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(Vol. Sixteen; No. 7) |
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Special Edition: America At War Saddam Besting Hypocrite Bush "Saddam has done remarkably well right now. In fact, the most remarkable achievement of the Bush administration so far has been creating quite a bit of worldwide sympathy for Saddam Hussein, who was until this war began perceived all over the world, including the Middle East, as just one horrible thug. Well, he's gotten quite a bit of sympathy and I suspect he wants to keep that sympathy, and I don't think he will be in the business of killing POWs....
We're Bullies for Not Losing "It seems to me that we're moving relatively freely toward Baghdad - you, General Myers, talked about we're 100 miles inside - there's reports of surrenders and that, with the attack on Wednesday, that we degraded Saddam's capability of communicating with his commanders. Yet, we keep talking about this overwhelming force that we're prepared to use. I'm wondering, are you concerned at all that we will be seen as a bully?" "One danger the administration may face in the next few days....is, the war is going so successfully and Iraq is putting up so little resistance, when we win, will it appear that we have been a bully, that we were, you know, we totally outmatched the other side, and if there are a lot of Iraqi casualties, that, of course, would dramatize that. But I think that's the one danger the administration must be worrying about now."
U.S. Bombing Like Dresden, 9/11 "That vista on the lower-left looks like Dresden, it looks like some of the firebombing of Japanese cities during World War II. There's another one. Still going on. You hear them overhead. Either jet aircraft or cruise missiles but yet another explosion." "To many New Yorkers, the scenes of a city under siege were achingly familiar. New Yorkers watching the televised bombing of Baghdad yesterday said they were riveted by the raw and uninterrupted display of American military might. But for some, the bombing brought back particularly visceral and chilling memories. They could not help thinking about Sept. 11, and how New York, too, was once under assault from the skies."
Leftists Are Ahead of the Curve "Across the country, citizens have been coming out to voice their opposition, all calling for the same things. They want government accountability, they want environmental justice, and most of all, they're calling for peace....While protesters like today are a statistical minority, in American history protests like this have been prescient indicators of the national mood. So the government may do well to listen to what's said today."
AP Writer Finds Saddam "Stirring" "With U.S.-led forces closing in on Baghdad, a composed Saddam Hussein tried to rally his people and his troops with a stirring address Monday in which he vowed that allied forces would be crushed and 'victory will be ours soon.'"
One Network's News Source Is Another's "Propaganda Machine" "Iraqi television is still on the air. They broadcast a statement from Saddam Hussein today. He urged peasants and his paramilitary guerillas, the Fedayeen, to kill the American invaders whatever way they can." "The Air Force blasted Iraqi TV with an experimental electromagnetic pulse device in an attempt to knock it off the air and shut down this propaganda machine which continues to show the regime is firmly in charge and ignores the fact that the American Army is almost literally at the gates."
Peter Pushes Protesters' Cause "There is a considerable body of opinion in the United States that thinks this war is a mistake and was opposed to the war. Very struck yesterday, huge ads in some of the nation's newspapers on the very eve of all this, being opposed to the war. History tells you that it's going to be very difficult for people who are opposed to the war to debate it now that the forces are in combat." Peter Jennings: "I suppose it makes sense that the time for debating the war or the future of the campaign is completely over."
Marxism for Dummies "By the way, 'No blood for oil,' from many people who are opposed to the war is, is not complicated at all. They believe the United States wishes to occupy Iraq in the long term to have the oil. Just so we understand why they wear those little buttons, 'No blood for oil.'"
Arnett Buys Another Iraqi Promise "This morning the Trade Minister Mohammed Saleh told us in a press conference that President Saddam Hussein had personally ordered that these [U.S.] prisoners [of war] be treated well. The Iraqis are aware that there is increasing American concern about the treatment of their people that are being held, a total of I believe, seven now. The Trade Minister said Saddam wants them given the best medicine and the best food."
Can You Handle Koppel's Truth? "We ought to take note of the significance of what is happening here because this is an invasion that in this particular case, of course, was not prompted by any invasion of the United States. I know that members of the administration have been creating a tenuous linkage between al-Qaeda and the Iraqis so that there is that linkage between 9/11 and what's happening here now, but this is a more pro-active, pre-emptive kind of operation, certainly a larger pre-emptive operation than I think the United States of America has ever engaged in and whichever way it goes I think it's going to shift the plates of the world." "There is no reason to believe that ultimately, perhaps even in the next week or two, U.S. forces will not prevail. But success will come at a significant cost. Forget the easy victories of the last twenty years; this war is more like the ones we knew before. The President has determined that U.S. security and national interests are at stake. Such determinations always carry with them a high cost in blood and treasure. Watching that unfold on your television screens, sometimes watching it live, as it's happening, will not be easy for you. Telling you if and when things are going badly for U.S. troops, enabling you to bear witness to the high cost of war, is the hard part of our job. In a famous couple of lines from the movie A Few Good Men, Jack Nicholson, playing a Marine Colonel, snarls: 'You want the truth? You can't handle the truth.' Well, this is no movie. We'll do our very best to give you the truth in the hope and the belief that you can handle it."
Bush's Responsibility for Iraqi Dead "The President has spoken many times of the special burden and the special responsibility he has as Commander-in-Chief of sending young Americans into harm's way.... But have you heard him talk about this other responsibility which may weigh on him heavily today, and that is for the death of innocents, for Iraqi moms and dads and children who may, despite our best efforts, be killed?" "Obviously, the Iraqi regime has mined this harbor and that is a wicked thing to do, but the coalition battle plan was to bypass Basra and leave the more than half million citizens there essentially to fend for themselves until we can get this aid flowing. It's not that we can't only get ships into Umm Qasr, it's that we didn't take Basra, which is now a scene of utter chaos and total unpredictability and there's no telling when aid will flow there. Does the administration take any responsibility for the plight of the people in Basra?"
"Summit of the Convinced" "There was...some confusion about this summit meeting in the Azores, 'a summit of the convinced,' some people said, when the time might have been used to work on those who are not convinced that war is the way to go, including the French. One thing is very clear, the Bush administration has not been able to convince the French President, who says he will veto any UN resolution which actually authorizes war."
Bush's Coalition of None "You're a journalist who's also a historian. Can you recall a time when the United States has been quite so alone?" "I want to come back to you, Fawaz, and ask you the consequences in the Arab world of the United States going it alone?"
"Very Challenging" Enemy Spin Peter Jennings: "In his first war briefing from the U.S. Central Command site at Doha in Qatar, U.S. commander Tommy Franks faced reporters from all over the world who were there and at one point he was asked a very challenging question about weapons of mass destruction."
No Flowers for U.S. Troops Peter Jennings: "Yesterday we saw images of a jubilant reception in the southern Iraqi town of Safwan, where soldiers stood by as people tore down a picture of Saddam Hussein and jumped in the streets - at least for the cameras...." "For months the administration has predicted - or seemed to predict, to be fair - that cheering Iraqis would be greeting Americans in the streets and it doesn't appear to have happened so far. Maybe we just haven't seen it. What do you think has happened?"
Extolling "Diverse" Protesters "It was a very calm and peaceful march, a lot of family members. The march was really led off by a group called September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows. These are all people who lost their families on September 11th. They were heading off the march and behind them the children's contingent and behind them the religious contingent. A very diverse group of people."
Painting Daschle as the Victim "At the White House today there were lots of harsh words directed at Democrats on Capitol Hill. Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle in particular....Democrats called the barrage of criticism a pre-emptive strike, orchestrated by the White House, to try to intimidate them from speaking out before war even starts." "With the nation perhaps just hours away now from war in Iraq, the White House and the Republican Party appear to be questioning the patriotism of the Senate's top Democrat....The White House bristled at suggestions that anyone is trying to muzzle him." "You were under a certain amount of criticism especially directly from the White House as the day before the war actually began you talked about the failure of diplomacy. Did you feel along the way, and especially in the hours after that, that some Republicans were actually questioning your patriotism?" "Listening to most of the public pronouncements on Capitol Hill, you'd think it was a united front behind the President and his strategy. But listen carefully and you can hear a significant grumbling, especially behind the scenes, things people don't want to say publicly in wartime....Why all of the covert frustration? Why hasn't there been more public dissent? Well, it is a tricky business to criticize a President during wartime. Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle did it recently and was practically tarred and feathered." Reality Check:
Winners of the MRC's 2003 DisHonors Awards On March 27, 2003 at the Omni Shoreham hotel in Washington, D.C., the Media Research Center presented its annual "DisHonors Awards" for the most outrageously biased liberal reporting of 2002. Cal Thomas served as the Master of Ceremonies; Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham and Ann Coulter presented the awards. The winners were chosen by a panel of 15 distinguished media observers listed below. In place of the journalist who "won" each award, a conservative accepted it in jest. For the runners-up, and to watch these quotes and the awards event via RealPlayer, please visit www.mrc.org.
Ozzy Osbourne Award (for the Wackiest Comment of the Year) "Seven years ago, when the last referendum took place, Saddam Hussein won 99.96 percent of the vote. Of course, it is impossible to say whether that's a true measure of the Iraqi people's feelings."
The 'I'm Not a Geopolitical Genius But I Play One on TV' Award "I despise him [President George W. Bush]. I despise his administration and everything they stand for....To my mind the election was stolen by George Bush and we have been suffering ever since under this man's leadership....There has to be a movement now to really oppose what he is proposing because it's unconstitutional, it's immoral and basically illegal....It is an embarrassing time to be an American. It really is. It's humiliating."
Ashamed of the Red, White & Blue Bill Maher: "Not for the rest of the world. We take pride in being big charity givers. We're in fact dead last among the industrialized nations. We give an infinitesimal amount of our money to people around the world. I think what people around the world would say is it would take so little for this rich country to help and alleviate so much misery and even that is too much for them. We're oblivious to suffering."
They Called It Puppy Love Award "For Castro, freedom starts with education. And if literacy alone were the yardstick, Cuba would rank as one of the freest nations on Earth. The literacy rate is 96 percent."
I Hate You Conservatives Award "The entire federal government - the Congress, the executive, the courts - is united behind a right-wing agenda for which George W. Bush believes he now has a mandate. That agenda includes the power of the state to force pregnant women to surrender control over their own lives. It includes using the taxing power to transfer wealth from working people to the rich. It includes giving corporations a free hand to eviscerate the environment and control the regulatory agencies meant to hold them accountable. And it includes secrecy on a scale you cannot imagine.
The Judges: L. Brent Bozell III, President of the Media Research Center
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