toward liberalism, democracy and the rule of law. (If only Ahmad Chalabi had been such a man.)

On the plus side, Goldberg only writes columns for the LA Times once a week. Otherwise, we’d be forced to endure this kind of sophistry far more often. And yeah, Pinochet made the trains run on time and infant mortality went down, and his “free market” reforms (short hand in Latin America for enabling crony capitalism and other kleptocrats) created some trickle down wealth - after he left. And while I understand the realpolitik reasons for the US supporting this thug, I think to wish his kind of rule on anyone - especially an ally - is the height of idiocy.

First of all, to even think that a secular anything will emerge from the current chaos in Iraq is loony. Whatever kind of government shakes out will almost certainly be dominated by fundamentalist Shias allied to either Abdul Aziz al-Hakim of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) or Mookie al-Sadr and his merry band of cutthroats. Those two will eventually fight it out; hopefully in the halls of government rather than in the streets but don’t count the latter out.

So we can dispose of Goldberg’s fantasy that some kind of benevolent tyrant will emerge from the current violence and lead the country to some kind of “liberalism” or “democracy.” As for “the rule of law,” if you’re talking about the application of Sharia law, it’s already happening in the southern part of Iraq, the stronghold of our new buddy al-Hakim who is laboring to form another governing coalition as we speak. In some areas, Islamic courts have been set up to mediate disputes and religious “police” patrol the streets enforcing dress codes.

Finally, Goldberg tries to make the point that because only “bad options” are available in Iraq, what he’s proposing is actually “moral” because it is “less immoral” than other alternatives - like a Castro style government:

Now, you might say: “This is unfair. This is a choice between two bad options.” OK, true enough. But that’s all we face in Iraq: bad options. When presented with such a predicament, the wise man chooses the more moral, or less immoral, path. The conservative defense of Pinochet was that he was the least-bad option; better the path of Pinochet than the path toward Castroism, which is where Chile was heading before the general seized power. Better, that is, for the United States and for Chileans.

I bring all this up because in the wake of Pinochet’s death (and Jeane Kirkpatrick’s), the old debate over conservative indulgence of Pinochet has elicited shrieking from many on the left claiming that any toleration of Pinochet was inherently immoral — their own tolerance of Castro notwithstanding.

This might be termed the “Kirkpatrick Doctrine” - a strict reading of which would put Goldberg’s argument in the garbage where it belongs. Kirkpatrick’s “double standard” was a response to an existential threat to the United States; that not only Castro but Soviet Russia would gain a foothold on the South American continent. Castro has been a burr under our saddle for nearly 50 years but never posed a direct threat to our existence. Salvador Allende on the other hand, made it clear that he would happily take on the mantle of a Soviet client state - a turn of events that the realpolitikers in the Nixon Administration realized would be a strategic setback. Hence, their support (and the support of subsequent administrations) for Pinochet.

How this translates into a more or less moral lesson for Iraq is a little murky. Iraq itself presents no threat to the US anymore. And while there are some scenarios where Iraq could degenerate into a failed state unless order is re-established and become a base for al-Qaeda and perhaps even Shia terrorists, the fact is that Iraq’s neighbors will probably not allow that to happen. Of course, the only way such a scenario could take place is if the US leaves precipitously - something our lefty friends have been agitating for.

There are other options in Iraq that are bad but don’t involve a Pinochet-inspired thug to rise to power. Groveling before Syria and Iran, begging them to help us pull our chestnuts out of the fire is bad but not as bad as siccing a Castro or Pinochet on the Iraqi people. Mookie al-Sadr running things would be almost as bad as a murderous strongman like Pinochet or Castro in charge. The point being, while there may be only bad options left in Iraq, some bad options are worse than others. And Goldberg’s Pinochet fantasy is about as bad as it gets.

Goldberg has now confirmed every nasty thing that the Glenn Greenwalds, Dave Neiwerts, and Jane Hamshers have been saying about the right being in love with authoritarianism and dictators. For that, he should be criticized roundly by all sides of the political spectrum. But let’s also keep in mind that the left’s love affair with the lickspittle Castro has been one of the most astonishingly stupid and ignorant manifestations of moral blindness in the post World War II world. It will be marvelled at by future historians who may very well wonder what magic spell the strutting, arrogant, murderous tyrant in Cuba cast over the western left that caused them to ignore so much suffering and death dealt out by the evil and barbarous men who kept that beautiful island imprisoned for so many years.

I have to confess to being a a little underwhelmed by the AP story of burning mosques and burning Sunnis. Not that I don’t believe the story is important or that the work done by several bloggers hasn’t been outstanding.

It’s just that we’ve been down this road before many times. Conservatives have been questioning the facts about news stories coming out of Iraq for more than 3 years. We questioned stories from the Israeli-Hizbullah war last summer. We have known about the disinformation, the enemy plants, the outrageous bias of the international wire services AP, AFP, Reuters, as well as the BBC.

We have seen photos doctored, stories embellished or faked outright. Anyone remember the “chemical weapon attack” on Fallujah? We have seen civilian body counts inflated and stories of how they died swallowed whole by a press who would rather believe enemy propaganda than their own military; a press who suspends belief when given information that reflects poorly on the American military but insists on triple confirmations before they publish a retraction - if they ever bother.

And they don’t bother. The burning Sunnis were last week’s news, already forgotten in the rush of events. Bush and Maliki. The Iraq Study Group. Obama, Obama, Obama.

In their smug, self righteous little cocoons, the AP and others continue the process of making sausages out of the news. The burning Sunnis were just one mind-numbing atrocity in a Flanders Field of atrocities so who really, really cares down deep if we blew it? Just put up the old firewall of denial, do a cursory follow up by finding some “eyewitnesses” (who probably read about the burning Sunnis in the paper or saw the report on TV), neglect to mention our little police captain problem and that’ll do it. End of story.

AP can do this because ultimately, we are not their clients. Unlike newspapers or TV networks, the AP could give a hoot about the people who actually end up reading their enemy propaganda. The people who pay them are, of course, the newspapers and TV stations that subscribe to their service.

And what does that say then about all of those media outlets who carried this story? Curt at Flopping Aces was able to raise numerous questions about the truth of the burning Sunnis story after a couple of hours of research using nothing more than some common sense, a curious mind, and a modem. If similar questions had been raised in newsrooms across America, I can guarantee you any responsible editor would have put a “hold” on that story. At least until a later revision from AP had been forthcoming.

But that wouldn’t have been good enough. The changing nature of journalism in America means that to a large extent, reporters are almost as incurious about the world as their readers. What would it have cost to pick up the phone and call CENTCOM? The PA officers there got back to Curt within a few hours with the info that contradicted the AP story. Better yet, duplicating Curt’s work, how much trouble would it have been to Google up Capt. Jamil Hussein? Would the fact that he appeared as a source for AP so many times over the previous months raised a red flag in any newsroom in America? I doubt it.

I think the difference between journalists today and those of 20 or 30 years ago is that reporters used to have a thirst for knowledge, an “itch” that could never be scratched. They attacked a story, constantly challenging assumptions, digging ever deeper to see if there was anything else there. They did it not necessarily because they were afraid they were wrong but rather because they were afraid they were missing the true essence of the story.

But the shocking incuriousness of the media who left the vetting of this story to AP and allowed it to appear in newspapers across the country proves that times indeed have changed. Publishers and editors used to stand by everything that appeared in their publication. But how can they do that today if they don’t make even the most cursory of efforts to see that what is printed actually happened.

And lest there be any doubts about whether this incident actually happened or not, here’s Sharon Tosi Moore, an officer in the United States Army Reserves currently serving in Iraq with a piece in The American Thinker today:

A winning situation all around.

Except, well, except for the tiny little detail that the incident most likely never happened. A week has gone by and no charred bodies were produced. No dramatic funeral parades, with all the attendant wailing and gnashing of teeth, occurred. Not one photo. No grand reprisals. Not even any speeches (and it is hard to imagine Iraqi religious leaders miss an opportunity to make speeches). Just a few remarks from the Iraqi government, largely ignored by the U.S. press, that all reports showed that that particular district had been quiet, and pleading the Iraqi people for calm.

No one thought to question this unusual divergence from normal protocol.

The gullible press swallowed the initial claims whole. Of the major news sources, only TIME Magazine used the word “reportedly” in their headline.

Gullibility is not really the issue. I believe the issue is laziness. And perhaps a lack of passion that enables the reporter to simply go through the motions of being a journalist instead of living up to what his editors and readers expect.

This story is revealing of many things, not the least of which is that our free press is in trouble. Partly from infringements by government but also by lousy stewardship of this precious right being carried out by many the current practitioners of the craft. Not all, of course. There are still some excellent journalists writing for the top publications. But by and large, those whose responsibility it is to inform us, to keep us abreast of what’s going on in the world, are failing and failing badly.

And the hell of it is, no one seems to want to fix the problems much less address them.

It was 1940 and the Germans had the drop on the British. The Nazis had just pushed the British literally into the sea at Dunkirk and despite a heroic evacuation of nearly 350,000 men, almost all of the British Expeditionary Force’s armor and artillery had to be left behind.

England was hurt badly but not defenseless. Her navy still commanded the Channel and the North Sea thus blocking any realistic effort by Germany to invade the Island. And of course, the Royal Air Force was poised to do battle with the Luftwaffe whenever Hitler decided the time was ripe to strike.

But the Nazi dictator was hesitating. After conquering most of Europe, his armies stood a scant 22 miles across the Channel from the White Cliffs of Dover. But Hitler and the German General Staff had barely even thought of how to go about invading and occupying the British Isles. Operation Sea Lion, the German war plan for the attack on Great Britain was just that - a plan. And not a very good one at that.

So Hitler decided on trying a gambit that had worked like a charm on other occasions; a major speech in which he would offer England “peace” in return for a free hand on the continent. Hitler, so in love with the sound of his own voice and so confident in his ability to sway people failed to realize that times had changed.

In describing the scene at the Reichstag where Hitler delivered his “Peace Speech,” noted Nazi chronicler William L. Shirer commented that he thought that the address was one of Hitler’s finest - and certainly his most brazenly dishonest. He didn’t want war with the English. The Germans and English were historic friends. It was that demon Churchill and the Jews that started the war. He outlined a future where Germany and Great Britain would be partners in peace, united in racial brotherhood and comity.

The response from the British was lightening fast. Within a half an hour after the conclusion of Hitler’s speech, the BBC was on the air rejecting all of the dictator’s proposals out of hand. Britain would never make peace with Germany as long as Europe was enslaved by Hitler. The BBC’s towering denunciation of the speech sounded like an official response from Churchill’s government. But it wasn’t. On its own, the BBC had taken to the air and given the only response a free people could give. As Churchill said later, no one from government had contacted the BBC nor encouraged it in any way. The response was entirely the idea of the BBC staff.

In this instance, the BBC crossed the invisible line between reporting the news and making the news. No doubt they felt they had good reason to do so. They weren’t taken in for one second by Hitler’s propaganda. This despite the fact that all during the 1930’s when Hitler was building his war machine and carrying out his bloodless conquests, the BBC (along with most other major newspapers like the New York Times and Chicago Tribune) took whatever Hitler had to say at face value and swallowed his disinformation whole. This despite warnings from disgusted correspondents in Berlin like Norman Ebbut of the London Times whose editor Geoffrey Dawson famously wrote to a correspondent that he did his “utmost, night after night, to keep out of the paper anything that might hurt their (German) sensibilities.” This meant that most of Ebbut’s brilliant reporting on the depravity of the Nazi regime went unread.

Contrast the experience of the BBC with today’s reporting from Iraq. Both the BBC then and the media today know that there are agents of disinformation seeking to spin the news by giving slanted even erroneous reports. The question we should be asking the media - like the question directed by Churchill at the BBC and the London Times prior to the World War II - is how hard are you trying to get the story right?

Once it became clear that Hitler was a threat to the existence of the nation, the BBC and other British news outlets started to view what the Nazis were saying with a much more critical eye. But couldn’t they have figured this out sooner? Why did they swallow enemy propaganda so willingly?

We asked similar questions during the Israeli-Hizbullah war when it became readily apparent that the AP (and thus hundreds of media outlets around the world) were using photos and stories from outright Hizbullah sympathizers whose job could only have been to give enemy propaganda to western reporters. And in Iraq, many critics have pointed to the almost total reliance by the mainstream press on Iraqi “stringers” for news of what’s happening around the country.

First of all, I am constrained to point out that reporting from Iraq is a nightmare. Going outside of the “green zone” is an invitation to being kidnapped or killed if you’re a western reporter. It is not a question of courage. It’s a question of common sense. Reporters are not combatants and are not armed. The use of stringers in order to assist in the news gathering process is an absolute necessity. Without them, reporters would be limited to writing from CENTCOM news releases and Iraqi government press handouts. And while some may consider that sufficient, I don’t think very many of us truly want the press that much in the pocket of the government.

Having said all of this, I have a few pointed questions that I’d like to ask the New York Times, the Washington Post, the news nets and others who use stringers in gathering the news.

Who are they? What are their backgrounds? Are they journalists? If so, what kind of experience have they had? Have then been vetted to make sure they aren’t out and out insurgent sympathizers? Or militia mouthpieces?

Do they have axes to grind against America? How does the reporter in Iraq or the editor back home establish their objectivity or accuracy? Does the reporter on site even try and confirm information from the stringers? If so, how many sources are used to confirm their stories? How do you gauge the reliability of those confirming sources?

This is the nuts and bolts of journalism. Raw information is not news. It has to be poked and prodded, examined and re-examined in a process that is supposed to reduce that information to its most basic and understandable parts and then massaged by the reporter and polished by the editor to appear as “news” in the newspaper or on the TV broadcast.

Reporters here at home have established rules regarding sources and story confirmations that are carefully followed (for the most part) and a level of trust that what we are reading is reasonably accurate has been established. Bloggers are very good at pointing out where this system fails and, depending on the news outlet, the failure is either swept under the rug or actually addressed. The news business is far from infallible and everything from out right bias to downright laziness can infect the news.

But there seem to be different rules for war reporting from the Middle East. It appears to this observer that there is too much trust between the parties involved in news gathering and not enough hard, slogging, verification of information that is reported on a day to day basis. I have no doubt that reporters trust the information they get from their stringers (and other sources as well). And the editors here at home feel they have to trust and support their reporters in the war zone who, after all, are still taking a tremendous personal risk despite them being largely confined to living and working in the green zone.

But it doesn’t appear to be good enough. Curt at Flopping Aces, a longtime supporter and linker to this site, has done an extraordinary job of ferreting out a piece of disinformation passed along by a source who evidently is not who he says he is and has also proven to be unreliable in the past. Read the entire post as Curt digs deeper and deeper into how this one Iraqi “police captain” (who CENTCOM reports is not on any police roster) passed along a bogus story about Sunni civilians set on fire this past weekend that created a huge sensation internationally but is almost certainly no true.

While it is unclear whether the AP reporter who “broke” this story interviewed the fake policeman personally or whether he received the information from someone else, the fact that editors around the world (it was front page news in my local suburban daily) ran the story without question is enormously troubling. All Curt possessed to discover this information about the fake police captain was a computer and a modem. He didn’t need any special expertise to ferret out this information. Are you trying to tell me the editors of mutli-million dollar enterprises don’t have the time or the energy to do exactly what Curt did regarding this story?

I totally reject that notion. This is pure laziness on the part of the media. There is no excuse, no other explanation possible. They didn’t bother because either their pre-conceived notions of the violence in Iraq came into play or they felt it wasn’t necessary because the AP had supposedly vetted the story. If the former, that kind of bias has no place in a newsroom. And if it was the latter, it shows that the editors of those newspapers care little about what appears on the pages of their publications.

And what do we make of Patterico’s brilliant work regarding the stringer’s story told to the Los Angeles Times Iraq reporter about an American “bombing” in Ramadi; a bombing that never occurred. The stringer’s report of civilian deaths is also apparently a hoax (or disinformation). The fact that all we are getting is silence from the LA Times is par for the course but it does make one curious about the answers to all those questions I asked above. Read Patterico’s analysis and then start contemplating what else we might be hearing and reading about that has no basis in fact.

This is not to minimize what is happening in Iraq. And I don’t agree with those who believe that the efforts of Curt and Patterico reveal that things aren’t really that bad in that bloody land. Independent sources far and wide - including our own military and military sympathizers - paint a portrait of a country spinning out of control and headed for tragedy. But it is clear from these two deliberately planted stories that the insurgents in Iraq wish to keep the pressure on the White House and the American people in order that they not change their minds about withdrawal.

Beyond that, the questions these stories raise for the media are very troubling. It is not a matter of accusing them of bias. It is a basic question of trust between the reader and journalist without which the news becomes meaningless drivel. And if the media are not going to reveal answers to some of those questions I asked above, I would sincerely hope that they start asking them internally.

One way that a different perspective on the news from Iraq could gain currency is if the American media bothered to embed themselves with our armed forces. At last report, there were only 9 authorized embeds by the American media. This is shameful. We have 130,000 men and women in harms way and the American media can’t find eager reporters willing to face the danger in order to tell their stories? As we wind down our involvement in this tragedy, let’s hope that more reporters are willing to see what it is our forces are doing so that the American people have a complete picture of the conflict.

Reporters and editors are human. But somehow, I can’t escape the feeling that they are not carrying out their responsibilities to tell the story of this war to the best of their abilities. They are letting us down. And for that, they should be ashamed of themselves.

Try as I might, I’m just not that shocked at the news that Ted Kennedy and other Democratic liberal Senators were willing to work with the Soviet Union in a joint PR campaign to undermine and defeat President Reagan at the polls in 1984.

Bryan at Hot Air has the skinny on what is either the most egregious violation of trust in the history of the United States Senate or the most calumnious lie ever told about - love him or hate him - one of the most dedicated public servants in American history:

There’s a new book on Ronald Reagan making the rounds, The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism. Its author, Paul Kengor, unearthed a sensational document from the Soviet archives. That document is a memo regarding an offer made by Sen. Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts via former Senator John Tunney, both Democrats, to the General Secretary of the Communist Party, USSR, Yuri Andropov, in 1983. The offer was to help the Soviet leadership, military and civilian, conduct a PR campaign in the United States as President Ronald Reagan sought re-election. The goal of the PR campaign would be to cast President Reagan as a warmonger, the Soviets as willing to peacefully co-exist, and thereby turn the electorate away from Reagan. It was a plan to enlist Soviet help, and use the American press, in unseating an American president.

There are many reasons why this might not be true, not the least of which is that Soviet agents were notorious for lying to their superiors - especially when it came to bragging to their bosses about Americans who may or may not have worked with Communists. Contained in the million or so pages of documents that came to light in the immediate aftermath of the fall of the Soviet Union are the names of dozens of prominent Americans that Soviet agents claimed were helping the Communist cause, including FDR’s friend and closest White House advisor Harry Hopkins as well as famous entertainers like Marilyn Monroe. The long and short of it is, you need a helluva lot more than one memo to prove that Ted Kennedy wanted to take part in this scheme.

Ted Kennedy helped invent the modern Senate. His knowledge of its workings as well as his advocacy for issues like education, health care, and workers’ rights have transformed what at one time was a clubby, almost aristocratic body where little of domestic importance happened into a liberal legislative laboratory, often driving changes in the law ahead of the House. Kennedy’s encyclopedic knowledge of Senate procedure has allowed him to triumph in the face of almost certain defeat many times. In this respect, he is one of the giants in the history of Congress.

He is also a vainglorious hypocrite, scion of one of the most screwed up families in American history who has demonstrated time and time again that he believes that the law does not apply the same way to he and his family as it does to the rest of us. In this respect, I always thought Kennedy one of the greatest threats to American liberty ever to serve in Congress and that defeating many of his more outrageous proposals to smother the American spirit to be a patriotic duty.

The point is, it is not beyond imagining Kennedy or any other liberal from that period taking part in such an effort to betray their trust. This is because one of the core tenets of modern liberalism is that ordinary morality that may apply to most of us can be set aside in the name of a higher goal. For Kennedy, his belief that he would be preventing nuclear war overrode any more mundane considerations like loyalty to the country or his President. This kind of action feeds the liberal’s heroic self image while also revealing the dirty little secret of the New Left; they consider ideals like patriotism and love of country subservient to their belief in the universality of man. And from the time of the Russian revolution until the fall of the Berlin Wall, they felt that spirit - despite all evidence to the contrary - was embodied in the old Soviet Union.

I predict that not much will be made of this revelation in the media. Too many years have gone by and the information itself is so tenuous that it will be difficult to prove beyond a reasonable doubt. It will probably be treated the same way that revelations about the possible resting places for Saddam’s WMD in Syria has been covered by the press. But the fact that the information is in and of itself believable says much about the modern left and their continuing war against all that is decent and good in America while calling into question the patriotism and loyalty of such people.

In a jaw dropping post on Anderson Cooper’s 360 Blog, Executive Producer David Doss reveals that CNN not only doesn’t care if their broadcasts give aid and comfort to the enemy in Iraq, but also that there is no difference between a US sniper and an enemy sniper.

One doesn’t have to read between the lines of this post nor does one have to put words into Doss’s mouth to understand exactly where CNN stands when it comes to the United States and the American military being at war. After outlining the sequence of events that led to the network broadcasting a tape of insurgent snipers shooting at 10 American soldiers, Doss proves that he is either the dumbest schmuck ever to work in TV or that he realized full well the propaganda value of the tape to the insurgents:

We are assuming they included the sniper tape to prove the authenticity of the Al-Shimary interview tape and to establish their credibility. Of course, we also understood that some might conclude there is a public relations benefit for the insurgents if we aired the material, especially on CNN International. We also understood that this kind of footage is upsetting and disturbing for many viewers. But after getting beyond the emotional debate, we concluded the tape meets our criteria for newsworthiness.

What kind of an idiot would “assume” that they included a tape of insurgents killing Americans to an American media outlet simply for purposes of authentication? Anyone with more than one brain cell working can see the PR benefit to the insurgents. Writing that “some might conclude” this is so is idiocy. Everyone believes it to be so - except the deliberately blind and self deluded.

And I am very happy for CNN that they were able to get “beyond the emotional debate.” I’m sure it was a travail trying to decide whether or not to glorify the insurgents who were shooting at Americans.

Is that too harsh a judgement? Think again:

You should also know we tried to put all of this in context. Our reporting included an interview with a current U.S. sniper in Iraq. He’s been both under attack from insurgent snipers and he has himself operated as a sniper. We also heard from Major General William Caldwell, a coalition forces spokesman in Iraq, and CNN military analyst General David Grange, formerly with the Green Beret, Delta Force and Army Rangers.

In his own words, Doss makes it crystal clear that CNN views a US sniper in exactly the same context as an Iraqi sniper. Their refusal to acknowledge the difference - that one side is killing Americans and the other side is killing the enemy - is perfectly in keeping with many (not all) media outlets who refuse to make a moral judgement about which side they are on.

I reject the notion that the nature of war reporting must necessarily make a journalist neutral. For the reporter not to recognize that 1) he is being used by people who are killing his neighbors and his neighbor’s children; and 2) that there is in fact a moral difference between those who are fighting to defend the reporter’s freedoms while the other side is fighting to take them away smacks of a breathtaking myopia that one must actually work at in order to succeed in efforts to be “neutral.”

A journalist who allows himself to be used as a tool to advance the enemy’s goals of turning the American people further against the war is no better than a paid propagandist of that enemy. This is so clear that anyone who might argue to the contrary must tie themselves in Gordian knots of logic in order to come down on the other side.

Reporting on the enemy is one thing. Telling us who they are and why they are fighting is probably unnecessary but relatively harmless. But what CNN did with the tape of enemy snipers shooting and killing Americans is something so far beyond the pale as to call into question CNN’s commitment to the “unvarnished truth.” Whose truth? Why, the enemy’s truth, of course. And by giving “context” to the story by placing the actions of an American sniper side by side with those of an insurgent’s shows that the network has a hard time with morally differentiating between the two sides. As impossible as that might sound, there can be no other conclusion drawn from CNN’s actions.

Also, while some lefty viewers were apparently satisfied that “both sides” of the conflict were being shown (as if it were a given that it not be necessary to take sides), some of the more bloodthirsty liberals were mad that the American people were spared the moment that the bullets made impact on the bodies of American citizens:

Others praised us for showing the threats U.S. military personnel actually face: “Thanks for having the guts to show the sniper update and to show us the other side of the story. Please continue to give us the truth; I know the network is bound to be taking heat.”

And still others thought by dipping to black and not showing the moment of impact of the sniper rounds we were sanitizing the horror of war: ” … I think the reason it took Americans so long to come around on this war is because they somehow did not think it was real because they never saw anyone hurt … you guys need to show the unvarnished truth.”

Just goes to show that when it comes to giving aid and comfort to the enemy, you just can’t please all the people all the time.

It would be too much of a stretch to believe that Bob Woodward is in cahoots with the Democrats and has timed the release of his new book State of Denial for any other reason save the fact that political books are best published during the political season.

That said, it is fascinating to see the Democrats and the press leap upon this book like ravenous beasts, eagerly pointing out this little tidbit and that in order to “prove” something. What they are trying to prove is a mystery since from what I can gather from this story in the New York Times, there are absolutely no factual revelations contained between its covers. Instead, we have a typical Woodward book that gives us all the gossipy details of history in the making; what were people thinking and feeling as the Iraq War went to hell in a handbasket.

In fact, as is Woodward’s wont, he has relied on unsurpassed access to policymakers who for one reason or another, spill the chatty details about who they like, who they hate, why someone is strange or weird or just plain awful. They highlight their little stories by illustrating their points with vignettes of what goes on behind the scenes when high matters of state are being decided. Dishing dirt on co-workers may not be very elevating but it makes for damn fine reading.

Woodward then takes this raw material and fashions a narrative that is at once both gossipy and historical - an instant classic inside the beltway where people are always interested in gossip about politicians and their fellow travellers.

In this respect, Woodward will always be a highbrow Kitty Kelly, never quite descending into the personal muck that Kelly eagerly wallows in but at the same time, giving us the same angles and views of the high and mighty that Kelly so relishes. Both writers expose the powerful in ways that bring them down to the level of the rest of us by ripping aside the mystique of high office to reveal the petty, the quirky, the personality conflicts, and - dare I say it - the humanity of our national leaders.

The problem is that once you’ve read one Woodward book and the technique becomes familiar, most intelligent readers will start asking basic questions. How does he get those long, extended quotes from conversations between principals? How can he possibly know this particular detail of what someone else was thinking? Woodward’s books are usually riveting affairs because he has a reporters eye for important details and a novelist’s flair for making those details interesting. The question ultimately arises then; does he ever get his two personae confused? Does he try and logically extrapolate what was said or thought from known facts? Or does he truly have people on record revealing such intimate details of their thoughts and reactions?

Here’s Woodward himself on how he is able to write the way he does:

Woodward says that people talk to him because they know he has the time to get it right — which is also part of the reason these seemingly unattainable sources show him a little leg. “I have the significant luxury of time, which enables me to really look at something in depth,” he says. “I can go to people and then go to other people, and then go back and track and try to develop a documentary trail. I have time; most reporters don’t have time. Like you, for instance,” he said to me, “when you called me you said you had a tight deadline [for this story]. I don’t have that.”

It sounds plausible but it doesn’t answer some critics who believe he has actually fabricated some of the more noteworthy incidents in some of his books. Perhaps most famously, his 1987 book Veil which chronicled the extraordinary exploits (and crimes) of William Casey’s CIA, Woodward claims to have visited Casey on his deathbed in a hospital and gotten a confession from him that he knew about the transfer of funds from Iran to the Contras in Nicaragua. Casey’s widow stated that Woodward could not possibly have gotten access to her dying husband at that time - especially with a cadre of FBI agents guarding the Director’s door.

Somehow, this kind of thing has never damaged Woodward’s credibility. His eye opening books on the Clinton presidency - the towering rages by Clinton, the fights with Hillary, a cowed and brutalized staff - made for fascinating reading. But again, there really were no earth shattering revelations regarding policy or world events. Instead, the reader was treated to a front row seat at the greatest show on earth - how the powerful behave in various circumstances and the fact that they truly are no more or less human than the rest of us.

Woodward’s latest effort in this regard happens to arrive on book shelves at a very inopportune moment for the Administration. Just as the Republicans are making some headway in focusing attention on the fact that voting Democratic in November means handing the reins of power to politicans who have yet to annunciate anything approaching a policy on Iraq, the War on Terror, or homeland security, people are reminded once again what a truly botched effort the Iraq War has been and that the principals involved either through overweening hubris or tragic miscalculation quite simply blew it.

This hasn’t stopped the New York Times (who apparently got an advance copy - even before the Post was able to serialize the book prior to publication) from breathlessly reporting as “news” those facts which are already well known and whose only shock value will be in the way they are reported not that there is anything revelatory about them. In this respect, the Times and other news organs do the Democratic party a favor by going “green” and recycling - not to conserve but rather to destroy.

For instance:

* Did we know the White House was warned that we would need hundreds of thousands of more troops in Iraq in order to get control of the country following the invasion? Perhaps we should ask General Shineski who testified before Congress and sounded that very warning.

* Did we know that Rumsfeld mismanaged the occupation and reconstruction? One need only look at Iraq today in order to draw that conclusion.

* Did we know that Rummy had lost credibility with the Generals by last fall? I guess the Times doesn’t read their own newspaper very often because that fact has been widely reported.

* Did we know that the Administration was in a state of denial about the insurgency? This is a little trickier because again, the Times would have to read their own newspaper to see the 180 degree change in policy regarding how we were fighting the insurgency in the spring of 2004 compared to the previous summer.

What we are treated to and told is “news” are all the little gossipy details like the fact that Rummy hated Condi and wouldn’t return her calls unless the President told him to or that Cheney was obsessed with proving that WMD’s existed in Iraq by going so far as calling David Kay, who was in charge of finding Saddam’s weapons, in the middle of the night to give him satellite coordinates of a place to look for them. (Now what does that do to the moonbat theory that we absolutely knew there were no WMD’s in Iraq and invaded anyway?)

As an inside look at the Bush Administration, I have little doubt that Woodward’s book will be an entertaining read. But its political utility will be to block the small amount of momentum that Republicans had been gathering this month in their efforts to keep control of the House and Senate not by revealing anything new but by dressing up old news in the latest anti-Bush couture.

UPDATE

Allah describes the impact of the book in much more apocalyptic terms and is filled with “heart-ache.”

I hadn’t read the Daily News blurb about Tenet coming to Rice in July of 2001 begging for funds to go after Bin Laden. If true, all it does in my mind is add to the ongoing argument about how responsible Bush or Clinton was for 9/11. And, of course, going after al-Qaeda at that point would not have stopped the 9/11 plot which was ready to step off, only needing a the Saudi muscle guys to show up in America and a firm date (the date was set in early August).

As for the descriptions of Rummy, this again is nothing new. He’s an incompetent fool and Republicans on the Hill who didn’t join with Democrats in getting this guy kicked out should be ashamed of themselves. When the investigations into what’s gone wrong in Iraq begin, we will not have to look any farther than Rumsefeld’s extraordinary mismanagement of the entire occupation. One disasterous decision after another while going before the American people and telling us how rosy things really were.

The gossip dished on Rumsfeld in the book will reveal nothing we didn’t know about him already. And I will reiterate what I said above; the impact of this book will not be in anything new but in how it is being reported. In that respect, it may, as Allah thinks, be something of an earthquake. More likely, it will stall the Republican comeback and cost some GOP representatives their seats. And in a close race like this one, that may be enough to tip the balance toward the Democrats in the House.

In what, in my opinion, is one the most disgraceful and shocking exhibitions of callous disregard for journalistic standards not to mention human decency, the New York Post gossipy Page Six ran a story describing MSNBC host Keith Olbermann’s terrifying experience with a threatening letter that contained a “white powder.”

Here’s the piece:

September 27, 2006 — MSNBC loudmouth Keith Olbermann flipped out when he opened his home mail yesterday. The acerbic host of “Countdown with Keith Olbermann” was terrified when he opened a suspicious-looking letter with a California postmark and a batch of white powder poured out. A note inside warned Olbermann, who’s a frequent critic of President Bush’s policies, that it was payback for some of his on-air shtick. The caustic commentator panicked and frantically called 911 at about 12:30 a.m., sources told The Post’s Philip Messing. An NYPD HazMat unit rushed to Olbermann’s pad on Central Park South, but preliminary tests indicated the substance was harmless soap powder. However, that wasn’t enough to satisfy Olbermann, who insisted on a checkup. He asked to be taken to St. Luke’s Hospital, where doctors looked him over and sent him home. Whether they gave him a lollipop on the way out isn’t known. Olbermann had no comment.

The fact that the story is not considered “straight news” is absolutely no excuse. The columnist, Paula Froelich, should be fired immediately.

The tone of the piece is not only insulting but attempts to make light of what must have been a horrifying experience for Mr. Olbermann. And, as Dave Neiwert points out, sending the letter is considered an act of terrorism - hardly something to yuck it up about with references to “lollipops” not to mention the attempt to portray Olbermann as something less than courageous.

Yes, I realize I wrote a piece yesterday skewering Mr. Olbermann for his pretentiousness, his ignorance, his hysterical exaggerations about the right, about Bush, and Republicans. Politics is full contact sport and going for the jugular as Olbermann does on his show and I do on this site from time to time necessitates using rhetoric more suited to knife fighting than pistols at 20 paces.

But the United States is not a banana republic where we go around trying to kill our political opponents. Tear them down, yes. Hit them where they’re weakest, yes. This has been the nature of politics in America for more than 200 years. And if you know anything about history, you know that things are much, much more civilized today than they were even 100 years ago. Politics is a blood sport and if you want sweetness and light, get thee to a nunnery - you ain’t gonna get it from the wardheelers of Chicago, the Back Bay Brahmins of Boston, or in the high rise offices of the media manipulators, pollsters, advance men, oppo researchers, or candidates of today.

Our friends on the left are trying to tar the entire conservative media by conjuring up the conspiracy theory that because The Post is owned by Fox News’ Rupert Murdoch, that somehow Froelich’s disgrace was instigated by evil right wingers.

Spare me.

What is it about the left and conspiracies? For them, 2 + 2 = 4 is a conspiracy because it’s possible one of the 2’s used to be a 3 and colluded with the 5 to step aside and allow the 4 to hide the fact that the 3 is now a 2.

Can’t things just be coincidence every once and a while? You know, like real life. History is replete with coincidences that few have bothered to posit conspiracy theories for. And making a conspiracy about everything your political opponent does reflects badly on the critical thinking skills of many liberals not to mention their emotional maturity and innate intelligence.

The New York Post has no excuse. One would hope they would fire Froelich and issue a page one apology to Mr. Olbermann forthwith.

UPDATE

Were Ed Morrissey and Rick Moran brothers in another life? Ed and I have been on the same wavelength all day. Here’s his take on Froelich’s disgrace:

I don’t know what Froelich was thinking when she wrote this piece. Olbermann has surely slammed the Post on a number of occasions, perhaps even in personal ways. That doesn’t excuse Froelich from belittling someone who had good cause to be frightened, especially considering the level of animosity he provokes. The anthrax attacks in 2001 went to media offices, something Froelich fails to mention in her schoolground rant.

Being partisan is one thing. Being inhuman is something else entirely.

And Hugh Hewitt thinks its time for the entire staff to go - again. You may recall the “Page Six Fix” from last year where it was discovered former columnist Richard Johnson was getting expensive gifts and other goodies from some of the subjects mentioned in his columns. Of course, it was just coincidence that references to the gift givers were almost always positive.

Pride goeth before the fall…

Add Patterico to the fire Froelich/shame on the Post group. He points out Ed, Hugh, and I all came to the same conclusions he did without any of us aware of the other’s position.

Maybe all of us were brothers in another life. Let’s see…I would have been the black sheep, Hugh the scholar, Ed the man about town, and Pat the lawyer.

We would have called ourselves “The Undefeated…”

I rise from my sickbed this morning to weigh in on Keith Olbermann’s latest “Special Comment” during which he referred to Fox News Reporter Chris Wallace - a journalist who has won every major broadcast news award around - as a “monkey posing as a newscaster” and accused Republicans of trying to foist blame for 9/11 onto the Clinton Administration.

The fact that I am dizzy, drugged up, and incoherent this morning makes me the perfect candidate to respond to Olbermann’s ignorant rant. Judging by some of the jaw droppers unleashed by the Unhinged One during his confused and typically shallow critique of Fox News, conservatives, Republicans, the Bush Administration, and the press, MSNBC should probably initiate drug screenings for its on air talent at the earliest possible moment. Either that or someone should make sure that Keith is still taking his Lithium religiously for it is apparent the reality Keith is experiencing is on some other plane of existence than the rest of us.

For the longest time, I tried my best to peg Olbermann, to define his appeal in normative terms; A left wing clown? A liberal provocateur? A humorist a la Will Rogers? A self-anointed Diogenes, carrying the lantern throughout America looking for the one honest man?

Olbermann tried all of these approaches and failed miserably. It wasn’t until he realized that his bread was buttered by liberal bloggers did he begin to demonstrate some traction with his show. In fact, it is eerie how like a liberal blog his show has become; wildly accusatory with no evidence to back up outrageous charges; sophomoric flights of logic and reason; an unhinged whining that causes the viewer to actually recoil in disgust at some of the self-pitying “woe is us” rhetoric; and a breathtaking shallowness that outlaws context and substitutes emotion for rational thought.

In this respect, Olbermann’s shtick is reminiscent of the high school know-it-all who used to drive everyone nuts by trying to prove he was smart by using a large vocabulary - invariably misusing terms willy nilly - while taking on a professorial air of superiority that attracted every bully in the school like flies to rotting meat. Loud, insufferable, and laughably incoherent at times, the know-it-all was able to gather around him the witless, the woebegone, and the wasted where he would hold forth every day in the lunchroom, his sycophants hanging on every word.

Reading this transcript of his remarks last night, it is clear that Olbermann has slipped the surly bonds of earth to touch the face of idiocy. To call a fellow journalist a “monkey” is so far beyond what passes for rational discourse that even a lefty blog should find such rhetoric disturbing.

Of course, they don’t. In fact, they are cheering Mr. Olberman on to ever higher flights of rhetorical excess and juvenile name calling. Reporter Wallace is a “monkey.” Bush is a “coward.” This is what passes for reasonable dialogue on lefty blogs and Olbermann doesn’t let his audience down.

But the real dishonesty by Olbermann comes when he ascribes actions to the Bush Administration that he not only offers no proof for but that are also belied by the facts. For instance:

Moreover, for the last five years one month and two weeks, the current administration, and in particular the President, has been given the greatest “pass” for incompetence and malfeasance in American history!

This, of course, is one of the Ãœber talking points on liberal blogs; that the press are a bunch of lapdogs. One wonders how Olbermann and his shipmates on the S.S. Perpetually Outraged got their high school diplomas without benefit of acquiring the ability to read. How, in fact, did we find out about this “incompetence and malfeasance?” A little birdie? Perhaps Olbermann has powers of divination that allows him special access to the supernatural for his Special Comments?

Should we tell Keith and his crew that their ammunition to prove incompetence and malfeasance comes from the press and therefore negates the “Bush is getting a pass” meme? Not if you don’t want to be showered with brain matter following the collective explosion of liberal heads. Logical thought to a lefty is like anti-matter. When it comes in contact with the muddled gray stuff in their confused, limited, and emotionally charged cranium, the two forces annihilate each other thus causing a rupture in the space-time continuum. Thankfully, there isn’t much chance of swaying a liberal with logic so we’re safe for the time being.

Caution: The following will make you want to tear your hair out if you are older than 5, can write complete sentences, and have the wit and reason to know the difference between reality and make believe:

It is not important that the current President’s portable public chorus has described his predecessor’s tone as “crazed.”

Our tone should be crazed. The nation’s freedoms are under assault by an administration whose policies can do us as much damage as al Qaida; the nation’s marketplace of ideas is being poisoned by a propaganda company so blatant that Tokyo Rose would’ve quit.

Nonetheless. The headline is this:

Bill Clinton did what almost none of us have done in five years.

He has spoken the truth about 9/11, and the current presidential administration.

“Portable” public chorus? Olbermann’s strained alliteration is sprinkled throughout his piece and hearkens back to that know-it-all high school kid. And please note the hysterical comparison between al-Qaeda and the Administration. Such over the top stupidity is lapped up by liberal blogs. It fits in perfectly with their worldview that the War on Terror is a sham and that al-Qaeda is no more a threat than the mugger in the park or rapist in the alley.

And believing that “Bill Clinton did what almost none of us have done in five years,” by giving the Democratic spin on 9/11 is either sly disingenuousness or Olbermann is oblivious to The Narrative. The “truth” being spun by liberal bloggers, pundits, media, and politicians has been non-stop for 5 years. To give Clinton a privileged position as truth teller is laughable.

More strained and putrid prose from Olbermann with Keith getting out the kneepads to service his hero:

Thus in his supposed emeritus years has Mr. Clinton taken forceful and triumphant action for honesty, and for us; action as vital and as courageous as any of his presidency; action as startling and as liberating, as any, by any one, in these last five long years.

“Forceful and Triumphant?” The awkwardness is embarrassing, jarring to the senses. By trying to sound Murrowesque, Olbermann ends up sounding like Elmer Fudd.

And I hope Clinton has the common decency to respond to Olbermann’s gooey eyed groveling. Such lap dog devotion should be rewarded with at least a Milk Bone or some other doggie treat.

Saving the most calumnious for last, Olbermann then offers up a shocking charge without one scintilla of evidence to back it up:

After five years of skirting even the most inarguable of facts—that he was president on 9/11 and he must bear some responsibility for his, and our, unreadiness, Mr. Bush has now moved, unmistakably and without conscience or shame, towards re-writing history, and attempting to make the responsibility, entirely Mr. Clinton’s.

Of course he is not honest enough to do that directly.

As with all the other nefariousness and slime of this, our worst presidency since James Buchanan, he is having it done for him, by proxy.

Thus, the sandbag effort by Fox News Friday afternoon.

No, you are not reading incorrectly. Keith Olbermann is accusing a major national news network of being in cahoots with the White House in an effort to “rewrite” history. He offers no proof of this conspiracy. No proof of this connection. No proof of anything at all, most especially that anyone is trying to “rewrite” anything.

Only in Olbermann’s hysterically juvenile fantasies (and those of his slavering supporters in the lefty blogosphere) does a recitation of the known facts - gathered by the 9/11 Commission, Richard Clark, and others - regarding the inconstancy, the hesitancy, the confusion, the misplaced priorities, the missed chances, and the suicidal underestimation of the capability of our enemies by the Clinton Administration become an effort for the Bushies to dodge responsibility for 9/11.

First of all, the historical record won’t let them. Nor will the historical record be unkind to Clinton’s efforts against terrorism which, despite its many flaws (flaws that when pointed out, for some reason, sends the left into paroxysms of apoplectic anger), at least recognized Bin Laden as a threat.

The fact of the matter is that the left saw a political opening via 9/11 (and found a way to negate the Administration’s political use of that date) and have attempted to shift the entire blame from Osama Bin Laden for the attacks and place it in the oval office. It has largely worked although I sense in the desperation of Clinton’s remarks as well as Olbermann’s rant that this rehash of arguments about 9/11 may be resonating with the American public. The semi-fictitious Path to 9/11, which has set off this debate, has people questioning the dominant lefty Narrative about 9/11 for the first time. It is this that Olbermann and Clinton are railing against; people re-examining the conventional wisdom and putting the American government’s response in a context detrimental to the political aspirations of Democrats.

But Olbermann’s charge of collusion between Fox and the White House is so ridiculous that only in the fringe fever swamps of the left will it get any play. In fact, an encouraging sign that some of the saner liberals are saying enough with regards to Olbermann’s ever more unbalanced “Special Comment” segment:

Knock knock.

Who’s there?

Key.

Key who?

Key-th Olbermann is as shrill as Tiny Tim sucking a balloon full of helium and then blowing sixty-four octaves above middle C on a giant dog whistle right in your ear. And not the original recording, mind you - the cover. By Alvin & The Chipmunks.

Um…’kay. At least their hearts are in the right place.

(NOTE: Apparently, I am mistaken. There are no sane lefties out there. Imagine my embarrassment in learning that at the link above, “Shrill” doesn’t mean “strident or intemperate.” Or perhaps it does mean that but it is seen as a badge of honor by some liberals. Kinda like “speaking truth to power” minus the truth and substituting ear muffs. Or maybe the truth is there but you leave out the speaking part. Actually, I believe that many liberals believe that acting and speaking like an ass should be their ultimate goal.

My head hurts…)

Allah is waiting for Olbermann to go completely off the rails and start spouting 9/11 conspiracy theories. He’s already had on as guests several leading truthers so that wouldn’t surprise me one bit. It is evident that Olbermann has given up on trying to impress the kind of liberals who grace the salons of the Upper West Side. The society folk like their Bush hatred warm but not too hot lest it scorch those whose humor tends more toward the cerebral rather than Olberman’s Punch and Bush show physicality.

But I have no doubt he will be handsomely rewarded by the netnuts who luxuriate in his laughable attempts at profundity while egging him on to ever greater heights of irrelevancy.

You almost want to avert your eyes when the inevitable crash comes but, like those of us who watch NASCAR solely for the spin-outs and pile-ups, the entertainment value of watching Olberman melt like the Wicked Witch of the West right before our eyes will be immensely satisfying.

As blogswarms go, the Clinton interview on Fox News Sunday rates about a 7 on the 10 point Rathergate Meter, easily the biggest blog brouhaha of the year. There may have been larger stories. But for sheer emotionalism, it’s hard to beat Clinton and his dredging up the old conspiracy theories about the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy out to get him. It cheers the left and riles the right like no other issue in American politics. In many ways, the unhinged opposition to the Bush Presidency is a direct result of the twin earthquakes of Clinton’s impeachment followed almost immediately by the 2000 election debacle, both events seen by the left in the context of evil conservatives attempting power plays at the expense of the Democrats.

Of course, the right views any talk of this “conspiracy” with a mixture of laughter and contempt. Unless one wants to accuse the Republican party of being a “conspiracy” or like minded conservative individuals and organizations working together to oust a President they believed to be corrupting the law, then the idea of any kind of secret cabal, plotting in the shadows to overthrow the government kind of loses its potency. It says volumes about both Hillary and Bill Clinton that they viewed the legitimate political activity of their opponents, most of which took place in the open and indeed, publicized to to the max as something dark and evil.

But this hearkening to the past by Clinton in his interview had a more contemporary goal; reminding Democrats and the nutroots of their shared outrage. It not only suits Clinton’s self image of the courageous Democrat standing in the breach beating back the evil Republicans who sought to bring him down (while opposing him at every turn in his anti-terrorism policies), it also rallies the left to a defense of his Presidency which may have taken a bigger hit than any of us realize thanks to the broadcast of ABC’s The Path to 9/11.

Indeed, whether the show has a political impact is beside the point; it certainly angered the ex-President who seemed eager to tee off on the bemused Wallace. The Fox reporter sat in his seat dumbfounded as the former most powerful man in the world wagged a beefy finger in his face and accused him of a “conservative hit job,” a remarkable accusation given that Wallace had only asked one question about Bin Laden. Coupled with the off the wall suggestion that Fox was only doing the interview with him to assuage the supposed anger of their viewership who might be upset by Rupert Murdochs support of his climate initiative, and you have a portrait of someone so self-obsessed that one can only shake their head in disbelief that someone that enthralled with himself could ever have achieved high office.

As for the diatribe itself, righty bloggers are all over Clinton’s charges made in the interview today as are some in the mainstream press. Clinton’s statement that Republicans opposed him when he sought to kill Bin Laden has been totally debunked. Jack Tapper quotes contemporary press reports that give quite a different picture of support for Clinton’s attack on Bin Laden.

I think the president did exactly the right thing,” said House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) said. “By doing this we’re sending the signal there are no sanctuaries for terrorists.” Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) called the attacks “appropriate and just,” and House Majority Leader Richard K. Armey (R-Tex.) said “the American people stand united in the face of terrorism.”

The AP says: “Gingrich dismissed any possibility that Clinton may have ordered the attacks to divert attention from the scandal. Instead, he said, there was an urgent need for a reprisal following the Aug. 7 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. ‘Anyone who watched the film of the bombings, anyone who saw the coffins come home knows better than to question this timing,’ Gingrich said. ‘It was done as early as possible to send a message to terrorists across the globe that killing Americans has a cost. It has no relationship with any other activity of any kind.’

Moreover, the story goes on to say that Gingrich adviser Rich Galen e-mailed to conservative radio talk show hosts that: “Speaker Newt Gingrich has made it clear to me” that the attacks were necessary and appropriate, Galen said. “This is a time to put our nation’s interests ahead of our political concerns. I am asking you to help your listeners, your friends, and your associates to look at this situation with the sober eyes it deserves.”

The real problem for Clinton was that the rest of the world didn’t believe him, not Republicans in Congress. And Patterico has a post that knocks down another Clinton/liberal charge; that Fox News never asked Bush Administration officials any of the same questions they asked him:

In 2004, Wallace asked almost the exact same question of Donald Rumsfeld that he asked Clinton today.

Here’s what Wallace asked Clinton today:

[H]indsight is 20 20 . . . but the question is why didn’t you do more, connect the dots and put them out of business?

And here is what Wallace asked Donald Rumsfeld on the March 28, 2004 episode of Fox News Sunday:

I understand this is 20/20 hindsight, it’s more than an individual manhunt. I mean — what you ended up doing in the end was going after al Qaeda where it lived. . . . pre-9/11 should you have been thinking more about that?

. . . .

What do you make of his [Richard Clarke’s] basic charge that pre-9/11 that this government, the Bush administration largely ignored the threat from al Qaeda?

. . . .

Mr. Secretary, it sure sounds like fighting terrorism was not a top priority.

Patterico also debunks another Clinton charge; that the Bushies were so unserious about terrorism that they fired Richard Clark, someone who, in retrospect, did indeed “get it” with regards to terrorism and Bin Laden.

Clarke was not fired; he was, in effect, demoted. When Bush took over, Clarke retained his title as “National Coordinator on Counter-terrorism” but Condi Rice demoted the position. After 9/11, Clarke requested a transfer out of frustration, and later left government and wrote a book, which contained bitter recriminations against Bush — and whose stories were elaborated and dressed up by Clarke as he hit the talk-show circuit.

So I’m left a bit baffled why Clinton thinks Clarke was “fired.” And it’s clear why Fox News Sunday never asked a Bush official why Clarke was “fired” — he wasn’t

No he wasn’t fired. But it is also true that Condi Rice, in an effort to marginalize Clark, downgraded his position. Rice didn’t want Clark with direct access to the President (as he had enjoyed in the Clinton Administration) because access is power in the White House and Rice was not up to sharing any with someone she looked upon with suspicion.

Regardless of whether Clinton’s charges are true or not (and most of them are not), the furor ignited by the confrontation is something the left has been dying for almost since Fox News started broadcasting. Indeed, the left would like nothing better than to use the issue to shine a light on what they perceive as the outrageous conservative bias of the Fox network.

I don’t watch much cable news anymore but when I did, I never felt that Fox’s reporting was slanted any more than CNN’s or any other network’s reporting. Even if this were the case, Fox almost always has representatives from both the right and the left to argue about the stories making news. Because of this, it has always been a mystery to me why the left feels so wronged by Fox. Prior to the practice of inviting representatives from both sides of an issue to debate it on the air, such a thing was never heard of on the nets. If CNN wanted analysis of a story, they either got another mainstream reporter to talk about it or some establishment liberal to comment. The only reason to have a conservative on was to savage him.

To this day, it puzzles me why the left goes ballistic over stories reported on Fox News. Regardless of why this is so, the liberals have been unable to get much traction with their charges - until now. When a popular ex-President says something about the bias of a network and those comments are widely disseminated throughout the country, I daresay that Clinton did more in 10 minutes to advance the left’s critique of Fox News than all their previous efforts combined.

But it is solidarity that Clinton seeks and, according to Ann Althouse, he apparently got it:

What’s struck me most, in the context of these recent events, is just how extremely *protective* of Clinton liberals (e.g. blogs & blog commenters) have become. This isn’t surprising, and it’s not a negative thing per se: cf. the protectiveness of Bush on the right, especially when he’s being assailed (unfairly & dishonestly, in their view) by the media. The comparison is illuminating, of course, because Bush does very little public self-defending against his harshest critics (and never complains of being ‘victimized’ by the media)– though of course commenters on the right do that for him. Clinton, with these recent actions, is (I think) trying to tap into a similar dynamic– e.g. trying to tap into the (surprising– and surprisingly mainstream) surge of protectiveness & feeling for him during the impeachment saga. (And lest we forget, that was the origin of moveon.org, wasn’t it.) . . .

I do think it’s likely that his latest public acts are a kind of strategic gamble, specifically directed at the left (rallying it for Hillary, who can then do what she needs to do to convince the center)– (and the left is eating it up aren’t they, he’s playing them like a piano)— more likely than that this last outburst was an ‘accident’ (esp. when the questioning was *so* to be expected– he himself practically *asked* for it, in making such a big deal of the 9/11 movie).

Glenn Reynolds thinks that the Clinton blow-up will affect the elections - negatively for the Democrats. I suppose it’s possible but I think it equally likely that it will once again unite Democrats in their shared outrage at what they see as the deviltry of their political opponents.

It should be interesting to watch both Fox ratings as well as how well Republicans poll over the next few weeks. Both could tell us much about what the American people are thinking as we head down the home stretch to the elections.