Category Archives: Media

#IraqWar Liars: We Knew Then What We Know Now

Bush, Iraq, Journalism, Just War, Media, Republicans, WMD

“Iraq Liars & Deniers: We Knew Then What We Know Now” is the current column, now on WND. An excerpt:

“If we knew what we know today, we would not have gone into Iraq”: This is as good an apology Republicans vying for the highest office are willing to offer, 12 years after launching a war that was immoral and unjust from the inception—as some of us pointed out from the inception—cost trillions in treasure, tens of thousands of lives (American and Iraqi), and flouted America’s national interests.

The big reveal began with Jeb Bush, who told anchor Megyn Kelly that knowing what we know now about Iraq, he would absolutely still have invaded Iraq. Broadcaster Laura Ingraham was having none of it. With the benefit of hindsight, she had arrived at the belated conclusion that the invasion was wrong. Ingraham suggested that Bush III was insane for sticking to his guns about Iraq.

Next to disgrace was Sen. Marco Rubio, also in the running. Six weeks back, Rubio had been unrepentant about the catastrophic invasion. After The Shaming of Jeb, Rubio changed his tune.

The title of Judith Chalabi Miller’s “rehab book tour” is, “If we knew what we now know … .” Over the pages of the New York Times, Miller, the Gray Lady’s prized reporter had shilled for the Iraq war like there was no tomorrow. In her reporting, she channeled Ahmad Chalabi, an Iraqi conman who fed the moronic Miller with misinformation and lies about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction (WMD). The other conman was Bush II, president at the time. His administration assisted Miller—a woman already prone to seeing faces in the clouds—to tune-out and become turned-on and hot for war (also the title of a January 2003, “Return To Reason” column). No tale was too tall for our Judith; no fabrication too fantastic.

Miller’s “mistakes,” and those of America’s news cartel, are no laughing matter. But it took a Comedy Central icon to deconstruct her national bid for redemption. The fact that others were on board, Republicans and Democrats, is not exculpatory. Idiocy is bipartisan. Not everybody got it wrong. Miller and her ilk chose not to consult those who got it right.

Miller had company. The Fox News war harpies were certainly a dream come true for many American men. Who cared about honest reporting or basic fact-checking when a heaving bosom is yelling from the screen, “Sock it to Saddam, Dubya!”?

In any event, the meme, “If we knew what we know now, we would not have gone to war in Iraq,” is false; a lie. We most certainly knew what we know now as far back as 2002, which was when this column wrote:

Iraq is a secular dictatorship profoundly at odds with Islamic fundamentalism. No less an authority than the former head of the CIA’s counterterrorism office, Vincent Cannistraro, stated categorically that there was no evidence of Iraq’s links to al-Qaeda. Even the putative Prague meeting between Mohamed Atta, the ringleader of Sept. 11, and Iraqi intelligence, turned out to be bogus. … Iraq has been 95-percent disarmed and has no weapons of mass destruction, an assessment backed by many experts in strategic studies.

The column excerpted was published on September 19, 2002, in Canada’s national newspaper. On that day, the flirty notes and the gracious dinner invitations from America’s leading neoconservatives ceased.

Indeed, there were many experts, credible ones, who categorically rejected the contention that there were WMD in Iraq. But they were silenced …

… Read the rest. “Iraq Liars & Deniers: We Knew Then What We Know Now” is now on WND.

Our Commoner Commentariat Discuss #MurdersinWoodleyPark

Crime, Media

Woodley Park, in Upper Northwest Washington, is where a family of four was murdered and their multimillion-dollar house set alight. Yes, it is a tony neighborhood. Reports repeat that the home targeted is “blocks away from the home of Vice-President Joe Biden.”

It transpires that our commoner commentariat—pukes such as Dana Perino and Juan Williams—are no strangers to these rarefied zip codes. They live in the vicinity, all the while championing the common American and pretending they’re “one of us.”

What’s perplexing is that these phonies have a following (of zombies).

In any case, “Police have named a man they believe held [the] family and housekeeper hostage in their home before killing them: Daron Dylon Wint, 34.”

Pamela Geller Offends Shariah Media

Constitution, Europe, Free Speech, Islam, Jihad, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Media, Political Correctness, Propaganda

There’s a “FRENCH CONNECTION” and a “RED CONNECTION”—both bad—in “Pamela Geller Goes Against Sharia Media,” the current column, now on WND. An excerpt:

Sandhya SomethingOrAnother is a “social change” reporter for The Washington Post. (Yes, the WaPo has such a beat.) Ms. Somashekhar (her surname copied and pasted) implied that WND columnist Pamela Geller ought to repent for staging a Muhammad Art Exhibit and Cartoon Contest in Garland, Texas, an event that was briefly attended by two, uninvited ISIS-Americans. Sandhya must have been angry because she called Geller, in error, “a housewife from Long Island.” Progressives don’t much like housewives.

Like most Geller haters, Somashekhar (her name copied and pasted) cited the Southern Poverty Law Center as her “scholarly” source for Geller’s hatefulness. The SPLC is a “leftist vigilante group,” explained Paul Gottfried, a real scholar. It is “unmistakably totalitarian in the drive to suppress and destroy deviationists from the party line on race, gender, and ‘discrimination.’” The “$PLC” is as dodgy in its financial dealings as it is in its strong-arming tactics. (Read “Is The Southern Poverty Law Center ($PLC) The Next Financial Bubble?”)

“Stupid,” ruled a less obscure enforcer of political correctness, Bill O’Reilly, on Geller’s event. Also at Fox News, host Martha MacCallum suggested Geller ought to have explored kinder, gentler ways of protesting Islam-imposed restrictions on expression.

Pantomime, perhaps?

The left-liberal Jon Stewart took the safe route. The idiotic urge to kill over any annoyance was the object of the satirist’s spoof. Stewart’s Thou Shall Not Kill skit was hardly cutting-edge comedy. So he livened up the tired shtick with a curtsy in the direction of the Prophet’s avengers. Geller’s group, The American Freedom Defense Initiative, was about hate speech, warned Stewart.

The biggest clown in the media circus, however, was TV anchor Chris Cuomo. While Geller staged her vital challenge in private; Cuomo, a lawyer, flaunted his “smarts” in public. He tweeted that “hate speech” was unprotected by the Constitution. Not everyone was speechless. Another of CNN’s cretins, Alisyn Camerota, stood squarely in the corner of the victims: those poor ISIS-Americans whose descent into hell was hastened by a guard at Geller’s Garland cartoon contest.

It was difficult to tell what it was about Pamela Geller’s position on impolite and impolitic speech—echoed in the 1st Amendment in the Bill of Rights—that so puzzled Camerota …

… Read the complete column, “Pamela Geller Goes Against Sharia Media,” on WND.

Sycophants’ Supper, 2015 & Cecily Weak

Affirmative Action, Celebrity, Ethics, Journalism, Media

The nitworks have been all guffaws and genuflection in anticipation of their correspondent’ participation in what I call the “Sycophant’s Supper.” Other than to reproduce my annual post distilling the essence of the event, I’m pleased to report that “the un-watchful dogs of the media” have at last begun to ask whether they indeed have any business frolicking with the president and his minions. Here’s how the dolled up twits at CNN are parsing their craven, journalistic co-optation, annually, at the event, and all year round:

Should the press party with those they cover?

Something along those lines.

Barely A Blog’s annual Sycophant’s Supper post reminds our readers of the following:

Almost all—your favorite opinionators, too—attend the annual Sycophant’s Supper, where they cozy up to Kim Kardashian and Beyoncé Knowles. (Kudos to the few, such as former NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw, who’ve excoriated the annual White House Correspondents’ Dinner, or who’ve refused to attend, irrespective of the political affiliation of the man ensconced in the White House.)

The annual White House Sycophants’ Dinner is where the most pretentious people in the country—in politics, journalism and entertainment—convene to revel in their ability to petition and curry favor with one another, usually to the detriment of the rest of us in Rome’s provinces. Those gathered at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, or its Christmas party, are not the country’s natural aristocracy, but its authentic Idiocracy.

The events and the invited say a great deal about the press, its ethics and code of conduct. Like nothing else, the Sycophant’s Supper is a mark of a corrupt politics and press, as the un-watchful dogs of the media have no business frolicking with the president and his minions. This co-optation, however, is the hallmark of the celebrity press, in general. The days following these glitzy events, the Gilded Ones spend genuflecting to … themselves.

As for this affirmative action stand-up comic: WTF!!!!!!!! And I thought Jimmie Fallon’s Millenial humor was weak. Fallon is Jay Leno compared to this bleating bimbo.