🚀 go-pugleaf

On 2007-06-29 20:22:37 -0400, Mike Smith <mws@wt.net> said:

> On Fri, 29 Jun 2007 16:14:35 -0400, Slim <slim@pickins.com> wrote:
> 
>> On 2007-06-27 20:21:14 -0400, Mike Smith <mws@wt.net> said:
>> 
>>> On Wed, 27 Jun 2007 22:33:44 GMT, leroyblue@pillinor.net wrote:
>>> 
>>>> On Tue, 26 Jun 2007 01:27:42 -0500, David Agnew
>>>> <DavidAgnew@nospam.nul> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>>> LOL
>>>>> 
>>>>> Posted on Tue, Jun. 26, 2007
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> GOP Senator Says Iraq Plan Not Working
>>>>> 
>>>>> ANNE FLAHERTY The Associated Press
>>>> 
>>>> The Senator is up for re-election and is playing politics. THE
>>>> ASSOCITED PRESS! You have got to be kidding. There isn't a more
>>>> anti-American propaganda machine in existence.
>>> 
>>> 
>>> Yes there is...
>>> 
>>> Reuters.
>> 
>> What about Foreigner Murdoch's FOX Empire?
>> 
>> The biggest liars network of all time.
> 
> Post 1 lie from that news site.
> If, as you mindlessly claim, they are the biggest liars out there,
> this should be an easy "task" for you to attempt to complete.


 

Fibbing It Up at Fox
by Dale Steinreich

Flat out lies should be confronted
~ Bill O'Reilly; Fox News Channel; May 22, 2003
Since the Iraq conflict began on March 20, Fox News has been on a 
mission to legitimize it.  One problem for Fox's protracted apologia is 
that despite promises of evidence of current weapons of mass 
destruction (WMDs) by the Bush Administration, the evidence has been 
ambiguous at best.  Unfortunately for the network, I’ve been keeping a 
scratch diary of their reports since the war began.
Keep in mind that in the first three weeks of March, before the bombs 
started officially dropping, Fox was spreading all sorts of Pentagon 
propaganda.  Iraq had "drones" that it could quickly dispatch to major 
U.S. metropolitan areas to spread biological agents.  Saddam was 
handing out chemical weapons to the Republican guard to use against 
coalition troops in a last-ditch red-zone ring around Baghdad.  Given 
what we now know about Iraq, these reports seem to be laughable 
fantasies, but they were effective in securing public backing for the 
war.  The following is a short chronicle of lies, propagation of lies, 
exaggerations, distortions, spin, and conjecture presented as fact.  My 
comments are in brackets [ ]s.

March 14:  On The Fox Report anchor 
Shepard Smith reports that Saddam is planning to use flood water as a 
weapon by blowing up dams and causing severe flood damage.

March 19:  
Fox anchor Shepard Smith reports that Iraqis are planning to detonate 
large stores of napalm buried deep below the earth to scorch coalition 
forces.   Fox Military Analyst Major Bob Bevelacqua states that 
coalition forces will drop a MOAB on Saddam's bunker [!!] and give him 
the "Mother of All Sunburns." 
[After my last article, one sniveling neocon after another wrote me to 
tell me I was unqualified to assess defense matters because I wasn't a 
"defense analyst" (never mind that the article wasn't on the war, and 
the "real" defense experts made one wrong prediction after another on 
this war).  It's interesting how these sniveling Frumsters cheer on the 
college-uneducated Hannity and Limbaugh when they make defense analyses 
supporting the neocon view.  I do know enough to say that the informed 
Bevelacqua's suggestion that a MOAB would be used on a bunker was 
puzzling to say the least (given the reports of less-than-dazzling 
performance of daisy cutters outside caves in Tora Bora).  Anyway, 
later reports confirmed that GBU-28 bunker busters were used during The 
Decapitation That Apparently Failed.]   
March 23: The network begins 2 days of unequivocal assertions that a 
100-acre facility discovered by coalition forces at An Najaf is a 
chemical weapons plant.   Much is made about the fact that it was booby 
trapped.  A former UN weapons inspector interviewed on camera over the 
phone downplays the WMD allegations and says that booby-trapping is 
common.  His points are ignored as unequivocal charges of a chemical 
weapons facility are made on Fox for yet another day (March 24).  Only 
weeks later is it briefly conceded that the chemicals definitively 
detected at the facility were pesticides.

[Jennifer Eccleston has to 
be the worst reporter employed by any network.  She began one segment 
with a "Hi there!" – in no response to any segue from the relaying 
anchor at Fox headquarters in New York.  Her bangs are long and 
constantly blowing in her face in the wind.  Her head wobbles from side 
to side with her nose tracing out a figure 8 all the while arbitrarily 
syncopating a monotone voice with overemphasis on the last syllables of 
different words (e.g., Bagh-DAD’).  The old, white-haired flag-waving 
yahoos like her not for her professionalism – she has none – but 
because of her innocent Britney Spearsesque beauty; i.e., she's a 
typical young piece of meat which dirty old men with too much time on 
their hands fantasize about.]
March 24:  Oliver North reports that the staff at the French embassy in 
Baghdad are destroying documents.  [How could he know this?] 
March 24: Fox and Friends. Anchor Juliet Huddy asks Colonel David hunt 
why coalition forces don't "blow up" Al Jazeera TV. [The context of the 
discussion makes it clear that she doesn't know the difference between 
Al Jazeera and Iraqi TV!!!! Juliet Huddy is a beautiful woman but not 
very bright.]
March 28:  Repeated assertions by Fox News anchors of a red ring around 
Baghdad in which Republican Guard forces were planning to use chemical 
weapons on coalition forces.  A Fox "Breaking News" flash reports that 
Iraqi soldiers were seen by coalition forces moving 55-gallon drums 
almost certainly containing chemical agents.
April 7:  Fox, echoing NPR, reports that U.S. forces near Baghdad have 
discovered a weapons cache of 20 medium-range missiles containing sarin 
and mustard gas.   Initial tests show that the deadly chemicals are not 
"trace elements."
[In the coming weeks, this embarrassing non-discovery is quickly 
stomped down the Memory Hole.  The missiles were never mentioned again.]
April 9:  The crowd around coalition troops toppling the Saddam statue 
in Baghdad looks strangely sparse despite the network's assertions to 
the contrary.  The perspective is always in close and even then there 
is no mob storming the statue to hit it with their shoes. Just a 
handful of people.  It's constantly asserted that there's a huge 
crowd.  [I'm perplexed.  Where's the huge crowd?!]
April 10:  Fox "Breaking News" report of weapons-grade plutonium found 
at Al Tuwaitha.  [In the coming weeks this "discovery" was 
expeditiously shoved down the Memory Hole as well.]
April 10 (2:59 EDT):  A report noting with surprise "how little" the 
Iraqis were celebrating the coalition invasion.  [An interesting 
contradiction of the allegations of widespread celebration just the day 
before with the toppling of the Saddam statue.]
April 10 (3 p.m. EDT: Reporter Rick Leventhal)  Fox "Breaking News" 
report:  A mobile bioweapons lab is found.  Video of a tiny tan 
truck—about the size of the smallest truck that U-Haul rents – which 
had its cargo bed and fuel tank shot up with bullets after a looter 
tried to drive it away. Repeated assertions that this is most 
definitely a "bioweapons" lab.  A graphic sequence is shown of a large 
Winnebago-type vehicle that is massive compared to the tiny truck 
found.  The irony of this escapes the Fox newscasters and defense 
"experts." 
[This was the first "bioweapons lab" found, not the larger one later 
found in Mosul.  A week later it is briefly conceded that the tiny 
truck was probably never a bio weapons lab, but promises that real ones 
will pour forth from the landscape continue.  The second phantom lab, a 
large tractor-trailer truck was discovered around May 2 by Kurdish 
fighters.]
April 10:  To show that France is in bed with Saddam Hussein, Fox 
begins running old footage of Saddam Hussein's September 1975 trip to 
Paris to meet with Jacques Chirac and tour a nuclear power plant.  
[Because Fox strives so hard to be "Fair and Balanced," it's all the 
more curious how it fails to inform its audience about another trip 
four years later, this one to Baghdad on December 19, 1983 made by 
Reagan envoy and then former secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld (see 
pic below).  The network again, because it's so very "Fair and 
Balanced," also inexplicably forgot to tell its audience about another 
trip by Rummy to Baghdad, this time on March 24, 1984, the very same 
day that a U.N. team found that Iraqi forces had used mustard gas laced 
with a nerve agent on Iranian soldiers.  Rummy obviously wasn't too 
concerned about the charges of gassing, as in 1986 when he was 
considering a run for the Republican presidential nomination of 1988, 
he listed his restoration of diplomatic relations with WMD-using Iraq 
as one of his proudest achievements. 
But all that's an eternity ago for Imperial Conservatives with a 
20-second attention span.  The Fox newscasters rename Jacques Chirac 
"Jacques Iraq"(yuk, yuk, yuk – what a side splitter!) and keep going.] 
April 7:  Repeated ominous footage of barrels buried in a below-ground 
shed near Karbala.  The implication is that the Iraqi landscape is 
replete with these types of shelters, all of them brimming with 
evidence of chemical weapons.  [These were revealed to be agricultural 
chemicals as well.]
April 13:  Fox Graphic:  "Bush:  Syria Harboring Chemical 
Weapons."

[My favorite Fox war commentator is definitely Colonel David 
Hunt.  From my canvassing of all the cable network war coverage, it's 
hard to find an analyst who is more dogmatic.  When coalition forces 
weren’t greeted with hugs and kisses like he predicted and instead 
encountered stiff resistance from Iraqi forces in Basra and other 
places, Davey was all denial.  Everything’s going perfect.  Rummy is 
God, hallelujah and praise Dubya!  There's not a problem in Iraq that 
can't be solved by blowing some Iraqi's brains out.]
April 15:  Fox analyst Mansoor Ijaz claims that the top 55 Iraqi 
leaders (along with the whole stash of chemical and biological WMDs 
they have taken with them) are now living it up in Latakia, Syria.  
[This is the same 55 that appeared on the deck of cards and is still 
being captured – far from all living it up in Syria.]  On The Fox 
Report anchor Shepard Smith completely breaks with any pretense of 
objectivity and openly mocks actor Tim Robbins after playing an excerpt 
of Robbins' speech to the National Press Club.  "Oh, that was so 
powerful!" Smith mocked.  [Impressive objectivity there, Mr. 
Smith.]

April 16:  Fred Barnes on Special Report with Brit Hume blames 
the looting of the Iraqi National Museum on the museum staff.  [Right 
now there are so many claims and counterclaims about the looting it's 
hard to tell what happened.  In a Fox segment on May 19 a coalition 
official asserted that 170,000 items were definitely not missing.  Of 
course he refused to give a ballpark estimate of what was missing, 
which he'd surely have in order to plausibly deny that the original 
estimate was wrong.]   
April 18:  Bill O'Reilly opens his show calling Iraqis "ungrateful." 
April 21:  Bill O'Reilly opens his show calling Iraqi Shiites 
"ungrateful SOBs" and "fanatics."  He concludes that "[we] can't 
tolerate a fundamentalist state" in Iraq. 
[Whoa, O'Reilly.  I thought we promised the Iraqis that we were going 
to implement democracy, not democracy that gives the U.S. the election 
results it wants.  That's not democracy, now, is it?  By now it's quite 
clear that despite the spinning on The No Spin Zone, Iraq is descending 
into chaos.]

April 22:  Lt. Colonel Robert Maginnis states on The 
O'Reilly Factor that the probability of finding WMDs is a 10 out of 
10.  [This is the same Robert Maginnis who predicted a double-ring 
defense of Baghdad in the Washington Times on January 7.]  O'Reilly 
states that if no WMDs are found within a month from today, then that 
spells big trouble.  O'Reilly promises to explore the issue a month 
later.   [Cool, let's hold his feet to the fire on that promise.  On an 
earlier show he said that U.S. credibility would be "shot" if no WMDs 
were found. ]
May 8: Fox News Military Analyst Major General Paul Vallely states on 
The O’Reilly Factor that "Middle East agents" have told him that Iraq’s 
WMDs along with 17 mobile weapons labs (1 of which was captured around 
May 2) are now buried in the Bakaa Valley in Syria 30 meters 
underground.  He also claims that France helped Iraqi leaders escape to 
Europe by providing them with travel papers [a charge that even the 
Pentagon later denies although it's apparent that's where Vallely got 
his information].
May 11:  On The Fox Report with Rick Folbaum it is conceded that the 
nefarious captured trailer contains not a shred of evidence of WMDs, 
but Folbaum hints that what’s important is that the trailer could have 
been used to make them.  [Hmmm.  I thought we went to war for actual 
WMDs, not for the ability to make WMDs.]
May 16:  Special Report with Brit Hume.  Muslims, citing Islam's ban of 
alcohol, are torching liquor stores and threatening their Christian 
owners.   Under Saddam's secular regime, Christian names were banned 
and schools were nationalized, but guns and alcohol were freely 
available; there was tolerance for Iraq's 1 million Catholic and 
Protestant Christians.  In New and Improved Neocon Iraq, there's a 
letter circulating in Baghdad threatening violence to even the families 
of women who refuse to wear the traditional Muslim head covering.  [The 
report is yet another interesting and reluctant concession of 
unintended consequences.]                
May 19:  O'Reilly discusses a number of inflammatory and bogus charges 
that were floated in the U.S. media about France (e.g., France supplied 
Iraq with precision switches used in nuclear weapons, French companies 
sold spare parts to Iraq for military planes and helicopters, France 
possessed illegal strains of smallpox, France helped Iraqi leaders 
escape to Europe by providing them with travel papers).  Recall this 
last charge was made by Major General Paul Vallely on May 8 on The 
O'Reilly Factor.  Again, the Pentagon denies all such charges although 
much of the Beltway thinks it's obvious that the Pentagon is the source 
of them.  O'Reilly claims that Vallely is only irresponsible if the 
charges don't turn out to be true.  O'Reilly refers to documents that 
prove that the French government was briefing Saddam right until the 
war started. [Briefed on what?]
May 20:  O'Reilly concedes that the Private Jessica Lynch rescue story 
could be a fraud, as asserted by the BBC and Los Angeles Times 
columnist Robert Scheer.  "Somebody is lying," he states.  He says that 
if the U.S. military has concocted a fraud, then it will be a terrible 
scandal but if the BBC and Scheer are wrong, nothing will happen to 
them.  He says he is skeptical of the BBC and Scheer. 

To prove his 
point he brings on no other than Colonel David Hunt.  [Geez.  
Transcript here.]  Over and over, Hunt calls the allegations of staged 
rescue an "assail on the finest soldiers in the world."  He claims that 
the ambulance with Lynch in it that drove up to a Marine checkpoint was 
never shot at, its drivers demanded $10,000 for information on Jessica, 
Saddam Hospital was guarded by uniformed Iraqi soldiers and Fedayeen, 
Jessica's life was saved, and coalition forces didn't trash the 
hospital.  What were his sources for this information?  The special ops 
members on the raid, some of whom are his friends and former 
colleagues.  Over and over Hunt kept saying, "They're the best soldiers 
in the world, they're the best in the world.  Why would they make this 
up?" 
[What followed next was an exchange that's priceless and one of many 
that goes by far too un-analyzed on Fox every day:]

Hunt:  In my 
opinion it's an assault, an effrontery to the finest men and women in 
our service, it's an assault on Jessica, it's an assault on these great 
guys, these great special operations guys ... at a minimum we should no 
longer buy the L.A. Times, no longer buy the Toronto Free Press, and 
shut the BBC off.  It's a government to government issue...this is 
calling into question the veracity of the finest soldiers in the world 
and it's uncalled for, it's absolutely unbelievable."
O'Reilly:  If you [Hunt] turn out to be right, nothing will happen to 
Scheer...he'll just go along blithely printing his lies and living his 
life and getting paid for it.

[To the Colonel:  U.S. special ops 
soldiers may be the best in the world at what they do, but how does it 
logically follow from that assessment that particular actions taken 
during the raid were not excessive and unjustified?   How is the BBC's 
story an assault on Jessica?!  What do you mean when you mention a 
"government to government issue" given that the U.S. government now 
controls Iraq?!  Is the Pentagon the most effective check on its own 
possible misdeeds?   How convenient if you're suggesting that it is.  
Who is your source that Iraqi doctors were trying to ransom Jessica?  
Why hasn't this allegation made its way into any other news reports?]
[To O'Reilly:  If the raid does turn out to be mostly staged, there'll 
be no terrible scandal precisely because you, Fox News, and the 
Pentagon will assert just the opposite and allow yet another 
embarrassment to slide into the Memory Hole.  This is exactly why your 
demand for accountability from the BBC and L.A. Times is so hollow and 
hypocritical.  Instead of plumbing the U.S. military to investigate 
itself, why don't you interview Iraqi doctor Harith al-Houssona as the 
London Times did on April 16 (where the story was first broken, not by 
the BBC or Robert Scheer) who actually saved Lynch's life instead of 
the U.S. special ops who could have jeopardized it?  The 
doctor testifies that all Iraqi forces left the day before the raid and 
that Jessica was delivered by an ambulance that had to return to the 
hospital because it was shot at by Marines.  Why would he lie?  You say 
you automatically trust the Pentagon.   Why, when tales of Lynch's 
heroics in fighting off 500 Iraqi soldiers with one hand while severely 
wounded and tales that she had amnesia have already been proven bogus?]
May 22 (5:54 a.m. CDT):  Richard King, a military doctor, appears on 
Fox and Friends with promises by the show's hosts that he will verify 
that the Jessica Lynch rescue wasn't staged.  King doesn't prove 
anything.  He states that he arrived at Saddam Hospital the day after 
the rescue, concedes damage and mal-treatment of doctors at the 
hospital, and that he "was told " that the hospital was guarded by 
hostile forces but doesn't specify who told him.  [The testimony of the 
hospital staff contradicts this last hearsay.]                     
May 22:  O'Reilly fails to live up to his promise to make a big stink 
if no WMDs are found by today.  In his Talking Points Memo he wonders 
why the U.S. has caught such informed Iraqis as Dr. Germ and Ms. 
Anthrax and has gotten no leads.  He states that more time is needed 
[contradicting what he said more than a month ago, when he said that if 
no WMDs were found after 2 months U.S. credibility would be "shot" and 
there would be big trouble].   He ends his Memo saying Bush must 
candidly address the situation soon. 
June 2:  [Unfortunately for O'Reilly, Bush isn't candidly explaining 
anything.]  A video clip on Fox and Friends is shown with Bush in 
Poland claiming that "[w]e found" weapons of mass destruction.  His 
evidence?  Two trailers found near Mosul that were supposedly used as 
mobile bioweapons labs.  [A June 7 article by the Times' Judith Miller 
reports serious doubts by some analysts that the two trailers were used 
as mobile bioweapons labs.   Said one senior analyst about the initial 
CIA report, it "was a rushed job and looks political."   Yes, they 
violated U.N. resolutions but this is another red herring to suggest 
WMDs.]      
June 4:  O'Reilly's Talking Points Memo:  [Surreal.]  O'Reilly says 
that the WMD issue has now been politicized [!!].   The war was a just 
war because there's now great progress between Palestinians and 
Israelis and that alone made the war worthwhile [?!!].  Also the mass 
graves and other horrors discovered add to the case for war.  The 
intelligence was either wrong or more time is needed to find the WMDs.  
[Again contradicting what he said on and before April 22.]
June 11:  Fox reports a bus blast in Jerusalem caused by Hamas, killing 
15 and wounding at least 100.  [Looks like the real reason for war 
according to O'Reilly (Israeli-Palestinian peace) has also 
disintegrated, but don't expect O'Reilly to admit it.]

 




-- 
"Naturally the common people don't want war: Neither in Russia, nor in 
England, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after 
all, IT IS THE LEADERS of the country who determine the policy and it 
is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a 
democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist 
dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to 
the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is TELL 
THEM THEY ARE BEING ATTACKED, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of 
patriotism and exposing the country to danger. IT WORKS THE SAME IN ANY 
COUNTRY."
 
--Goering at the Nuremberg Trials