Stephanie
Diamond Member
- Jul 11, 2004
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Sums things up rather nicely
Posted 6/12/2006
The Media: One of the pundits' favorite adjectives to describe President Bush, especially when it comes to the Iraq war, is "incurious." Not only is the characterization wildly inaccurate, but look who's talking.
It's a key tenet of responsible journalism that those who practice it should be curious. Sadly, if you take such job descriptions for granted, you're likely to be disappointed.
As it happens, if journalists want to stay tight with their anti-war colleagues, they have to keep repeating a false narrative about what's happened in Iraq since 2003.
We thought about this as we read Joe Klein's review in Sunday's New York Times of former New Republic editor Peter Beinart new book on why only liberals can truly fight terrorism. Beinart, a liberal who once supported the Iraq War, "wanted to prevent Saddam Hussein from acquiring nuclear weapons, which was reasonable. He also hoped the American-led invasion might produce an admirable democratic government in Iraq, which was not."
This, to us, perfectly sums up the media's conventional wisdom: We're supposed to believe the U.S.-led invasion failed and did not create conditions for "an admirable democratic government."
Yet Klein fails to note the Iraqi government now in power was put there by a greater percentage of voters than typically participate in American elections. Or that Iraq's government completed its Cabinet just days before Klein's condemnation of it appeared.
There's something incurious, even offensive, about such comments. Don't bother Klein and others in the media with real events. To them, the war is just wrong, an error by an errant president.
Klein isn't the worst offender. The mainstream media's constant meme that Saddam possessed no weapons of mass destruction and that he had no ties to al-Qaeda claims that formed the Bush-led coalition's main reasons for war seems to have fixed a verdict that the war was a colossal blunder.
Of course, we do know Saddam used WMD on his own people. The only mystery is whether he exhausted his supply, while bluffing U.N. inspectors, or sent them out of the country. It's simply false to assert that Saddam didn't possess them, as the media routinely do.
Likewise, evidence of Saddam's ties to al-Qaeda grow by the day. The evidence layered itself into an Everest of documents from which the media have ignored in order to keep denying the link.
As we've noted numerous times, The Weekly Standard's Stephen Hayes has compiled the evidence in a book, "The Connection," that has never been refuted. And author Richard Miniter wrote in IBD's pages a lengthy chronicle of meetings between Saddam's operatives and Osama bin Laden's counterparts.
On Monday FoxNews.com reported that just-released Iraqi documents show the Taliban "welcomed 'Islamic relations with Iraq' to mediate among the Taliban, the Northern Alliance and Russia, and that the Taliban invited Iraqi officials to Afghanistan."
Fox's Ray Robinson notes the document "provides evidence of a cooperative, operational relationship agreed to at the highest levels of the Iraqi government and the Taliban." Not good enough?
The word also came Monday that al-Qaeda in Iraq announced a successor to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the depraved terrorist killed last week by U.S. bombs. It turns out, according to terrorism specialist Mark Eichenlaub, that Abu Aseel, a high-level intelligence officer "during Saddam Hussein's heyday," was also considered for the post.
And why not? Aseel had been meeting with Zarqawi since 2002, before the U.S.-led invasion. About the same time the media decided there was no Saddam-al-Qaeda connection. And stuck with the story.
http://www.investors.com/editorial/IBDArticles.asp?artsec=20&issue=20060612
Posted 6/12/2006
The Media: One of the pundits' favorite adjectives to describe President Bush, especially when it comes to the Iraq war, is "incurious." Not only is the characterization wildly inaccurate, but look who's talking.
It's a key tenet of responsible journalism that those who practice it should be curious. Sadly, if you take such job descriptions for granted, you're likely to be disappointed.
As it happens, if journalists want to stay tight with their anti-war colleagues, they have to keep repeating a false narrative about what's happened in Iraq since 2003.
We thought about this as we read Joe Klein's review in Sunday's New York Times of former New Republic editor Peter Beinart new book on why only liberals can truly fight terrorism. Beinart, a liberal who once supported the Iraq War, "wanted to prevent Saddam Hussein from acquiring nuclear weapons, which was reasonable. He also hoped the American-led invasion might produce an admirable democratic government in Iraq, which was not."
This, to us, perfectly sums up the media's conventional wisdom: We're supposed to believe the U.S.-led invasion failed and did not create conditions for "an admirable democratic government."
Yet Klein fails to note the Iraqi government now in power was put there by a greater percentage of voters than typically participate in American elections. Or that Iraq's government completed its Cabinet just days before Klein's condemnation of it appeared.
There's something incurious, even offensive, about such comments. Don't bother Klein and others in the media with real events. To them, the war is just wrong, an error by an errant president.
Klein isn't the worst offender. The mainstream media's constant meme that Saddam possessed no weapons of mass destruction and that he had no ties to al-Qaeda claims that formed the Bush-led coalition's main reasons for war seems to have fixed a verdict that the war was a colossal blunder.
Of course, we do know Saddam used WMD on his own people. The only mystery is whether he exhausted his supply, while bluffing U.N. inspectors, or sent them out of the country. It's simply false to assert that Saddam didn't possess them, as the media routinely do.
Likewise, evidence of Saddam's ties to al-Qaeda grow by the day. The evidence layered itself into an Everest of documents from which the media have ignored in order to keep denying the link.
As we've noted numerous times, The Weekly Standard's Stephen Hayes has compiled the evidence in a book, "The Connection," that has never been refuted. And author Richard Miniter wrote in IBD's pages a lengthy chronicle of meetings between Saddam's operatives and Osama bin Laden's counterparts.
On Monday FoxNews.com reported that just-released Iraqi documents show the Taliban "welcomed 'Islamic relations with Iraq' to mediate among the Taliban, the Northern Alliance and Russia, and that the Taliban invited Iraqi officials to Afghanistan."
Fox's Ray Robinson notes the document "provides evidence of a cooperative, operational relationship agreed to at the highest levels of the Iraqi government and the Taliban." Not good enough?
The word also came Monday that al-Qaeda in Iraq announced a successor to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the depraved terrorist killed last week by U.S. bombs. It turns out, according to terrorism specialist Mark Eichenlaub, that Abu Aseel, a high-level intelligence officer "during Saddam Hussein's heyday," was also considered for the post.
And why not? Aseel had been meeting with Zarqawi since 2002, before the U.S.-led invasion. About the same time the media decided there was no Saddam-al-Qaeda connection. And stuck with the story.
http://www.investors.com/editorial/IBDArticles.asp?artsec=20&issue=20060612
