The Washington Post Gets Desperate
[posted by Justin Levine]
How a bogus newspaper article became a case for propagandist nonsense that has already been rehashed countless times over the years.
(This controversy is particularly frustrating to the many of us who feel that the WMD “stockplile” issue was ultimately irrelevant to the ultimate decision on whether or not to go to war in Iraq. But many seem to have to fit their analysis regarding the “reason we went to war” into a high concept sound bite. The motivations for human history are always far more complex.)
When I read this article I was stunned. How could what was essentially a PR piece for a book which contained nothing I haven’t heard many times before become a page one – above the fold – story?
No agenda journalism here. No editor either!
Charles Harkins (971090) — 4/3/2007 @ 12:04 pmSay, now that we’ve been in Iraq for four years, where is that yellowcake, anyway? And where was a program that could do anything with yellowcake even supposing Santa had brought it to Saddam for Christmas? All of the attempts to make Bush’s reliance on bogus, self-serving, and even forged, intelligence (in which I would include the Butler Report) founder on these two small, simple questions.
Andrew J. Lazarus (7d46f9) — 4/3/2007 @ 3:09 pmhehe!
Wow – you guys are desperate!
The Liberal Avenger (b8c7e2) — 4/3/2007 @ 3:13 pmNext story: Hillary brought affordable Universal Health Care during her husband’s first Presidential term.
Perfect Sense (b6ec8c) — 4/3/2007 @ 3:44 pmAmusingly, we did indeed find 550 tons of yellowcake. We didn’t find any of it highly refined.
But the response ‘there was nothing’ is sillyness too.
Al (b624ac) — 4/3/2007 @ 4:02 pm“The Liberal Avenger has learned that BlacquesJacquesShellacques recently sought significant numbers of automatic weapons from Africa.”
So lefties, what you gonna do if you find that old BlacquesJacquesShellacques is ‘seeking’ full auto assault rifles? How about if he has a history of looniness, torture and murder of lefties?
It’s a factor, isn’t it? Makes you a wee bit queasy doesn’t it, knowing that crazy right wingers are ‘seeking’ guns? That’s true even if we start looking in the wrong places, innit? Because sooner or later we’ll find some guns won’t we?
Lefties always apply logic identical to Bushes against their fellow citizens. “Our fellow citizens are seeking guns. Ban them.”
BlacquesJacquesShellacques (a1a544) — 4/3/2007 @ 4:29 pmIt certainly gets frustrating to keep revisiting this when what the President said was true, even backed up by Mr. Wilson in his verbal report to the CIA; not though in Mr. Wilson’s public statements which seems to be the media’s basis for any reporting on this issue. As to the total WMD issue for the invasion of Iraq, The UN resolutions over the 12 years were based almost exclusively on WMD, which Saddam had in 1991. The whole media discussion of the Iraq front on the GWOT then revolved around this single issue. It serves the media purposes since no “large” stockpiles were found. Only 55 gallon drums of insect repellent stored in munitions dumps. The congressional resolution lists many reasons, selectively ignore by the media, but a huge one was the violations of the cease fire including the attacks on the British and American aircraft patrolling in the no flight zones within Iraq.
amr (1f0f07) — 4/3/2007 @ 5:02 pmAbsolutely right, amr.
Another Drew (8018ee) — 4/3/2007 @ 5:45 pmSaddam had violated the Gulf War cease-fire so many times, his continued existance should not have been a question.
Virtually every SC resolution between 1991 and 2003 regarding Iraq was justification for invasion and regime change, since the government of Iraq (Mr. Hussein) was in violation.
What this imbrogilo demonstrates is that the Left has no spine – that there is nothing that they will stand up for (Can’t we all just get along?…wimper…wimper…wimper).
Dear Mr. Levine,
Thank you for bringing this to our attention. just wait until what we see as book and movie “reviews” come out for Mr. and Mrs. Wilson’s projects. (I guess project #2 for Mr.).
I have a question, naively perhaps, but nonetheless serious.
If Michael Moore (the Hollywood one, not the many others who bear the burden of having the same first and last names) and VP Gore can win awards for “documentaries” that are full of hogwash, why can’t somebody actually do a documentary with facts, fighting fire with fire?
Seriously, I bequeth this idea, FWIW, to you and any colleagues who wish to entertain the idea:
“Documentary style” coverage of all the things the MSM, Plame and Wilson, etc., etc., have said concerning Iraq. The info is being presented as truth. But, in addition, the “documentary” is being viewed by people pointing out the false claims and nailing them on it. (Easily can be done with better academic referencing than stated producers above). It could be a “who’s who” of the blogging world as well, contributing the various aspects.
This idea came to mind listening to Valerie Plame state she could work at Langley and still be covert because “they are taught how to spot people tailing them, and things like that”. Well, jolly good that she can look in her rear view mirror after pulling out of Langley and see someone is tailing her. What is she going to do, use the 007 oil slick, RPG, or machine guns??
The hope is the attention span would be captivated by entertainment long enough to actually slip facts in. (Any who do not know what “facts” are can look in any dictionary. I understand it is an endangered, perhaps archaic, concept, rarely used after 1984).
I would even pay to see that one.
MD in Philly (3d3f72) — 4/3/2007 @ 6:05 pmIt is not news that on a bright clear morning, what appeared to be earnest, young Muslim men, citizens of the world, crashed planes and killed 3000 Americans. They were not what they appeared to us to be. Just as examples, as CAIR shows in the Minnessota incident, similalrly to the Danish cartoon flap, we are told our perception is ‘racist.’ We must bend our perceptions, deny them, but this makes us angry, so we displace our allegaton and our anger. We can say, “Bush lied; people died,” and so we do.
Michael (80aff3) — 4/3/2007 @ 7:06 pmI just saw this Eisner on TV hawking his book. I thought I was in the Wayback Machine or something.
Patricia (824fa1) — 4/3/2007 @ 8:13 pmConned or con man?…
On National Public Radio on Wednesday afternoon, NPR Senior News Analyst Daniel Schorr had this to say (hyperlinks and emphasis mine): [Elisabetta] Burba is a reporter for an Italian news magazine that provided the American embassy in Rome with one of …
BeldarBlog (72c8fd) — 4/5/2007 @ 12:44 am