White House Takes On The Obama Network

The general rule of thumb of not picking fights with guys who buy their ink (or electrons) by the barrel doesn't really hold if you're counselor to the most powerful man in the world, so Ed Gillespie has taken on NBC.

In his letter attacking NBC's editing of a presidential interview, Gillespie's request is straightforward:

This e-mail is to formally request that NBC Nightly News and The Today Show air for their viewers President Bush's actual answer to correspondent Richard Engel's question about Iran policy and "appeasement," rather than the deceptively edited version of the President's answer that was aired last night on the Nightly News and this morning on The Today Show.

Should NBC fold? Let's look at the evidence, the two questions and answers Gillespie said were unfair. I'll present the edited interview in italics followed by the actual transcript:

RICHARD ENGEL: You said that negotiating with Iran is pointless and then you went further. You're saying, you said that it was appeasement. Were you referring to Senator Barack Obama? He certainly thought you were.

GEORGE W. BUSH: You know, my policies haven't changed, but evidently, the political calendar has. And when a leader of Iran says they want to destroy Israel, you've to take those words seriously.

Full transcript: "You know, my policies haven't changed, but evidently the political calendar has. People need to read the speech. You didn't get it exactly right, either. What I said was is that we need to take the words of people seriously. And when, you know, a leader of Iran says that they want to destroy Israel, you've got to take those words seriously. And if you don't take them seriously, then it harkens back to a day when we didn't take other words seriously. It was fitting that I talked about not taking the words of Adolf Hitler seriously on the floor of the Knesset. But I also talked about the need to defend Israel, the need to not negotiate with the likes of al Qaeda, Hezbollah and Hamas. And the need to make sure Iran doesn't get a nuclear weapon. But I also talked about what's possible in the Middle East."

NBC, in a manner typical of the media, cut out the part of the quote that challenges the media's veracity. The mighty MSM has a glass jaw. The subsequent snipping resulted in considerable detail being left out, including remarks that made it clear Bush set no new policy in his Knesset speech, and gave context to his Hitler comments. But did it mischaracterize Bush? I'll get back to that.

Gillespie then points out that the question immediately following illuminated the subject more, but was not included in the aired version of the interview. Here is that passage:

ENGEL: Repeatedly you've talked about Iran and that you don't want to see Iran develop a nuclear weapon. How far away do you think Iran is from developing a nuclear capability?

BUSH: "You know, Richard, I don't want to speculate – and there's a lot of speculation. But one thing is for certain – we need to prevent them from learning how to enrich uranium. And I have made it clear to the Iranians that there is a seat at the table for them if they would verifiably suspend their enrichment. And if not, we'll continue to rally the world to isolate them."

Says Gillespie:

This response reiterates another long-standing policy, which is that if Iran verifiably suspends its uranium enrichment program the U.S. government would engage in talks with the Iranian government.

NBC's selective editing of the President's response is clearly intended to give viewers the impression that he agreed with Engel's characterization of his remarks when he explicitly challenged it. Furthermore, omitted the references to al Qaeda, Hezbollah and Hamas and ignored the clarifying point in the President's follow-up response that U.S. policy is to require Iran to suspend its nuclear enrichment program before coming to the table, not that "negotiating with Iran is pointless" and amounts to "appeasement."

It's true, this passage does define why Bush is not talking to Iran and what conditions he requires before he would talk to them. As such, it defines why he thinks talking to them without these conditions amounts to appeasement. NBC would have had time to air this bit if it hadn't introduced the piece with the same moral equivalency we saw on AP's story on the same subject.

Much is being made of this letter today -- just check out the links to the two stories posted on memeorandum (here, here). My thoughts?

Gillespie picked the wrong target, for three reasons.

First, the editing is not that egregious. I don't think Gillespie is right when he claims that the editing gave the impression Bush agreed with Engel's characterization of his remarks, and I don't think the follow-up question moved the ball very far down the field. If you're going to take on a network, you should have a better case than the one Gillespie chose to argue, and Lord knows, there are plenty of better cases out there.

A White House edit of the interview would have been very different ... but it would have been editing nonetheless. Egregious editing is defined as putting words into someone's mouth that weren't stated, not leaving out further illumination on points you've put into the interview. I would have preferred to not hear the chiding of Bush in the intro -- the Arabs he was speaking to in Egypt deserved a lecture on democracy, and who cares if the minions of despots were cool to it? -- but NBC's editorial position is clearly anti-Bush, and within that context, the editing was more typical than outrageous.

Second, coverage of the Knesset remarks was going extremely well for the White House and the GOP. Obama was coming off as weak and naive; Bush, the GOP and McCain were coming off as more seasoned and more protective of America. There was no reason to give the opposition the opportunity to position Bush as a crybaby. As one leftyblogger responded to the matter:

Now it's clear that the White House is so invested in this phony war, so convinced of its usefulness, that Ed Gillespie is desperately trying to keep it going far past its expiration date with this message to NBC.

When the opposition is rallying, it's wise not to give them rallying points.

Finally, and most obviously, the nasty little NBC piece was weak and not terribly damaging to US policy, the war or the president, and it had already slipped off to the dustbin of history. Gillespie's letter awoke the dog -- not just the sleeping dog, but the very dead dog.

In the furor that is ensuing, those of us who are convinced the MSM has staked out a position damaging to the war effort and America will too easily jump on Gillespie's bandwagon, not seeing that the whole exercise was a mistake. And those on the left will happily attack Gillespie and Bush and praise NBC for standing up to the administration's arrogance and warmongering.

Gillespie did Bush, the GOP and McCain no favors. This was yet another mistake in the gargantuan chronicles of Bush administration media mistakes.

Will MSM Cover Saddam-al-Qaida Links?

Libs love to laugh at W for claiming there were ties between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida, relying on the old canard that Sunni and Shi'ia don't mix. I wonder if their laughter will wane upon reading this:

This ought to be big news. Throughout the early and mid-1990s, Saddam Hussein actively supported an influential terrorist group headed by the man who is now al Qaeda's second-in-command, according to an exhaustive study issued last week by the Pentagon. "Saddam supported groups that either associated directly with al Qaeda (such as the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, led at one time by bin Laden's deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri) or that generally shared al Qaeda's stated goals and objectives." According to the Pentagon study, Egyptian Islamic Jihad was one of many jihadist groups that Iraq's former dictator funded, trained, equipped, and armed.

The Weekly Standard news item is based on a report gleaned from 600,000 documents from the Saddam era, including letters, memos, computer files, audiotapes, and videotapes. From the report's abstract:

Because Saddam's security organizations and Osama bin Laden's terrorist network operated with similar aims (at least in the short term), considerable overlap was inevitable when monitoring, contacting, financing, and training the same outside groups. This created both the appearance
of and, in some way, a 'de facto' link between the organizations. At times, these organizations would work together in pursuit of shared goals but still maintain their autonomy and independence because of innate caution and mutual distrust. Though the execution of Iraqi terror plots was not always successful, evidence shows that Saddam's use of terrorist tactics and his support for terrorist groups remained strong up until the collapse of the regime.

Weekly Standard gives us this summary of some key report findings:

In 1993, as Osama bin Laden's fighters battled Americans in Somalia, Saddam Hussein personally ordered the formation of an Iraqi terrorist group to join the battle there.

For more than two decades, the Iraqi regime trained non-Iraqi jihadists in training camps throughout Iraq.

According to a 1993 internal Iraqi intelligence memo, the regime was supporting a secret Islamic Palestinian organization dedicated to "armed jihad against the Americans and Western interests."

In the 1990s, Iraq's military intelligence directorate trained and equipped "Sudanese fighters."

In 1998, the Iraqi regime offered "financial and moral support" to a new group of jihadists in Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq.

In 2002, the year before the war began, the Iraqi regime hosted in Iraq a series of 13 conferences for non-Iraqi jihadist groups.

That same year, a branch of the Iraqi Intelligence Service (IIS) issued hundreds of Iraqi passports for known terrorists.

So Saddam's interplay with terrorists not only included al-Qaeda, but went far beyond it, posing multiple threats to America on multiple fronts.

Will America read about this in their daily paper or see it on their nightly news? With the Weekly Standard just posting the story, it's too early to tell -- but somehow I feel that in the end, this will be passed of as just a story a neocon rag ran, discounting the report behind it in order to keep the mythology of the "war that started with a lie" intact.

Quote Of The Day: Enviro's Albatross Edition

“The Government is irresponsible to jump on a bandwagon that has no base in scientific evidence. This is one of many examples where you get bad science leading to bad decisions which are counter-productive."
-- Lord Taverne

Unfortunately, Lord Taverne is not talking about government's full-blown buying of global warming hysteria, the the story of what set Taverne off is illustrative of the power the Greenie/MSM alliance wields. Here's the story (London Times via Greenie Watch):

Scientists and environmentalists have attacked a global campaign to ban plastic bags which they say is based on flawed science and exaggerated claims.

The widely stated accusation that the bags kill 100,000 animals and a million seabirds every year are false, experts have told The Times. They pose only a minimal threat to most marine species, including seals, whales, dolphins and seabirds.

Here comes the paragraph on how stupid Lefty politicians are when it comes to Green Hype:

Gordon Brown announced last month that he would force supermarkets to charge for the bags, saying that they were “one of the most visible symbols of environmental waste”. Retailers and some pressure groups, including the Campaign to Protect Rural England, threw their support behind him.

Buy why?

But scientists, politicians and marine experts attacked the Government for joining a “bandwagon” based on poor science. ...

Campaigners say that plastic bags pollute coastlines and waterways, killing or injuring birds and livestock on land and, in the oceans, destroying vast numbers of seabirds, seals, turtles and whales. However, The Times has established that there is no scientific evidence to show that the bags pose any direct threat to marine mammals.

They “don’t figure” in the majority of cases where animals die from marine debris, said David Laist, the author of a seminal 1997 study on the subject. Most deaths were caused when creatures became caught up in waste produce. “Plastic bags don’t figure in entanglement,” he said. “The main culprits are fishing gear, ropes, lines and strapping bands. Most mammals are too big to get caught up in a plastic bag.”

He added: “The impact of bags on whales, dolphins, porpoises and seals ranges from nil for most species to very minor for perhaps a few species. For birds, plastic bags are not a problem either.”

You've heard the stat about the gazillions of species that go extinct each year (here's the myth ... here's the reality), or how many square miles of Brazilian rainforest disappears in the blink of an eye (here's a story that says it's disappearing at a rate of 9,000 square miles a year, and here's one that says the rate is 55,000 square miles a year).

Here's the key behind all of these fatalistic overstatements:

The central claim of campaigners is that the bags kill more than 100,000 marine mammals and one million seabirds every year. However, this figure is based on a misinterpretation of a 1987 Canadian study in Newfoundland, which found that, between 1981 and 1984, more than 100,000 marine mammals, including birds, were killed by discarded nets. The Canadian study did not mention plastic bags.

Some environmental group on a fund-raising binge seized on the study, misstated it (honest mistake or deliberate manipulation?)and spread the word ... and the MSM, which loses all journalistic integrity and fawns over every word from the Greenies and "environmental scientists," can be counted on to spread it ... so teachers can pass it along to our next generation ... and politicians can "solve" the problem by imposing regulations and raising our cost of living.

And it just keeps happening and happening, again and again.

Ask Not Who You Can Smear For Your Country

On the subject of the Kennedys' endorsements of Barack Obama, Soccer Dad commented, "Think that any members of the MSM or Democratic Party will say, 'I knew Jack Kennedy ...?'"

... and you, sir, are no Jack Kennedy. Dan Quayle's ears probably still hurt from the verbal cuffing he got from Lloyd Benson during the VP debate, yet Barack Obama remains pretty much uncuffed by such unflattering comparisons.

Until today.

Writing in the Washington Monthly under the coy headline Ask Not, Ted Widmer lays out why Obama is no Jack Kennedy. Here's one of several paragraphs Widmer spins out on the topic:

Kennedy, of course, was a decorated veteran of World War Two, which he fought in the South Pacific. But before and after the conflict, he had acquired travel experiences that most people take a lifetime to accumulate, richly detailed in biographies like Robert Dallek’s An Unfinished Life. His father was ambassador to the United Kingdom in the pivotal year 1938, and young Kennedy was in the audience of the House of Commons as the Munich deal was furiously debated (the experience shaped his first book, Why England Slept). As a young man, he made American officials uneasy with his relentless desire to see parts of Europe and the world that few Americans ever encountered. In 1939 alone, he took in the Soviet Union, Romania, Turkey, Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Greece, France, Germany, Italy and Czechoslovakia. As the war was ending, he attended the San Francisco conference that created the United Nations, filing seventeen dispatches for the Chicago Herald American.

There's more, and it's all interesting, including how Widmer lionizes Kennedy's youthful encounters with Europe will dismissively brushing away Obama's youthful encounters with South Asia.

Now keep in mind that Widmer was a speechwriter for Bill Clinton.

Oh.

So, the answer to Soccer Dad's question -- will the MSM do a forthright comparison of Kennedy and Obama, a subject Caroline Kennedy's endorsement makes so ripe? -- remains "Not yet."

We have today a well planted counter-attack from the Clinton camp, a sign of a well-oiled political machine. But the overwhelming silence from the media is itself a sign of an MSM that has turned its back on Clinton and is "objectively" cheering Obama on.

Is it because they like Obama so? Maybe a bit. But if we conservatives know that Hillary will be the easier of the two to beat in November, don't you think the the overwhelmingly Democratic leadership of the MSM (the NYT editorial board notwithstanding) gets that, too?

Hat-tip: RCP; Illustration: Kyo

Honor Killings In Texas

Police in Texas are searching for an Egyptian Muslim man -- Yaser Abdel Said -- who shot his two teenage daughters multiple times because, according to some neighbors quoted in the Dallas Morning News, he was upset with their dating activities.

That is the definition of an honor killing, plain and simple, even though the Dallas Morning News, Star-Telegram, AP/Fox, and TV station WFAA all steered clear of giving honor killing as the motive -- a defensible position given the early stages of the investigation, with the killer still at large.

The local CBS affiliate got closer to giving honor killing as the motive, although it shied away from the words:

Friends of the girls say their father was Egyptian and critical of popular American lifestyles. ""He was really strict about guy relationships and talking to guys, as well as the things she wears," Kathleen Wong, a friend of the dead teenagers. "I'm definitely 100% sure that it was her dad that killed her."

Blogger Israel Matzav, who reviewed the memeorandum links as I have, draws the conclusion that the murders are news only in media with a known conservative bias, and concludes:

Not one link comes from an outlet or blog identified with the Left. Even the AP story comes from Fox, which is identified with the Right.

Why doesn't the Left think this story is so important? Has it become politically correct to be silent when Muslim girls are murdered by members of their families for 'defiling the family honor.'

It's an interesting question, and one I fear we will have far too many opportunities to analyze as immigrant Muslim men begin more and more to exhibit this disgusting bit of homeland tradition on our shores. Not all Muslim countries have honor killing problems, but Said's native land of Egypt is one that definitely does.

The Dallas Morning News provides information that shows the two victims, Sarah and Amina, were exceptional -- yet typical -- American girls:

Friends describe Amina and Sarah (pictured) as quiet but well-liked students at Lewisville High School. They played tennis and soccer and were enrolled in many Advanced Placement classes.

"They were extremely smart – like geniuses," said Allison Villarreal, a senior at Lewisville High, where Amina was a senior and Sarah was a junior.

Liz Marines, secretary of the Lewisville High School Student Council, had classes with both of the sisters and also remembers their scholastic abilities.

"Amina was very nice with everybody. She helped me in [Advanced Placement English] class," she said. Sarah was a sophomore when she took an Algebra II class with Liz, who was a junior at the time.

She said the sisters, who wore typical American clothes, didn't talk much about their family. "I didn't know they were Muslims until she told me they were Egyptian and Muslim," Liz said.

She said the Student Council is organizing a prayer vigil at 6 tonight at Lewisville High. Students are being asked to wear pink to school today to honor their friends.

"It's because pink was their favorite color," Liz said.

Most honor killing victims don't get the benefit of such praise in the media. From the reports, they deserve it -- and true honor (as opposed to the twisted Islamic concept of honor) demands that their murders become a major national story, so honor killing is discouraged in America.

Can we depend on our liberal media to carry out such a basic task?

Sunday Scan

All The News That Causes A Fit

Speaking hypothetically, if a conservative major MSM outlet (see why we have to be speaking hypothetically?) hired a liberal columnist, would anyone even peep? Well, peeping they are about the NYT's hiring of the Weekly Standard's William Kristol as a columnist.

As the picture shows, Libs aren't too keen on letting Kristol speak his piece, so it'll be nice that NYT readers will now have a weekly wincing and grinding of teeth, as we do on reading any number of their far left "thinkers."

And it's beyond nice to read this in the NYT:

Mr. Kristol, 55, has been a fierce critic of The Times. In 2006, he said that the government should consider prosecuting The Times for disclosing a secret government program to track international banking transactions.

In a 2003 column on the turmoil within The Times that led to the downfall of the top two editors, he wrote that it was not “a first-rate newspaper of record,” adding, “The Times is irredeemable.”

Is redemption at hand? Nah, not by a long shot.

"Considering?!"

If you're planning to become a parent someday, clip and file this one under "What not to do:"

GARLAND, Texas - An essay that won a 6-year-old Texas girl four tickets to a Hannah Montana concert began with the powerful line: "My daddy died this year in Iraq."

While gripping, it was not true .... Her mom acknowledged to contest organizers the claim was made up specifically to win the contest. ...

The girl won a makeover that included a blonde Hannah Montana wig, as well as the grand prize: airfare for four to Albany, N.Y., and four tickets to the sold-out concert on Jan. 9.

The mother had told company officials that the girl's father died April 17 in a roadside bombing in Iraq.

"We did the essay and that's what we did to win," Priscilla Ceballos, the mother, said in an interview with Dallas TV station KDFW. "We did whatever we could do to win."

Winning, Ceballos taught her daughter, is more important than honesty or integrity.

Ceballos and offspring were busted when the Dept. of Defense confirmed that the alleged father, one Sgt. Jonathon Menjivar, did not exist.

Support our fighting men! Kill them fictionally for concert tickets!

Most amazingly, contest organizers, instead of immediately pressing criminal charges against Ceballos so her unfortunate daughter might finally learn a civics lesson, are "considering" taking away the girl's tickets.

Healthy Christian Skepticism

While some famous Christians are hopping on the global warming bandwagon, George Pell, the Cardinal Archbishop of Sydney, isn't so sure. In a year-end column, Pell said:

The Bali summit on the Kyoto Protocol and climate change was a public relations triumph, although I'm hopeful the new government will not impose major costs on the people for dubious versions of climate goals.

We need rigorous cost-benefit analysis of every proposal and healthy scepticism of all semi-religious rhetoric about the climate and, especially, about computer models for the future. It is difficult to predict what the weather will be like next week, let alone in 10, 20 or 100 years.

"Semi-religious?" Pell is being diplomatic, since great faith is required to accept Warmism lock, stock and barrel. (hat-tip: Greenie Watch)


Ron Paul's Medal Mettle

Consistency, blogs Josh Nelson at The Seminal, "is one of Ron Paul's strongest points in his presidential campaign." Put Paul loses his mettle when it comes to Congressional medals.

Nelson points out that Paul voted against awarding custom-made, $30,000 solid gold Congressional Gold Medals to American luminaries, asking "Why should taxpayers pay for these medals?"
Why, then, did Paul earlier submit a bill (which, like all of his bills, went absolutely nowhere) calling for a military metal for everyone who served in the armed forces during the Cold War, from September 2, 1945 to December 26, 1991?

DoD fought the bill. Why? Well, think of the weapons you could buy or salaries you could pay for the loony concept's price tag: $240 million.

More damning than the flip-flop ("I was for costly Congressional medals before I was against them"), is that the supposedly anti-government, pro-individualism Paul was saying in this bill that it didn't matter whether recipients served well, stood out, or accomplished anything during their service; everyone gets a medal.

I've thought many things of Ron Paul, but I've never thought him to be a "trophy for everyone who plays" sort. (Art: Neoperspectives)

The Debate Is Over!

We've heard that one before. Not just global warming, mind you. The debate has long been over on vegetables. Eat 'em raw for max nutritional value; cook 'em and lose some benefit.

Right? Everyone says so! Just like global warming! Think again:

ScienceDaily (Dec. 30, 2007) — In a finding that defies conventional culinary wisdom, researchers in Italy report that cooking vegetables can preserve or even boost their nutritional value in comparison to their raw counterparts, depending on the cooking method used.

Specifics? You want specifics? We got 'em:

In the new study, the researchers evaluated the effects of three commonly-used Italian cooking practices — boiling, steaming, and frying — on the nutritional content of carrots, zucchini and broccoli. Boiling and steaming maintained the antioxidant compounds of the vegetables, whereas frying caused a significantly higher loss of antioxidants in comparison to the water-based cooking methods, they say. For broccoli, steaming actually increased its content of glucosinolates, a group of plant compounds touted for their cancer-fighting abilities. The findings suggest that it may be possible to select a cooking method for each vegetable that can best preserve or improve its nutritional quality, the researchers say.

The lesson: Beware of false algore-ithms.

Burying A Hate Crime

The headline may cover one side of this story:

Church shooter wanted to be a missionary

But the Denver Post story is deliberately misleading because this weekend's shootings at New Life Church and Youth with a Mission was apparently the act of someone who hated Christians. You'd have to work pretty hard to get to that information, though.

The media is more comfortable with Christians as people who hate others than it is with Christians as the victims of hate crimes.

It is obvious that the killer, Matthew Murray, had been a Christian. He had been enrolled at Youth with a Mission before health problems ended his stay there. He had enrolled in a Christian college, but withdrew before attending a single class.

But we learn, if we read all the way down to paragraph 23 of the 28-paragraph story:

Earlier today, a law enforcement official who spoke on condition of anonymity said it appeared Murray "hated Christians."

If the same crime had happened at a Muslim center and mosque, do you think we'd have to wait until paragraph 23 to know of the shooter's feelings towards Muslims? Heck, even if it had occurred at a Jewish school and synagogue, the reporter would have felt obligated to report that the perp hated Jews.

But if someone hates Christians and kills Christians for no other reason than that they're Christians, well heck, who wouldn't? What news is that?

hat-tip: memeorandum

Innocent Until Proven Liberal Pervert

SF Chronicle writer Jaxon [cute] Van Derbeken is doing all he can to exonerate Big Lib San Fransisco radio guy Bernie Wood -- "the lion of the left" -- who was charged yesterday with kiddie porn possession.

Van Derbeken's story dedicates nine of its 13 paragraphs to Wood's attorney's comments, which are basically that Wood was just researching a book -- an excuse we've heard before from attorneys for perverts.

None of the remaining four provide a forum for a different, more believable, point of view. Granted, the indictment is sealed, but any reporter worth his salt would dig up a source to counter the defense attorney.

Van Derbeken apparently made no such effort, or is not particularly good at his job, or feels compelled to use the press to defend someone who's only sin is loving too much ... or at least loving the much too young.

Update: Since I drafted this last night, the Chron has posted more info -- but it's buried under the initial story, so readers are well-conditioned by the attorney's full spiel before getting to this:

Authorities in the case noted that Ward was monitored as he went on a chat room and sent and received images, sources familiar with the case said. Weinberg [the attorney] did not comment on the details of those accusations, other than to confirm that his client is accused of distribution of images.

Weinberg did not mention a chat room in his first bite at the apple:

As part of the research for the book, Ward - a married father of four - downloaded a few images of child pornography, Weinberg acknowledged.

Chat? What chat?

Ward may very well be guilty of nothing more than being an idiot, a common shortfall of liberal radio hosts. That's not what this post is about in any case, because there are perverts on the right and on the left.

I'm just posting this because it's evident that the Chron is bending over (eeuw) to defend a fellow traveler.

Iran's Nukes: Gadzooks! and Pukes!

The media at its best and worst is on display as reporters and analysts pick over the bones of the NIE report on Iran's nuclear capabilities. Some, the "gadzooks!," give new insights directed at those who need them; others, the "pukes!" play insignificant old journalistic games with significant news.

The latter first:

CNN (surprized?) puked with this story:

President Bush was told in August that Iran's nuclear weapons program "may be suspended," the White House said Wednesday, which seemingly contradicts the account of the meeting given by Bush Tuesday. ...

President Bush was told in August that Iran's nuclear weapons program "may be suspended," the White House said Wednesday, which seemingly contradicts the account of the meeting given by Bush Tuesday.

Let's see if I have this right. We have a story that deals with the capabilities of our intelligence community, the threat of nuclear jihad, foreign relations with Russia, Germany, France, England and of course Tehran ... and CNN thinks the story is a "what did he know and when did he know it" tripe-a-thon design to keep their Bush-bashing record pure?

Did Bush bomb Tehran sometime between August and now and we missed it? Have the rules changed so that names will break Ahmahdinejad's bones but sticks and stones will never hurt him? Is there any harm in keeping up pressure on a country that is waging a proxy war against us in Iraq while trying to deceive the world about the nature of its nuclear program?

Then there's the "Gadzooks!" story, penned today by John Bolton in WaPo.

First, having a view that's contrary to the editorial line of a paper is a celebration of American journalism. It's good that Inside-the-Beltway liberal readers get regular doses of Bolton; and this one is a maga-dose, making many big points, some of which we're already familiar with: that the "headline finding" of the report -- that Iran has supposedly stopped its nuke weapons program -- "is written in a way that guarantees the totality of the conclusions will be misread."

In fact, there is little substantive difference between the conclusions of the 2005 NIE on Iran's nuclear capabilities and the 2007 NIE.

Take it from the PR guy, how you word something can make a huge difference. In this case, the words are about the Mullah's psychology and motivation, not nuclear hardware and technology ... hence, "moderate" assurance in the findings and, as Bolton points out, considerable disention among intelligence analysts regarding Iran's alleged suspension of activities.

Funny. That dissension didn't make the headlines.

Bolton points out that the writers of the NIE are keen to stray into policy issues and far afield from mere intelligence:

It implies that Iran is susceptible to diplomatic persuasion and pressure, yet the only event in 2003 that might have affected Iran was our invasion of Iraq and the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, not exactly a diplomatic pas de deux. As undersecretary of state for arms control in 2003, I know we were nowhere near exerting any significant diplomatic pressure on Iran. Nowhere does the NIE explain its logic on this critical point.

Bolton also details the difficulty in getting good intelligence from Iran, especially since many older, trusted sources have disappeared, replaced with newer, less trustworthy sources.

But ultimately, he paints a picture of bureaucrats -- many from State, not the intelligence community, over-analyzing a couple new pieces of intelligence to the point that their opinions came to mean more than the implications or validity of the intelligence itself.

The take-away from the CNN piece is simple: The media will fight over the bones of a story long after the meat is gone, and we gain nothing from it but a better understanding of the media.

From WaPo's op/ed, the take-away is much more complex: We see a government process that is troubling from a policy perspective, flawed from an intelligence perspective and misinterpreted from a media perspective, leaving us with questions at a time when facts would be much more comforting.

hat-tip: memeorandum

Quote Of The Day: Corrupt News Network Edition

"In fact, this most recent debacle masquerading as a presidential debate raises serious questions about whether CNN is ethically or professionally suitable to play the political role the Democratic and Republican parties recently have conceded it."
-- Tim Rutten, LA Times Media Critic

Rutten says nothing I didn't say (here, here) about the failure of CNN's YouTube GOP debate, and the larger question of what passes (like a kid who can't read who gets advanced year after year) for debate in today's sensationalistic, breathless media environment -- but he says it with a burning fire in his belly.

Selecting a president is, more than ever, a life and death business, and a news organization that consciously injects itself into the process, as CNN did by hosting Wednesday's debate, incurs a special responsibility to conduct itself in a dispassionate and, most of all, disinterested fashion. When one considers CNN's performance, however, the adjectives that leap to mind are corrupt and incompetent.

Rutten's point, echoing a legion of points, is that CNN biased the debate, whether out of ignorance, malice or incompetence, so that it was weighted towards issues they thought mattered to conservatives at the expense of the issues that really matter.

He leans on a Pew poll that shows 40% of Americans rank foreign affairs as our most important issue, followed by 31% who rank the economy first. Only 6% give immigration the highest mark, yet CNN spent 25 minutes on immigration.

So, why did CNN make immigration the keystone of this debate? What standard dictated the decision to give that much time to an issue so remote from the majority of voters' concerns? The answer is that CNN's most popular news-oriented personality, Lou Dobbs, has made opposition to illegal immigration and free trade the centerpiece of his neonativist/neopopulist platform. In fact, Dobbs led into Wednesday's debate with a good solid dose of immigrant bashing.

His network is in a desperate ratings battle with Fox News and, in a critical prime-time slot, with MSNBC's Keith Olbermann. So, what's good for Dobbs is good for CNN.

In other words, CNN intentionally directed the Republicans' debate to advance its own interests. Make immigration a bigger issue and you've made a bigger audience for Dobbs.

That's corruption ....

I don't want to post any more of Rutten's column here because it might discourage you from reading the entire piece. It's worth three minutes of your time because it is an exceptionally blunt appraisal of the abject failures of those who hold broadcast licenses ... and because it's not that often you get to read the liberal LATimes accuse the liberal CNN of "intellectual venality" ... "wickedness" ... and of being "anathema to our system."

From Crisis Standpoint, Hillary Blew It

An unfortunate sidebar of being an experienced communicator is having to deal with crises -- deaths of well-known people, restaurant poisonings, corporate crimes or stupidity, natural disasters -- so I'm reading the post-hostage taking Hillary coverage with an attentive, if jaded, eye.

The media seems to think she did stellarly:

• The hostage-taking itself offered a rare, if small, genuine drama in a campaign season governed by strict schedules and scripted stump speeches.
  
  The scene was one of a woman in charge.
  
  It looked and sounded presidential,” said Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia Center for Politics. “This was an instance of the White House experience of this campaign. They knew how to handle this.” (Politico)
  
  
• When the hostages had been released and their alleged captor arrested, a regal-looking Hillary Rodham Clinton strolled out of her Washington home, the picture of calm in the face of crisis. (AP)

Here's what the regal, presidential Clinton did when faced with crisis: She canceled a speech in Virginia and flew home. Only after it was over did she go to New Hampshire and meet with the taken hostages.

Tactically, it was important for the hostage taker, Leeland Eisenberg, not be given the opportunity to talk to Clinton, but that did not mean she had to be miles from the scene. I seem to recall torrents of criticism directed at President Bush for not being at the scene of Katrina, but Hillary skated with laudatory references to her regal and presidential character. (I'll have none of the former, please; this is America.)

Why isn't the press demanding to know why she hid herself away in the New York suburbs instead of being there for her faithful employees in their time of need?

Why aren't they asking why she cowered or hid (using words that probably would have been applied to Bush in a similar situation) instead of being visible? She was under no personal threat.

Why isn't her senior staff being grilled? Can you imagine the questions being directed at a Karl Rove or Andy Card if the sensible pump were on the other foot?

It's not just that; it's that Hillary missed one one singular, golden opportunity to appear ... warm. Here's how it could have played out:

Upon hearing the news, Hillary cancels her speech, leaves Virginia and flies to New Hampshire. The press has not been traveling in her bus or plane, so they easily enough could have been misled by a press secretary who refuses to disclose her location but hints that it's not New Hampshire.

Once in New Hampshire -- perhaps arriving in a wig and dark glasses in an unmarked car -- she goes to a private place near the scene, where she meets with the hostages' families, giving them encouragement and strength, and talks by cell phone with law enforcement officials.

Then, when the negotiations succeed and all is well, the first person to greet her traumatized workers, under the glare of the cameras, could have been Hillary Rodham Clinton, a tear sneaking its way down her cheek, but strong, commanding and compassionate as she gives them the kind of comfort she wants to extend to all of us Americans.

(This of course assumes Hillary would be able to act like a warm, compassionate human for a prolonged period of time.)

But instead of taking any risk, she thought too much about options: What if the negotiations drag on and I miss a fund-raiser? What if it all ends horribly; do I want to be there?

Pshaw. On a risk/reward scale, this one was overwhelmingly tilted toward reward; especially if things did start going very badly and she could have been there to talk to Eisenberg.

She played it safe, took no risks, and got praised by a fawning media. Not a bad result, but if she'd played by my playbook, she could have been unbeatable.

Update: Ann Althouse writes well on the subject, too.

hat-tip: memeorandum

A Smarmy End For The YouTube Debate Format

YouTube debate outing continues unabated this morning at Free Republic and Michelle Malkin.

First was the gay general who supports Hillary. Then the "abortion girl in blue" who is an Edwards supporter. (Picture courtesy of michellemalkin.com) The Log Cabin Republican questioner is an Obama supporter. The lead toy questioner is a union activist and Edwards supporter.

Is this an outrage or simply the end of the YouTube debate format?

Most definitely an outrage is the chatter going on at Free Republic where the outting of the "abortion girl in blue" is getting quite creepy, with her Internet guts getting spread all over the blogosphere with info like this:

Blue Girl's Profile:

she listens like spring and she talks like june View all userpics
Name: cold as fire, baby, hot as ice
Text
Message: Send likespring a text message
on his/her cellphone/pager.
Website: website
Location: Arlington, Texas, United States
Birthdate: 1988-09-21
E-mail: ******* @ gmail.com [all addresses censored by C-SM]

AOL IM: ***** (Add Buddy, Send Message)
MSN Username: ******* @ hotmail.com

Bio:
******* @ l i v e j o u r n a l . c o m
journey. yes, that's her real name. female. 19. arlington, texas. liberal. vegetarian. feminist. lesbian. has an inexplicable teeny crush on joey
fatone. attending the university of texas in arlington. hoping to transfer to ut-austin in 2008. political science. aims for law school. enjoys good food. finding a great new book. watching glbt movies. and lots of shopping. was a princess in another life. future president of the united states of america.

Yes, of course Likespring opened the door to this exposure by becoming a public figure with her question, and she should know her cyber-fingerprints are easily lifted, but digging into her personal info like this seems a bit like cyber-stalking -- and with her various cyber-contact addresses now posted for all to see, she's probably in for a long bout of ugly inbox.

That's unfortunate because she probably had every right to ask the question. Nothing in the rules of the YouTube-CNN debate says questioners must be of the party that's debating that night, so there may well have been GOP questioners in the Dem debate.

"Abortion girl in blue" did not misidentify herself; she merely failed to identify her candidate of choice -- and being a GBLT supporter of the most feminine of all the Dem Prez wannabes isn't a crime. If, however, Likespring works for the Edwards campaign or cooperated with the Edwards campaign in designing and submitting the question, then it's another story. And it's a story that may turn out to be difficult to document one way or the other,

Also another story is the Log Cabin Republican questioner because he created the sense that he was a gay Republican by the way he asked his question. He is a political trickster, scum, persona non grata.

As is Gen. Keith Kerr, who, if he were an honorable man, would have stated his position in the Clinton campaign.

CNN has no excuse for not ID-ing Kerr. I traced his background in a couple clicks last night, and even this morning after his exposure, the Clinton news release listing him as a member of her GLBT task force is fifth from the top on Google:

HillaryClinton.com - Media Release
It includes people like former US Assistant Attorney General Eldie Acheson, ... Keith Kerr, retired Colonel., US Army; retired Brigadier General, ...
www.hillaryclinton.com/news/release/view/?id=2196 - Similar pages - Note this

The most cursory review by CNN staff would have turned up this news release, so either they were entirely too cavalier in their screening of questioners, or someone at CNN knew full well who Kerr was and to whom he was affiliated.

This should, I hope, spell the end of YouTube debates. As refreshing as it has been to have real people ask real questions, the system is simply too easily corrupted by unreal people asking unreal questions. Winnowing out the Kerrs is as easy enough job, but tracking down the political affiliations and sexual orientations of people like Likespring infringes on their rights and chills the political process.

With YouTube so problematic, the format simply must be dropped. We then are back to the awful format of pundits asking preened-up questions of wooden, overly trained candidates, all to the detriment of the American people, who deserve a better way to evaluate their candidates.

I propose as an alternative a round-robin kind of debate, where two candidates are selected at random, then given five minutes in proper debate format to pound back and forth on a question from a list prepared by a neutered (not neutral) body, i.e., questions worked out by the party that's debating in concert with the media outlet that's sponsoring the debate.

Then another two candidates would get the opportunity, until every candidates has had at least two opportunities to give detailed responses under the pressure imposed by the responses of the other candidate.

It's compact, challenging and intelligent. It'll never happen.

The Snowmanization Of Presidential Politics

Mitt Romney may be answering questions from a snowman after all.

That was his quip when he said earlier in the year he didn't want to follow the Dems into a CNN-YouTube debate, referring to a YouTube clip that made the cut, allowing a talking snowman to ask the Dem Prez candidates about global warming.

Romney wanted the prez race to be held to a higher standard -- uh, with Kucinich and Paul in the running? -- but the standard gets dropped tonight.

Writing in Politico, Garrett Graff says "the 2008 election will be the first one dominated and shaped heavily by the issues and technologies of the 21st century — from YouTube and MySpace online to China's rise and information age educational reforms."

It is, he thinks, the triumph of the interesting over the boring.

But is it? And if it is, is that a good thing?

We kid ourselves if we think this format allows the people to speak. In August, over 3,000 submitted videos got winnowed down to 37 that were used; winnowed not by the people, but by the gatekeepers.

Anderson Cooper and his staff decided what should be asked and what should not. They supposedly went for a mix of entertainment and policy -- but who's to know what they left behind and why they left it there?

It's the same old MSM-driven system, but the system has found citizens to ask the questions the system wants asked. As such, it's all packaging and the substance stays the same.

Granted, it's more interesting to have two lesbians from Brooklyn, Mary Matthews and Jen Weidenbaum, ask the candidates if they would allow the to be married than to have Anderson Cooper (who reportedly would be personally interested in the answer) ask it. But it's the same question in a different package, and it drew the same packaged answers from the Dem Prez wannabees.

I sympathize with Romney. I would like a more elegant campaign. Bring back the Lincoln-Douglas debates, which were real debates, with some 30 hours of back and forth, in depth, without a blow-dried moderator intervening.

But woe, that is not to be, at least not in this race or the next. Maybe sometime in some new and improved America.

But for now, we have two options: The standard, fatally flawed format of preening questioners and parrying responders, or a slightly more vital and fun, but still imperfect, format of YouTube questioners and parrying responders.

It's hardly the ideal, but I'm with Graff if the format draws more people, especially young people, into the political process.

Bring on YouTube. Goodbye, Cooper, hello Frosty.

hat-tip: memeorandum

NYT Leaks Again, To Detriment Of War

It's a pipsqueak by comparison, but today's NY Times leak-driven story on the new Dept. of Defense planning for alliances in the tribal regions of Afghanistan is not entirely unlike the paper leaking details of the Normandy invasion during the months leading up to D-Day.

A new and classified American military proposal outlines an intensified effort to enlist tribal leaders in the frontier areas of Pakistan in the fight against Al Qaeda and the Taliban, as part of a broader effort to bolster Pakistani forces against an expanding militancy, American military officials said.

If adopted, the proposal would join elements of a shift in strategy that would also be likely to expand the presence of American military trainers in Pakistan, directly finance a separate tribal paramilitary force that until now has proved largely ineffective and pay militias that agreed to fight Al Qaeda and foreign extremists, officials said.

We're not talking a lot of U.S. troops here -- just the current 50 or so growing by "dozens." Any U.S. troops in the tribal regions of Pakistan are already at high risk of terrorist attack, and this story won't calm down the Islamists any.

Its real risk, though, is against the tribal leaders with whom we hope to ally. Until today, they were just tribal leaders under the watchful and threatening eye of Islamists, who have shown in Iraq and Afghanistan alike their eagerness to assassinate any leader who affiliates with the Americans. Now, they are potential U.S. allies.

We know that already this story has been translated and is circulating amidst al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders in Pakistan. They know the best tactic against the U.S.: Ruthlessly murder a few of the potential U.S. allies and their families, leave them beheaded in pools of blood, and let the other potential allies consider the road ahead.

Without the NYT, special ops forces could have quietly begun working with the Frontier Corps, a paramilitary force recruited from the various border tribes. Granted, their presence there would have been known soon enough, but it would have been known on our terms, not the NYT's terms.

NYT acknowledges that aspects of the new effort have already been leaked by the LA Times and WaPo. These stories dealt with increased aid to the region and did not put soldiers or their allies at risk. The NYT got the leak on the military support and joined the leak-fest to avoid being journalistically one-upped.

The story itself is straightforward and remarkably non-critical, drawing parallels to successes in Anwar that it does not question ... much:

The proposal is modeled in part on a similar effort by American forces in Anbar Province in Iraq that has been hailed as a great success in fighting foreign insurgents there.

"Has been hailed as a great success" is about as positive as you'll get in the anti-military media today. But that sentence is followed with this:

But it raises the question of whether such partnerships, to be forged in this case by Pakistani troops backed by the United States, can be made without a significant American military presence in Pakistan.

Nowhere in the story is that concern addressed again, let alone attributed to any source, named or unnamed. Who raised the question? The three-reporter team it took to break the story? Did they, in raising the question, consider that by leaking the plan and putting the military and the tribal leaders at greater risk, and that they therefore may be contributing to the need for more than a few dozen additional troops?

Who knows? All we k now for sure is that beating the LAT and WaPo is reason enough to put soldiers' lives at greater risk.

See more coverage at memeorandum.

Terrible Deaths, Terrible Reporting

Two wrongs don't make a right, but they do make for evidence of media bias.

Wrong one: US air strikes in Afghanistan. Even though we call off, in the words of one AF officer, "thousands" of these strikes out of concern for civilian safety, civilians have been killed, resulting in a flood of news stories like this WaPo story from July:

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, [Note that the story is reported from an entire country away] June 30 -- Just a week after Afghan President Hamid Karzai chastised international forces for being "careless," Afghan officials reported Saturday that possibly 100 or more civilians had been killed in a NATO and U.S.-led assault.

The battle in the southern Afghan province of Helmand, which was prompted by a Taliban ambush, began Friday night and continued into Saturday morning, Afghan officials said. It ended with international forces bombing several compounds in the remote village of Hyderabad.

More than 100 people have been killed. But they weren't Taliban. The Taliban were far away from there," said Wali Khan, a member of parliament who represents the area.

A couple paragraphs down, WaPo got around to mentioning that U.S. forces say the claims are exaggerated by "an order of magnitude," or 10 vs 100, but that's not the point. Rather, it's that when we make a mistake, it's guaranteed global critical coverage.

Now, let's look at wrong two, as evidenced by this photo from today's AP coverage and the caption:

A woman walks through a room of a house that caught fire after a roadside bomb blast in Baghdad, Iraq, Sunday, Nov. 11, 2007. A roadside bomb missed a passing U.S. military convoy in eastern Baghdad's Baladiyat district on Sunday but killed a 12-year-old girl and wounded four other Iraqis, police said.

A small tragedgy by Iraqi standards: a girl horribly killed at a wonderfully innocent time of life, four killed and families disrupted by fires. But compound it by tens of thousands (three orders of magnitude!) and you have the reality of the civilian deaths caused by the enemy in Iraq.

Of course there's a major difference between the two: We try like crazy to avoid civilian deaths, and those crazy Islamists deliberately pursue them.

Yet from the coverage, you'd think we're the bad guys.

What Should GE and Microsoft To Do With Their Libs?

The secret's out. MSNBC, we are told by its executives in a NYT article today, never sat around a conference room table with a dogma chip on their shoulders and decided it would be great to attack Bush and Cheney long enough and hard enough so that their lackluster techie news cable network would become America's liberal TV network.

Officials at MSNBC emphasize that they never set out to create a liberal version of Fox News.

“It happened naturally,” Phil Griffin, a senior vice president of NBC News who is the executive in charge of MSNBC, said Friday, referring specifically to the channel’s passion and point of view from 7 to 10 p.m. “There isn’t a dogma we’re putting through. There is a ‘Go for it.’”

As well-spun as that sounds, there's a modicum of truth to it, especially when you consider that Ann Coulter, Laura Ingraham and John Gibson were all early MSNBC on-air newsfolk.

But a funny thing happened on the way to Clinton's impeachment, as MSNBC suddenly began seeing surging viewership on a show hosted by an angry leftist by the name of Keith Olbermann. They liked the dough, and now it looks like the networks sole holdout against flaming liberalism, Tucker Carlson, is about to be shunted aside to make room for 9/11 nut and angry lesbian Rosie O'Donnell.

Giving O'Donnell airtime is a much more whacky proposition than putting Olbermann in front of a camera. He's just a run of the mill, well vocalized lib. She's a certifiable paranoid crazy.

So the co-owners of the network, GE and Microsoft, appear content that the child they birthed to appeal to geeks at the dawn of the Internet age has grown up to be a haven for rants against America and American values. That's not exactly a conventional marketing scheme.

Should we buy Whirlpool instead of GE? Should we shun Windows and Vista (as if that's possible, Apple fans notwithstanding)?

I say no, with one condition: If its owners talk as frankly about the network as the network's hosts do. Here's the not too cryptic Olbermann:

“If you go into a burger place, and you go in there for the fish, you might want the fish occasionally but it’s probably a mistake,” he said. “Could you be utterly different politically and succeed in this format? You’d basically be throwing your audience away.”

Burgers apparently being the food of the left and fish the food of the right. No MSNBC execs would talk for attribution to the Times about the network's leftist leanings. Let them admit it openly, let the corporate owners say they're pursuing the money that comes in from left field, and I'm ok with it.

If they pretend that they're just another fair and balanced news outlet (get the hint, Fox?) then I'd be concerned about giving my money to corporate liars.

Headline Readers Think Iran Doesn't Seek Bomb

The McClatchy headline and the lead are bold indeed:

Experts: No Evidence of Iranian Nuclear Weapons Program

WASHINGTON — Despite President Bush's claims that Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons that could trigger "World War III," experts in and out of government say there's no conclusive evidence that Tehran has an active nuclear-weapons program.

Even his own administration appears divided about the immediacy of the threat. While Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney speak of an Iranian weapons program as a fact, Bush's point man on Iran, Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns, has attempted to ratchet down the rhetoric.

Leftyblogs were quick to jump on this bandwagon because, after all, there is no evil in the world other than Bush:

If you listen to White House officials, Iran’s nuclear-weapons program is already a reality. There’s no hesitation on the rhetoric — the program, top administration officials say, is an unfortunate reality that demands our immediate attention. As Dick Cheney recently put it, “Our country, and the entire international community, cannot stand by as a terror-supporting state fulfills its grandest ambitions. We will not allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon.”

With this in mind, it’s probably worth taking a moment, now and again, to point out that there’s no conclusive evidence that such a program actually exists. (The crooks and liars at Crooks and Liars)

Then there's The Newshoggers with this pig-eyed view:

One of the contributing worries of people who believe that there is a significant possibility of overt US military actions against Iran before Jan. 20, 2009 is the roll-out of the propaganda and FUD factors. We have Kyl-Lieberman taking the place of the 1998 Iraq Liberation Act, we have the unfounded accusations, we have the massive hyping of potential threats built upon gossamar threads of plausibility, we have freakish exile groups stovepiping their 'intel' and we have a coterie of officials who have a long-standing hard-on for 'regime change' with power in the White House.

One of the positive repeats of that entire cycle was the McClatchy/Knight Ridder team. They were the ones who were digging around and pointing out the bullshit on weapons claims, threat assessments and intel 'sources' while the big boys in the national media reprinted official claims without any skepticism on the front page, or in the lede. McClatchy is doing it again today with an analysis of the Iranian nuclear capacity in a great article.

Beware, my friends, it appears the Leftyblogs are content to make news from headlines and leads, and not really probe into the articles they are basing their posts on. The highly suspect and blatantly anti-Bush motivations of McClatchy's headline and lead-writers notwithstanding, let's fisk a bit, shall we?

The gist of the article is that Iran is no doubt pursuing a nuclear program, but there's no evidence they're actually making bombs. Well, duh. There's not much point in making bombs until you have something to put in them, eh? And there's plenty of evidence related in the article about their efforts to do that, including:

• Seized drawings "that indicated that Iranian experts studied mounting a nuclear warhead on a ballistic missile."
• Seized plans for a deep-bored shaft "apparently designed to contain an nuclear explosion."
• A document viewed by the IAEA that showed how to produce uranium hemispheres which have no application in nuclear power plants "but form the explosive cores of nuclear weapons."
• Iran's assertions that it only has P1 centrifuges, not P2's, which are much faster, fly in the face of IAEA evidence that they do, indeed, have plans for P2s.
• Iran's assertions that they're not doing anything with their P2 plans flies in the face of proof "that Iran sought to buy thousands of specialized magnets for P2s from European suppliers."

And on and on. The McClatchy article, in totality, is a condemnation of Iran's claims that it seeks nukes only for peaceful purposes, but the Left is content to skim the headline and lead and make their own safe, anti-American conclusions.

hat-tip: memeorandum

New Media And America's Most Influential Conservatives

I quibble with some of the Telegraph's selections of the 20 most influential conservatives in America, but from their viewpoint across the pond, they did a pretty good job.

Quibbles: Are Giuliani (#1) and McCain (#9) really seen by conservatives as conservatives? And where is George Bush? Many of his picks and inner circle are on the list (Petraeus, #2, Cheney, #6, Gates, #7, Roberts, #8, Rice, #12, Bolton, #13, Gillespie, #20), but W is nowhere to be seen.

What's particularly interesting about the list is what it says about the media. The old media is nearly nonexistent on the list; only Paul Gigot, the editorial page editor of WSJ, makes the list, coming in at #14. The Telegraph's list of most influential liberals in America doubles that count, with Michael Moore (#7) and Oprah Winfrey (#9), but I think they're undercounting. At a minimum, Don Hewitt, the producer of 60 Minutes, should be on the list, as should Andrew Rosenthal, who chairs the editorial board at the NYT.

New media grab a full 20 percent of the Telegraph's most influential list, starting with Matt Drudge at #3 and running through Rush, #5, Laura Ingraham, #15, and Glen Beck, #18. On the liberal side, I my top 20 list would include Kos and the Blades/Boyd team at MoveOn.org, but no others. The Telegraph puts Kos at #12 and B/B at #20, but adds Ariana Huffington at #16.

Most interesting pick: Arnold Schwarzenegger as the eighth most influential liberal -- actually a very astute pick. He wouldn't be California's governor if he weren't a liberal. One has to wonder if there's room for the classic old liberal Republican now days, or whether the RINO label has made the position unmarketable.

Biggest burn: Elizabeth Edwards made the most lib list at #19, but her hubby didn't break into the top 20.

Best discussion generator: Rudy as the #1 most influential conservative in America. The biggest drag on his campaign is his liberal positions on social issues -- but that doesn't seem to discount him under the British definition of conservative.

Hat-tip: memeorandum

16 Days Without A US Combat Fatality In Iraq

Corrected: See this post, which reports data that disproves this post. I apologize for the error.

A U.S. soldier died Thursday, October 27 when he was hit with small arms fire in Salah ad Din, Iraq.

This is the first combat-related New Casualty Report posted on Cent-Comm since October 11, when a release was posted on a soldier who was killed in combat operations in Baghdad.

Two weeks and two days passed between one death and the other. Did the MSM notice? Do you recall seeing a raft of stories about success in Iraq? Let's see.

Here's a CBS story ... from July. Here's a McClatchy story from September. This USA Today story is a little hard to peg; there's a note that it was updated "95d" ago, presumably in July, like the CBS story. Even this Fox News report from last Wednesday failed to note the fact.

These stories and many like them, right up to this WaPo editorial from October 11, are reporting on the general success of the surge, one measure of which has been the dramatically falling rate of combat deaths and injuries among not just US forces, but also Iraqi forces.

Have the Dems on Congress taken notice? Certainly, some of them have, but the leadership plods on in a quagmire of denial and defeatism.

Has the media noticed? Nowhere can I find a report that says that two weeks and two days went by without a single American dying in combat in Iraq. It seems like a newsworthy story ... but what would I, a former reporter who's spent 30 years in PR, know about newsworthiness?

Note: The photo at the top, from A Soldier's Blog, doesn't show a soldier grieving over a fallen comrade. It's even more touching. Here's the caption:

U.S. military police officer Brian Pacholski comforts his hometown friend and fellow officer David Borell, both from Toledo, Ohio, at the entrance of the military base in Balad, Iraq, about 30 miles northwest of Baghdad, on June 13. Borell broke down after seeing three Iraqi children who were brought to the base seeking medical help after they were injured while playing with and burning a powder that was inside a plastic bag near their farm.

These strong, tough men who break down when seeing an injured child ... how noble they are; how different from our enemy, who plant bombs on children.

Dinosaurs Alive And Kicking In Blogosphere

The dinosaur media may be struggling ... but we'd be struggling without them.

That fact becomes clear when you look at the sources for the most cutting-edge new media. Memeorandum qualifies in that regard, with its running, nonpartisan log of the news of the day, drawn from the blogosphere, the printosphere and the real atmosphere (the broadcast media).

The site just posted its top 100 news sources; here are the top ten.

1	New York Times
2	Washington Post
3	Associated Press
4	The Politico
5	Think Progress
6	The Atlantic Online
7	The Corner
8	CNN
9	The Hill
10	CNN Political Ticker

Seventy percent of the top ten are old line media, with only The Politico, Think Progress and The Corner qualifying as new media. New media become more pronounced in the second ten, representing 60 percent of that grouping:

11	Los Angeles Times
12	The Huffington Post
13	Crooks and Liars
14	Weekly Standard
15	Captain's Quarters
16	Opinion Journal
17	Talking Points Memo
18	MSNBC
19	Firedoglake
20	michellemalkin.com

The MSM are struggling, but they're obviously continuing to perform a needed function no one has figured out how to usurp. To succeed they must first overcome their bias and become Everyman's media; only then will they be able to figure out a way to stay profitable in the face of a finely tuned and efficient new media.

Can they do it? Sometimes. Look what the LA Times is doing to use new media to stay ahead of the blogosphere in its fire coverage.