Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community - View Single Post - Iraq War False Statements By Month Chart of 935 False Statements by 7 Admin Officials

aceventura3 · 01-25-2008, 12:45 PM

Another perspective from the editorial pages of IBD 1/24/2008:

Quote:

Journalism's Lazy Lie Protectors

Media Bias: Left-wing activists claim "at least 935 false statements" by the Bush administration on Iraq, and the charge gets reported as if it were a scientific finding. Doesn't it follow that top Democrats also lied about Iraq?

The so-called Center For Public Integrity is a "non-profit" funded by the profits of left-wing billionaire George Soros. It also gets foundation support from the Heinz Endowments, chaired by Teresa Heinz, wife of Democratic Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry.

You'd think that in a presidential campaign year, a "study" by an organization propped up with money from someone who contributed more to defeat George W. Bush than anyone, plus cash from the wife of the man who ran against Bush in 2004, would be treated skeptically by our oh-so-impartial and professional mainstream media.

Not a chance. This week, when Soros' group accused the White House and Bush cabinet secretaries of making hundreds of deceitful assertions about Saddam Hussein and his nuclear ambitions, the activist organization was treated as an objective source.

The Associated Press, for instance, called it simply "A study by two nonprofit journalism organizations." The New York Times called the outfit "a research group that focuses on ethics in government and public policy." No mention of Soros. No mention of Kerry.

Some might insist that a president so obsessed with overthrowing Saddam should be held accountable for his words — a commander-in-chief who insists that "there was a substantial amount of biological and chemical material unaccounted for" in Iraq after George H.W. Bush's first Gulf War, and who worries that "We might have gotten it all; we might have gotten half of it; we might have gotten none of it."

Isn't it reasonable to suspect paranoia of a president who wanted Iraq to be told "if you don't cooperate the penalty could be regime change, not just continued sanction" because it was resisting UN weapons inspections?

But those are all Bill Clinton's words, speaking in July, 2003, defending George W. Bush's policy in Iraq at a time when the Iraq invasion was wildly popular. He was also the Democratic president who in 1998 nearly invaded Iraq himself after signing an executive order making regime change there the U.S.' official policy.

That year, with Congress impeaching him, Clinton defended attacking Iraq, saying, "Saddam Hussein must not be allowed to threaten his neighbors with nuclear weapons, poison gas or biological weapons."

Also that year, then-House Democratic leader Dick Gephardt said of our Iraq policy, "the goal is to impair Saddam Hussein's ability to prosecute war with weapons of mass destruction and to impair Saddam Hussein's ability to wage war against his neighbors."

But the most impassioned words against Saddam may have come from Hillary Clinton, who in October 2002 said on the Senate floor, "The facts that have brought us to this fateful vote are not in doubt."

Today's front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination pointed out in her floor speech that U.N. inspectors "found and destroyed far more weapons of mass destruction capability than were destroyed in the Gulf War, including thousands of chemical weapons, large volumes of chemical and biological stocks, a number of missiles and warheads, a major lab equipped to produce anthrax and other bio-weapons, as well as substantial nuclear facilities."

According to Hillary then, "if left unchecked, Saddam Hussein will continue to increase his capacity to wage biological and chemical warfare, and will keep trying to develop nuclear weapons."

Stating that "my decision is influenced by my eight years of experience on the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue in the White House," Hillary claimed her vote authorizing war against Iraq "says clearly to Saddam Hussein, 'This is your last chance. Disarm or be disarmed.' "

So Vice President Dick Cheney, secretaries of state Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld are all called liars by Soros' research center, yet it somehow chose not to include the "lies" that came from the mouths of Democrats, including both Clintons, in the hundreds of statements in its online database.

No one should doubt the threat that Saddam Hussein posed to the world, nor the wisdom of ousting him.

In an interview scheduled to be broadcast this coming Sunday on CBS' 60 Minutes, George Piro, the FBI agent who interrogated Saddam for months after his capture, says Saddam had every intention of restarting his entire WMD program.

"Saddam still had the engineers," according to Piro. "He wanted to pursue all of WMD . . . to reconstitute his entire WMD program" including chemical, biological and nuclear weapons, Piro tells CBS.

What's next on the agenda for Soros' "public integrity" center, to be dutifully reported as fact in the major media — a study showing that FBI agents are lying about Iraq,

http://www.investors.com/editorial/e...86069773455153