Chronicles of an Anti-Apathetic

Thu, 20 Nov 2003 18:02:30 GMT

Why Wes Clark Says Yes to Kosovo But Not Iraq

There is a mostly positive article in Slate about General Wes Clark's new ad. It consists of an exchange between Slate correspondent William Saletan and editor Jacob Weisberg.

Saletan says "How do I love this ad? Let me count the ways. I love it because it's a story..." and continues to praise the ad.

Weisberg responds to Saletan, however, by criticizing the Clark ad for justifying the Kosovo war on the grounds of a humanitarian crisis while Clark has not allowed that the Iraq War addressed an equivalent crisis. Weisberg says:

Saddam Hussein was Stalin to Milosevic's Mussolini. Saddam's efforts at ethnic cleansing and repression were bigger and more vicious than anything Milosevic was capable of.

Dan Rather brought this up at the conclusion of a 60 Minutes II interview with Clark yesterday, without giving Clark a chance to respond. Clark has stated previously that significant differences existed between the humanitarian situation in Kosovo and the one in Iraq.

In Kosovo, diplomatic efforts had been exhausted. Extensive negotiations were carried out between the US and Milosevic and between NATO and Milosevic. Other countries, including Milosevic's allies, also tried to persuade him to accept a diplomatic solution. He refused. Additionally, international war crimes charges were filed against Milosevic for his heinous acts in Bosnia, whereas no such charges had ever been filed by the international community against Saddam Hussein as of March 2003, when the US invaded Iraq.

Hussein had allowed UN inspectors back into Iraq. He was engaged with the UN and had made a last minute offer through an intermediary to Richard Perle, who was at the time the appointed chairman of Bush's Defense Policy Board. Perle acknowledged that he had received such an offer through "back channels" and relayed it to the White House and the Pentagon. The Bush adminsitration disregarded the offer because it was not made through one of several legitimate channels available to Hussein. The intermediary, a Lebanese businessman, also met several times with a senior aide to Paul Wolfowitz. Because the White House dismissed this offer out of hand, without attempting to follow up, we will never know whether the proposal would have afforded a genuine opportunity to avoid war.

This again points to a fundamental difference between Iraq and Kosovo, which Clark has referred to as consensus. In Iraq, an opportunity still remained for a diplomatic solution and our allies in France, Russia, and Germany were willing to work with us in pressuring Hussein for improved cooperation. But in Kosovo, almost every member of the security council except Russia and China agreed that force was the only alternative to end Milosevic's campaign of ethnic cleansing. For this reason, our nineteen NATO allies willingly participated in the campaign to oust Milosevic. Contrast this to the coalition Bush scrambled together for Iraq, which consisted mainly of small countries offering insignificant military and financial resources, with the exception of the UK. While Italy and Spain were not insignificant allies, their contributions to Bush's coaliation were minimal.

Clark has also stated that for him, a significant difference between the wars in Kosovo and Iraq was that for Kosovo, NATO outlined a clear exit plan, but the US had no strategy for post-war Iraq. He has also remarked that the situation in Kosovo was imminent, in that the Albanians were being exterminated and driven from their homes during the negotiations, and it was known that Milosevic planned to eliminate all ethnic Albanians from Kosovo. This included a directive from the upper echelon of command to have Serbian soldiers rape and impregnate as many ethnic Albanian women as possible.

The atrocities in Iraq were not orchestrated on this level, although Hussein and his sons were undeniably responsible for much of the brutality. It should be noted, however, that Hussein was concerned about the extreme depravity of his son Qusay and at one point even had him arrested. Milosevic probably would have promoted him.

The Bush administration likes to repeat the claim that Hussein gassed the Kurds, "his own people." This is opposite the position taken by the Reagan administration (which included Powell and Rumsfeld) immediately following the incident, whose officials repeated the conclusion of a 1990 Defense Intelligence Agency report. This report determined that while Iraq deployed poison gas in Halabja, it was Iranian gas that killed the Kurds. The DIA report validated the findings of Dr. Stephen Pellitiere and his colleagues from the Army War College. Human Rights groups disputed these conclusions, alleging that the US was trying to protect its ally Hussein, but the press reported them at the time and congress considered them credible enough to vote against a proposed resolution to censure Hussein for the incident in Halabja.

For the sake of argument, assume that Hussein was responsible for gassing the Kurds. It should be noted that the incident came at the end of a seven-year war with Iran in which the Kurds had allied with Iran to overthrow the Iraqi government. Kurds fought alongside Iranian soldiers and turned over their villages to the Iranian troops from which they could drive further into the heart of Iraq. In the US, we would consider this treason. While this does not justify gassing the many innocent civilians who died, it does suggest the motive was not simply genocide.

The DIA and War College reports both reached the conclusion that the Iranians and Iraqis assumed they were deploying gas against each other. Unknown to the Iraqis, The Iranians had pulled out of Halabja the day before, allowing the displaced Kurds to return. Unknown to the Iranians, the Iraqi soldiers had not taken over the town.

The second most highlighted example of Hussein's brutality relates to the Shiite uprising at the end of the first Gulf War. This uprising was instigated by US forces, who then withdrew and abandoned the Shiites to Hussein's bloody revenge. Hussein purged the Shiites of all those he believed were dissidents, along with their family members; but he never initiated a campaign to exterminate all Shiites or all Kurds.

Shortly after the Shiite massacre, the UN established "no fly" zones in the north and south of Iraq. This provided protection for the Kurds and Shiites in Iraq and prevented Hussein from carrying out any retaliatory or genocidal campaigns against them. Hussein did continue to abuse human rights and murder his "enemies" regardless of their ethnic persuasion. Most happened to be Shiite, however, since Hussein was a Sunni Muslim and treated Sunnis much better than he did Shiites.

In Kosovo, there were no such "no fly" zones. At the time NATO invaded, thousands of civilians had already been murdered or displaced in an ongoing campaign to purge Kosovo of ethnic Albanians. Bodies were cremated in an industrial furnace, a la Hitler, as Milosevic carried out his own "final solution" campaign.

Had NATO not intervened in Kosovo when it did, Milosevic might have succeeded in exterminating all ethnic Albanians:

Several of the Serbian fighters who took part in burning Albanian bodies--including Dusko--expressed no remorse. In fact, Dusko only wishes he could have done more.

"Had it not been for the NATO bombing," he said, "I guarantee you we would have driven out all 2 million Albanians from Kosovo. ... You gotta know, Albanians are stupid. They're a dirty people. And this hatred has been around for 600 years. It will never go away. In 30 years, or whenever these NATO troops and these human rights monitors leave, we'll start fighting again." [Burning the Evidence, Michael Montgomery and Stephen Smith, 2001]

No evidence exists that Hussein had an active plan to exterminate all the Shiites and Kurds in Iraq, one that only an invasion could stop. In fact, at the time of the US invasion, the Kurds had established an autonomous region in the northern "no fly" zone, with a semblance of democratic government and economic independence.

With greater UN pressure and negotiations to reduce or eliminate sanctions, perhaps an international presence could have been established inside Iraq, which then could have persuaded the Iraqi government to improve its human rights record in order to rejoin the world economy. While international diplomacy was tried and ultimately failed in Kosovo , it might also have failed in Iraq. But we will never know.

The greatest difference between Iraq and Kosovo is that no one can say with absolute certaintly whether a diplomatic solution could have been found for Iraq, because George Bush unleashed "shock and awe" long before the last resort.

Fri, 14 Nov 2003 21:36:55 GMT

Speak "No Evil According to Bush"

Nothing illustrates better why we need a new president than the continual erosion of our Constitutional rights under the Bush administration. The infringement of our rights begins at the top and works its way down to his ardent supporters, who have adopted the Bush mantra "you're either with us or against us" as their own.

In Tuesday's Veteran's Day parade in Tallahassee, Florida, sponosored by the Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 3308, two groups of veterans (Members of Veterans For Peace and Vietnam Veterans Against the War) legally registered to participate in the parade. As the parade was set to begin, the parade chairman pulled them out of line and refused to allow them to participate. He said they were "offensive" and that "They can have their free speech, just not in the parade.They belong on the sidewalk." Apparently they did not consider the girls from Hooters at all offensive, because they were permitted to remain in the parade. It was not reported whether any of the Hooters girls were actually veterans.

A Veteran's Day parade should be for all Veterans who served, not just those who agree with President Bush's policies.

The right to protest our government is one of the underpinnings of our Constitution. It is this right that preserves our demoracy. But perhaps this is difficult for some Americans to recall, when the actions of our president continually serve to diminish those rights. The Bush administration has worked hard to insulate the president from protest, here and abroad. The Secret Service has ordered local police to herd anti-Bush protestors into designated "free speech zones," which are often several blocks off the route Bush and administration officials travel and away from the media activity centered around the president. Meanwhile, Bush supporters are allowed to remain right up front where they can be seen by Bush and the media. Protestors who refuse to be coralled in one of the chain link cages erected to contain them are arrested and charged.

In England, the Bush administration is reported to be putting pressure on Tony Blair to ensure that Bush is kept well-insulated by the massive protests that are planned for his upcoming visit. While Scotland Yard denies they have been put under pressure, they have also admitted they will be taking the unprecedented step of closing large portions of London during the president's visit, and establishing a "free speech zone."

And how can anyone forget Stephen Downs, who in March 2003, was arrested at a New York mall for refusing to remove a shirt that read "Give Peace a Chance?" Proving the power of protest, charges were dropped after 100 protestors wearing anti-war insignia threatened to protest every day until the mall backed down.

Freedom to dissent is not the only right this administration is trampling. According to the New York Times, the senate and house recently approved a measure that greatly increases the ability of the FBI to gain access to an individual's personal records without judicial oversight. This is something for which Bush and Ashcroft had been lobbying.

According to the Times, "The measure now awaiting final approval in Congress would significantly broaden the law to include securities dealers, currency exchanges, car dealers, travel agencies, post offices, casinos, pawnbrokers and any other institution doing cash transactions with a high degree of usefulness in criminal, tax or regulatory matters."

The government has claimed this is needed to pursue people who may be involved in terrorism and espionage, but like the Patriot Act, nothing limits the new subpoena powers to those applications. The Justice Department has admitted that it has used the Patriot Act to target people suspected of crimes other than terrorism and espionage but has not been very forthcoming about the extent.

The greatest concern regarding this about-to-become-law provision is that it removes judicial oversight from the process, and therefore, no one independent of the FBI and Justice Department will be ensuring that innocent citizens are protected from undue invasion of privacy.

We need a leader who believes in our Constitution and will fight to protect the rights bestowed on us by the Constitution--and this cannot be a man who sat in congress and voted our rights away without hesitation. That is why I support Wesley Clark.

Some have expressed concern that General Clark recently expressed he would support a ban on flag burning, which many consider a legitimate form of dissent under the Constitution. Indeed, the courts have held it to be so.

But keep in mind, 48 states currently have laws against desecrating the American flag, including Vermont, whose law was enacted by Howard Dean. Of all the potentialy viable candidates, only John Kerry and Joe Lieberman have spoken against a flag desecration amendment. This amendment would apply to only 200 to 300 people per year, and the application of any consequences would have judicial oversight. While I personally do not agree with an amendment on flag desecration, it's not a make or break issue for me because I recognize that to many veterans, it is truly painful to behold.

Justice John Paul Stevens is a very liberal member of the Supreme Court, particularly on free speech rights; he is also a veteran of WWII. In a 5/4 Supreme Court decision upholding the right of Americans to desecrate the flag, Stevens issued a dissent, in which he said:

The ideas of liberty and equality have been an irresistible force in motivating leaders like Patrick Henry, Susan B. Anthony and Abraham Lincoln, schoolteachers like Nathan Hale and Booker T. Washington, the Philippine Scouts who fought at Bataan, and the soldiers who scaled the bluff at Omaha Beach. If those ideas are worth fighting for -- and our history demonstrates that they are -- it cannot be true that the flag that uniquely symbolizes their power is not itself worthy of protection from unnecessary desecration.

He also wrote:

In my considered judgment, sanctioning the public desecration of the flag will tarnish its value -- both for those who cherish the ideals for which it waves and for those who desire to don the robes of martyrdom by burning it. That tarnish is not justified by the trivial burden on free expression occasioned by requiring that an available, alternative mode of expression -- including uttering words critical of the flag... be employed.

We can conclude that reasonable people disagree on this issue, and it clearly doesn't qualify as a litmus test on party alliance. Diane Feinstein, a prominent democrat, has consistently sponsored an amendment prohibiting desecration of the flag; and while liberal justice Stevens supports bans on such activity, conservative justice Antonin Scalia does not.

A more pressing concern should be the legislation that has already passed or is poised to be enacted, which allows our personal freedoms to be abridged. We should also be concerned about the growing climate of intimidation in America among Bush supporters against those who would speak out against the government. These are things that Wes Clark, more than any other candidate, has promised to address and rectify as president.

Fri, 14 Nov 2003 21:21:31 GMT

Bush Hides from Families of Troops KIA

President Bush will be going to London soon for the "royal" treatment. He probably won't be addressing a joint session of Parliament, since several members are likely to walk out or hiss at him, which would not make for positive public consumption in America. It highlights that Bush's alliance is with Tony Blair--not the UK. The majority of the British population dislikes Bush intensely, and most are opposed to the increased security costs Britain must bear due to his visit.

Meanwhile, protestors plan to turn out en masse and the Bush administration is doing its best to see that Bush is insulated from the attention. When asked about it in an interview today, Bush said "I can understand people not liking war, if that's what they're there to protest. I don't like war. War is the last choice a president should make, not the first." Is he really so clueless as to believe the protestors, who plan to re-enact the wartime scene of Iraqis pulling down a statue of Saddam Hussein by having American expatriates pull down a statue of Bush in Trafalgar Square, are merely protesting the war? They have proven Bush's presence in London is not necessary to stage a war protest. Make no mistake, this is an anti-Bush protest.

The most stunning aspect of this report, however, was Bush's announced intent to meet with the relatives of British troops killed in Iraq. The mother of Darius Jennings, a 22-year-old American soldier who died when the Chinook helicopter was shot down in Iraq, has called on President Bush to meet with her family. It looks like the families of soldiers in Britain will get that meeting first--assuming Harriet Johnson, Mr. Jennings mother, gets one at all. Wes Clark met with Ms. Johnson earlier this month for a private visit. As general, he never shirked his responsibilities, including those for his troops and their families. As commander-in-chief, he would not avoid meeting with the parents of soldiers who die on his watch because his public relations guru advises that it's not politically expedient.

The Bush administration works hard to shield Americans from images of death and injury from the Iraqi front, reinforcing rules that were established to shield sitting presidents from public unhappiness over wartime casualties. This includes reminding reporters that they are banned from filming the flag-draped coffins of Iraq casualties returning to Dover, and, according to today's news, tightening restrictions on press coverage at Arlington National Cemetery funerals.

President Bush's image consultant should have realized that the most fitting tribute to our war heroes was not donning a flight suit and landing on an aircraft carrier but rather donning his best black suit and attending their funerals.

Thu, 16 Oct 2003 15:30:41 GMT

Joke of the Day:

From the Philadelphia Inquirer:

WASHINGTON - Concerned about the appearance of disarray and feuding within his administration as well as growing resistance to his policies in Iraq, President Bush - living up to his recent declaration that he is in charge - told his top officials to "stop the leaks" to the media, or else.

News of Bush's order leaked almost immediately.

Bush told his senior aides Tuesday that he "didn't want to see any stories" quoting unnamed administration officials in the media anymore, and that if he did, there would be consequences, said a senior administration official who asked that his name not be used.

Wed, 15 Oct 2003 17:43:34 GMT

Clark Minutiae

Jocks Always Pick on the Brains*

***UPDATE: This article by the New York Times blows any criticism of Clark by Bush-loving generals out of the water. From Colin Powell: "Wes Clark has been a superb battalion commander and will be a superb brigade commander. He is an officer of the rarest potential and will clearly rise to senior general officer rank. He will be one of the Army's leaders in the 1990's." || From Alexander Haig: "Major Clark's earnestness, sincerity of purpose and absolute dedication convey a moral force in his work which gives him a significant voice in this headquarters." and "Major Clark is an officer of impeccable character with a rare blend of personal qualities and professional attributes which uniquely qualify him as a soldier-scholar."|| From Col. Charles G. Prather IV: "The most brilliant and gifted officer I've known. I have never been more impressed with an officer's talent and dedication...should rank with men like Douglas MacArthur." || From General Shalikashvili: "...outstanding commander...quick of mind and an extraordinary strategic thinker." Quote from Times: He [Shalikashvili] said General Clark would not have been promoted repeatedly if most of his commanders did not agree. || I guess we can see the real reason why Clark got the job Cisneros wanted.***

The press has been covering remarks made by Clark's former peers regarding his service days. Most notable are Hugh Shelton's comments. Shelton called Clark a "nut" and suggested his forced early retirement "had to do with integrity and character issues" but refused to substantiate the accusations. He also tellingly refused to say whether he was a republican or democrat. Yet at the same meeting, he stated that in order to deal with the ongoing danger, the United States must "continue to go after terrorists," and that "Bush has maintained the pressure and earned kudos in spite of the criticism." It's pretty clear where Shelton's allegiance lies.

According to William Saletan at Slate, the Republican party disseminated Shelton's remarks in an email alert. Saletan says:

What we do know from widespread reporting is that Shelton resented Clark for going over his head to the Clinton White House, the State Department, and the media. That's the closest thing to a Clark-Shelton 'integrity' issue I can find in the public record.

Clark asserts that Shelton never confronted him about character issues, and assumes Shelton's unhappiness relates to professional disagreements that Shelton has taken personally.

Gen. Dennis Reimer, a former Army chief of staff, described Clark as an intelligent, "hardworking, ambitious individual who really applies himself hard," but added "Some of us were concerned about the fact that he was focused too much upward and not down on the soldiers. I've always believed you ought to be looking down toward your soldiers and not up at how to please your boss...I just didn't see enough of that in Wes.''

Reimer fails to specify how Clark ignored his soldiers' needs. Was it in Vietnam, when he led them to safety after taking four bullets? David Hackworth, a distinguished veteran and author of several books, once blasted Clark and called him a "perfumed prince." Conservatives had a field day with those remarks, repeating them everywhere, as though Hackworth were divine. Once Hackworth recanted and heaped praise on Clark, these same individuals took to calling him 'traitor.' Some conservatives have no respect for veterans.

At Veterans for Clark 2004, individuals who claim to have served under Clark have high praise:

T. Ryan, Rank – SSgt, USMC, City – Boston, Ma, 80-84 87-2003, says:

Prior to joining the Marines I was a 17-year-old soldier in the 1st Bn 77th Armor 4th ID. Then LtCol Clark was my Bn Commander. I can honestly say he was top notch, very well respected by Enlisted and Officers alike and earned a lifetime of respect from myself. A true Soldiers Soldier. Thanks for everything Sir and Semper Fidelis.

Tammi Triplett, Rank - SGT/E5 , Army, 1988-1996:

I was at the NTC while Gen. Clark was the post commander. I admired him them for holding townhall meetings so that he could hear the concerns of the entire community. He was concerned for us then and I believe that he is concerned for us now.

Forrest (Bill) Hilbish, CW04 (Retired), US Navy 1975-1999, Mogadore, Ohio:

I worked for General Clark while stationed at SCJ6 Current Operations Branch for USSOUTHCOM in Panama. He was an excellent leader and commander. My wife was impressed by the fact that even though there were hundreds of officers working for him, he knew both of our names...I am a Republican but I would vote for the "ONE" Democrat.

Sam Closkey, Rank - LTC - Army 1966-1986, City - Palm City, FL:

I worked with General Clark at the National Training Center. I always thought he would be an excellent president. He was the easiest guy to work for, smart, appreciative, confident and he really cared about people. I am a registered republican, but he's got my vote.

These soldiers do not bolster Reimer's description of Clark as a man who always looked up instead of down to the soldiers beneath him. After 9/11, Bush tapped Reimer to serve on the Homeland Defense commission.

Some of the harshest remarks were from former Lt. General Marc Cisneros, who has very close ties to the Bush family and is a Texas native. In 1997, then Gov. George Bush appointed him to the state Jail Standards Commission. In 1998, he was elected president of Texas A&M University, where he also serves on the advisory council for the Bush School of Government and Public Policy. He has given speeches at the Bush Library. In the runup to the 2000 election, Cisneros facilitated a speech from former President Bush to Texas A&M students, in which Bush said "It hurts far more to hear my boy criticized than it does when I'm criticized." Current President Bush also appointed Cisneros to his Defense Policy Board. The DFB includes neoconservatives like Richard Perle and conservatives Newt Gingrich, Henry Kissinger, Dan Quayle, Tillie Fowler, and Pete Wilson. While there are one or two democrats, such as Thomas Foley, the DFB is a hawkish advocate of Bush's pre-emptive doctrine.

Another identified Clark critic is Ret. Army Brig. Gen. David Grange, U.S. commander in Bosnia during Clark's service there. He said that Clark was ambitious and "he would maybe not be cognizant of some of the feelings or concerns of some of the people around him. There's no question that General Clark is for General Clark.'' Grange added, however, that Clark had always treated him well personally. In an earlier statement to the New York Times, he said only that "It was tenuous at times. He [Clark] did get into the weeds."

Other military men defended Clark, such as the respected Gen. Barry McCaffery. McCaffery acknowledged that Clark encountered friction in the military in part because he wasn't part of the "good ol' boys" network, which men like Shelton ascribed to. McCaffery pointed out that "...for 34 years when there was a tough problem the local leadership asked Wes Clark to take on the problem. This guy has been incredibly successful at doing the country's business.''

Dan Christman and Don Kerrick, two retired lieutenant generals, said of Clark "We knew that he was a man of his word and that he would deliver what we expected" and described the friction as an inevitable result of a campaign that involved coordinating nineteen NATO allies without compromising the interests of the United States.

Clinton Defense Secretary William J. Perry said Clark's "intellectual horsepower is very impressive."

The highest praise comes from Army Col. Douglas Macgregor, another intellectual military man, whom Clark appointed as Director of Planning at NATO:

There is this aspect of his character -- he is loyal to people he knows are capable and competent. As for his peers, it's a function of jealousy and envy, and it's a case of misunderstanding. General Clark is an intense person, he's passionate, and certainly the military is suspicious of people who are intense and passionate. He is a complex man who does not lend himself to simplistic formulations. But he is very competent, and devoted to the country.

The Washington Post wrote that Clark's "[s]upporters and detractors agree on this much: The retired general is immensely talented, possessed of a keen strategic sensibility and the kind of gold-plated military credentials that could make him a formidable candidate in the Democratic race for president."

Yes, he's ruffled a few feathers with a reportedly "abrasive" personality, something that has not been evident in any of his public appearances. But he's running for president, not Miss Congeniality. Conversely, Bush has a reputation for being a nice guy yet not possessing a burning intellect. Assuming you believe Bush is a nice guy, whom would you hire to run your company? The nice dimbulb or the brilliant hardass?

*Clark was actually a jock and a brain. Some say he could have become an Olympic swimmer if he had so desired.

Division in the Ranks? Not Really.

***UPDATE: Visit The Tooney Bin for an enjoyable satirical take on the letter that first triggered overhyped media claims of "dissent" among Draft Clark supporters. For an in-depth account from an insider personally familiar with Newberry, visit Women4Clark and read Needle of Dissent. Sadly, you won't hear a word from the mainstream media about how voices like Newberry's are an extreme minority among Clark's grass roots supporters.***

The mainstream media continues to make an issue of a few malcontents among the Clark grass roots movement. It's a bit like suggesting a high school has a violence issue because two of its 2,000 students had a fistfight.

Clark's MSNBC embed, Marisa Buchanan, filed her most recent report "from the front lines" on October 13. Instead of covering Clark's campaign, she affords Clark campaign manager Donnie Fowler the opportunity to vent his spleen uncontested.

October 13 was the day thousands of people participated in Meetups for Clark all over the United States. Buchanan has yet to report on the Meetups or Clark's October 14 New York speech, where he unveiled a bold policy initiative called "Civilian Corps."

Clark supporters can write MSNBC and copy the email to viewerservices@msnbc.com to complain about Marisa Buchanan's ineffective coverage of the Clark campaign. As for Fowler's disgruntled sentiments, along with those of minor league Draft Clark player Stirling Newberry, who wrote an open letter to Clark full of innuendo and rumor and little fact, they are mosquito bites: irritating but insignificant. Newberry runs DraftClark.com, a site owned by the DailyKos blogger, a strident Dean supporter.

Responses to Newberry's whining missive were overwhelmingly unsupportive. It's difficult to claim the Clark campaign is ignoring its grass roots supporters when it employs two individuals from the top tier of the Draft Clark movement: John Hlinko and Maya Israel. Clark maintains almost daily email contact with his Internet supporters, provides an active blog, recorded a webcast announcement, and meets with draft participants at campaign stops around the country. The evidence does not support the idea that he has abandoned his grass roots followers. Further, some respondents disagreed with Newberry's implication that the movement was more important than the man. Many said they supported Clark not out of a desire to be a part of some groundbreaking movement but because after examining his credentials they concluded that he was the best man for the job. Most recognize the need for Clark to attract non-draft movement voters, since no candidate can win with Internet support alone.

Based on Fowler's inexperience (Clark's was his first campaign) and both Fowler and Newberry's apparent propensity to go off half-cocked when things don't align with their wishes, it's better for the Clark campaign that they are not staff members. Since Fowler resigned, the campaign has run much smoother, with fewer gaffes.

Wed, 15 Oct 2003 06:47:54 GMT

Liberal Media, My Ass

Despite a Gallup poll claiming that 45 percent of Americans think the media is "too liberal," it's hard to ignore the obvious conservative bias in the mainstream media. Summaries of the poll invariably fail to mention that while 45 percent claimed to regard the media as too liberal, a grand total of 55 percent (that would be the majority) regarded it as just right or too conservative.

Further, the percentage of people believing the media is too liberal has decreased among all groups (conservatives, moderates, liberals) for the past two years, whereas the percentage of those believing the media is too conservative has increased.

Does this mean that the media does have a liberal bias? Not when you consider that one of the reasons for this misperception is FOX News, the highest rated news channel in America, which consistently tells its viewers that the media has a liberal bias (see O'Reilly's rantings about NPR elsewhere on this blog). Consider a study done by Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA), which discovered that 80 percent of FOX viewers held at least one significant misperception about the Iraq war (such as a strong link found between Al Qaeda and Iraq or weapons of mass destruction located in Iraq; and this was before the Kay report came out, which Bush & Co. have disingenuously used to argue that WMD were found). 71 percent of CBS viewers and 55 percent of CNN and NBC viewers had at least one misperception about the war. Even more startling, 45 percent of FOX viewers believed all three false statements PIPA asked about the war. The other networks' viewers scored between 12 and 16 percent, and NPR had a meager 4 percent of its viewers who believed all three claims.

This indicates that the majority of news-watching Americans are not well informed and are highly susceptible to repetition and suggestion. Those same people watching FOX news may also listen to Rush Limbaugh cursing the evil "liberal" media on a near-daily basis. Despite its moniker fair and balanced, few outside of FOX's loyal fans consider it so. At a recent gathering celebrating the renovation of the Al Neuharth Media Center at University of South Dakota, the Press & Dakotan quoted Robert MacNeil, former host of The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour, as saying "The Fox claim is a con on the public...The network is blatantly unbalanced." He added that the media used patriotism to promote President Bush and a right wing agenda. Tom Curley, CEO of the Associated Press, told the audience that while journalists are more often considered liberal (a point Al Franken makes in his book Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them), "most media are owned by Republican conservatives, so there is a healthy balance and tension."

Is there really a healthy balance? Was it the liberal journalist or the conservative owner at MSNBC who replaced anti-war Phil Donahue with conservative ideologue Michael "Weiner" Savage (subsequently fired for doing what he does best--insulting people)? One wonders who was surprised by Savage's on-air behavior or that of uber-conservative Rush Limbaugh, terminated from ESPN for making racially offensive remarks about black quarterback Donovan McNabb.

In What Liberal Media?, Eric Alterman does an excellent job debunking the myth of the liberal media. He quotes high ranking conservatives who admit to merely "working the ref" in hopes of getting "calls" more to their liking. And while Ann Coulter, author of Slander, which advocates the 'liberal media' theory, has appeared on "liberal" MSNBC's Hardball eight or nine times, Alterman has only appeared once. In fairness, Alterman acknowledged that he was "only willing to go on when plugging a book, which isn't that often."

Today, Carl Cameron of FOX News interviewed Wesley Clark prior to Clark's speech in New York. Cameron asked him about the never-ending story of Clark's supposed flip-flop on the Iraq War. Meanwhile, beneath a bar that says "You Decide 2004," FOX scrolls the pertinent facts Americans need to know about the candidates, such as "Clark gets his hair cut every two weeks."

Clark starts answering Cameron's question with "I've stated that it was not an imminent threat, I believe the problem should have been internationalized--" when Cameron interrupts:

"President Bush didn't say it was imminent, though."

This is a classic example of how FOX cheerleads for Bush and simultaneously abuses the people's trust in journalists to present facts instead of partisan spin. While conservatives Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes of FOX may believe Bush's failure to use the precise word "imminent" makes FOX factually correct, Cameron's claim is contextually incorrect. Bush released a statement on September 26, 2002, alleging that Hussein "could launch a biological or chemical attack 45 minutes after the order is given"; on October 8, 2002, he said "Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof -- the smoking gun -- that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud." According to the American Heritage Dictionary, a definition for peril is imminent danger.

Clark had a ready response for Cameron. "Oh there were all kinds of suggestions it was imminent, that's why the March deadline. We couldn't wait, remember?"

Recently Steve Rendall of FAIR analyzed FOX News' balance. His conclusion revealed that if FOX were a teeter-totter, with republicans on one side and liberals on the other, the liberals would have flown off into the stratosphere. In a 19-week study of Special Report with Brit Hume, FOX's primary political news show, Rendall divided guests into conservative and non-conservative. He was very selective in whom he labeled conservative, only including "guests affiliated with openly conservative think tanks, magazines or advocacy groups, or who promote openly conservative views." All others, even republicans like Christine Todd Whitman and Christopher Shays, were classified as non-conservative. Rendall discovered that 65 of the 92 guests (71 percent) were conservative. He then analyzed partisan guests and found that 89 percent of the 56 partisan guests were republicans. Only 6 were democrats, a greater than "8 to 1 imbalance."

Rendall then analyzed CNN's Wolf Blitzer Reports, a show comparable to Hume's, and concluded:

Of Blitzer's 67 partisan guests, 38 were republicans and 29 were democrats -- a 57 percent to 43 percent split in favor of republicans. Thirty-five out of 109 guests (32 percent) were avowed conservatives, with the remaining 68 percent divided up among the rest of the political spectrum, from center-right to left.

Michael Tomasky, a Shorenstein Fellow and contributing editor to New York magazine, produced Whispers and Screams, a research paper on "the partisan nature of editorial pages." He contrasted so-called liberal papers like The New York Times and the Washington Post against conservative ones such as The Wall Street Journal and the Washington Times. Tomasky concluded:

...the conservative pages are more partisan-often far more partisan-with regard to the intensity with which they criticize the other side. Also, the paper finds conservative editorial are far less willing to criticize a republican administration than liberal pages are willing to take issue with a democratic administration.

Of course, conservatives dismissed the report out of hand as biased because Tomasky was a "liberal" journalist.

Liberal publications and liberal media do exist, but they are insignificant in size and influence compared to the conservative machine, which often gobbles up the truth and regurgitates propaganda. The mainstream media appears cowed by the success of the conservative media and continues to lean further right in a reach for some of the audience share. According to CNN commentator Christiane Amanpour, regarding coverage of the Iraq War:

I think the press was muzzled, and I think the press self-muzzled. I'm sorry to say, but certainly television and, perhaps, to a certain extent, my station was intimidated by the administration and its foot soldiers at Fox News. And it did, in fact, put a climate of fear and self-censorship, in my view, in terms of the kind of broadcast work we did.

Former Pentagon spokeswoman Torie Clarke responded that Amanpour's claim was "categorically untrue. In my experience, a little over two years at the Pentagon, I never saw them (the media) holding back. I saw them reporting the good, the bad and the in between." Yet the only station providing detailed information on the true horrors of war, such as civilian deaths in Iraq, was Al Jazeera. The war American television broadcast was sanitized, featuring less blood than your average B-grade horror flick.

The Pentagon's attitude has changed significantly. Now that the media reports the bad news from Iraq, such as the frequent deaths of soldiers and suicide bombings, Bush has claimed news from Iraq moves through a filter. Considering Bush says he doesn't read the newspapers and gets his news through the filter of his staff, one wonders how he can accurately make this charge. It's an absurd charge, really, because every major news outlet has run stories about Iraq's successes. On April 25, 2003, CBS ran an article entitled Progress Seen in Postwar Recovery, relating Jay Garner's account of the progress being made. UPI covered July 18 testimony by Jay Garner to congress on Iraq's "rapid" progress. The Christian Science Monitor ran an article on July 24, called Iraq in Transition, which detailed how things in Iraq were "looking up." On September 14, CNN conducted an interview on Iraq's progress with Colin Powell.

Every media outlet covered the deaths of Uday and Qusay Hussein around the clock for the first few days. There have been stories about the progress in opening Iraq's oil pipelines, but admittedly also ones about the sabotage. Mainstream news reported on a Gallup poll that claimed most Baghdad residents were happy Hussein was gone, but the media also pointed out the majority felt life was better under Saddam, yet expected things to improve in the next five years.

Perhaps conservatives' problem with the filter is that it is large enough to allow the bad to pass through along with the good. It's not the fault of the media that in the minds of Americans, the fact that more Iraqis now have electricity seems insignificant compared to dead soldiers. Congressional republican George Nethercutt doesn't share that sentiment. Yesterday he said "The story of what we've done in the postwar period is remarkable. It is a better and more important story than losing a couple of soldiers every day." According to Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, the White House told congressional democrats no airplane was available to take them to Iraq to see the progress firsthand. "If they're going to make these characterizations, it would be nice if we could analyze those circumstances in a bipartisan way," he said.

How's this for media bias? The AP distributed a photograph to various news outlets of Bush giving a Columbus Day Speech and featured the same photo prominently on its home page. It depicts Bush with head bowed and a glowing halo around his cranium, a la pre-Renaissance Jesus.

Yahoo married this picture to three separate stories about Bush. The AP photo editor at the Washington DC bureau said that the photographer, Charles Dharapak, is a Buddhist and the theological implications of the picture were unintentional. He said that Dharapak, not the photo editor, was responsible for releasing the photo to the media and thus the AP no longer had influence on whether the photo was used alongside AP articles. The photo garnered several "holy molys!" on the Yahoo message boards and various blogs.

An increasing number of liberals have abandoned hope of finding an unbiased television news source and turned to the internet, the BBC, and various fringe publications for their news fix. This compounds the problem, because the mainstream news then feels less obligation to be fair and balanced and skews right to lure conservative viewers. Which is how conservative fruitcakes like Grover Norquist get prime time interviews on NPR. Fruitcake may seem harsh, but Norquist compared opposition to tax cuts to support for the Holocaust, of all things.

When you next hear someone venting about the 'liberal media,' set them straight. Point out that the most watched television news is FOX; the radio personality with the most listeners and on the most stations is Rush Limbaugh; there are currently three books by conservative personalities on the New York Times hardcover non-fiction bestseller list (with the help of bulk sales, as usual); the Wall Street Journal has one of the widest circulations in the nation; and more people recognize the name Matt Drudge than Joshua Miller. Any fair and balanced individual will readily concede that the conservative media is very pervasive in the United States.

Sun, 12 Oct 2003 04:25:12 GMT

Bush Campaigns on Our Dollar

Bush and company are using our tax dollars to fund a new public relations offensive meant to prop up his sagging poll numbers. Instead of working to defend our nation, they are working to defend Bush from an as yet unnamed democratic rival in 2004. Instead of admitting to mistakes in the Iraq war plan, they're working to convince Americans that Bush never makes mistakes.

Meanwhile, five US soldiers have been killed in Iraq this week and several injured. The Pentagon in the past has called such deaths "militarily insignificant," something Brit Hume of FOX News suggested when he falsely claimed a soldier had a greater chance of dying in California than Iraq. He pointed out that 6.6 people are murdered daily in California versus 1.7 troops in Iraq, but neglected to consider that 150,000 troops constitute a far smaller population than the 34.5 million Californians, giving a US soldier in Iraq a 46-time greater chance of being killed each day. Claiming that troop deaths are insignificant overall is like saying the 3,000 deaths on 9/11 are insignificant since more than 5,500 people die daliy in the US. Can you imagine the outcry if a democrat had been the first to call troop deaths insignificant? Limbaugh, O'Reilly, Coulter and their ilk would sink their fangs into the poor fellow, shake him, and stomp on his lifeless body. As they should. It's a despicable thing to say.

You can visit the CNN site to learn more about the soldiers who have died in Iraq. Most are men in their early twenties. It is painful to see the smiling faces and realize that no one will see that smile again. While the average American reflects on the loss of these soldiers on Veteran's Day and Memorial Day, someone else reflects on it every single day. Our empathy makes it excruciating to assert that those soldiers died fighting a war that should not have happened.

Yesterday Cheney preached a fire and brimstone sermon about how Bush the savior launched this war to keep us free from the clutches of the great satan Saddam and averted Armageddon. Bush and Cheney never squander an opportunity to drag out the bloody corpses of 9/11 and wave them in front of us, trying to shock us into support. But there new corpses crowd us on the other side: the ghosts of the more than 7,000 Iraqi civilians who have died in this conflict and the 381 coalition soldiers. That total is more than double the deaths on 9/11, an event for which our president admitted Iraq was not responsible, yet one for which Iraqis have paid with blood.

Rice, Rumsfeld, Powell, Cheney, Wolfowitz, and Bush will blitz America over the next week or two, attempting to convince everyone that a vial of B-strain botulinum bacteria hidden in a referigerator since 1993 constitutes an active weapons program. They will neglect to mention that to convert this bacteria to weapons grade material requires sophisticated equipment that Iraq didn't have, and there is no indication Iraq had taken a first step on that path. They will play up newly discovered hidden laboratories "suitable for continuing CBW research." Indeed, much of Kay's conclusions center around so-called dual use facilities. These are facilities with a legitimate purpose but for which one can imagine a nefarious purpose. In other words, owning ordinary duct tape proves homicidal intent because everyone knows taping it over someone's nose and mouth causes suffocation. The Bush team is unwilling to consider that former Baathist scientists might lie or exaggerate to curry favor with the coalition and avoid arrest.

The government has not allowed the Iraq Survey Group (the team looking for the weapons in Iraq) to read Kay's classified report nor has it provided copies to the UN. Yet the CIA was given the report and allowed to make alterations:

More evidence of such programmes was included in a 200-page classified version of the 13-page report made public, but experts in the ISG, including former UN inspectors, have so far not been allowed to read the classified version, according to one of their former colleagues.

The refusal to allow ISG experts to read a report on their own work adds weight to suspicions that the report has been manipulated. "They're under huge pressure to come up with whatever," the ex-colleague said.

Mr Kay has said privately the report's publication was held up for about two weeks while more work was done on it at CIA headquarters.

In other words, no independent source has examined the basis for Kay's conclusions. Considering the Bush administration's previous determinations regarding aluminum tubes and mobile weapons labs, both of which Kay and coalition intelligence agencies have since discredited, how does one trust anything released from Kay's report or the conclusions the Bush team offers about it? The Bush administration has shown repeatedly a willingness to sacrifice truth for political gain.

As part of this new public relations offensive, Cheney yesterday insisted that critics of the Iraq war would have done nothing to protect the US from the dastardly Hussein. Prosecuting the Iraq war has diverted valuable resources and intelligence from pursuing Al Qaeda, the group we know was behind 9/11 and presents a much bigger threat to US interests than Iraq ever was, so one wonders why Cheney would fault anyone for suggesting we take care of bin Laden before Hussein.

Almost everyone on the UN security council agreed Hussein was violating the resolutions and that it was imperative to continuing pressuring him to cooperate with inspectors, including threatening force. Had Hussein eventually been stamped as in compliance, the UN would have continued to monitor Iraq for years. It would not have been unreasonable to give the inspectors the additional time that Kay now requests. In the months that he has had unfettered access to all of Iraq, Kay has proven what many previously suspected, including some in the intelligence field: Iraq did not present an imminent threat or even one that had to be dealt with before the expiration of the six- to nine- month extension Hans Blix requested.

The Bush administration complains that the media is not painting a Kinkade portrait of Iraq; they pretend that reconstruction mitigates the daily reports of violence and death that emerge from Baghadad. They want the media to highlight the many schools opened without higlighting the sad fact that in many towns, women and girls can no longer attend because of the danger from kidnappers and rapists:

...Fears of a similar fate have driven Baghdad's female population indoors. When schools reopened on October 4, classrooms were half empty, with girls kept home by parents forced to choose between education and safety.

They want the media to report on the thousands of Iraqi police officers turned out without pointing out that these officers have no guns to enforce the laws and that corruption is widespread among them.

The Bush team believes the media should emphasize the successful rebuilding projects, without mentioning allegations of corruption among the American companies there or talking about the high price tag of no-bid contracts awarded to Cheney's former company. Bush has asked for $20 billion to rebuild Iraq, yet Paul Bremer says estimates are that Iraq will require $100 billion to rebuild the infrastructure, not including the costs of maintaining a military presence.

The media has presented many positive stories coming out of Iraq, such as the great progress that has been made in Mosul. But for every plus, there are two minuses, and it's hard to point out that more houses in Baghdad have power without pointing out that fewer Iraqis now have homes.

Tribal tensions have increased in small villages outside Baghdad, where the US maintains little to no presence. The Shias, once grateful, are growing angry and impatient. Only an irresponsible media would fail to report a 10,000-person street march in which the Shia participants chant "No no no to America!"

A recent report on Iraq's economy shows that it has plummeted since the occupation, leaving more than 50 percent of Iraqis unemployed. Even doubling oil production will not be enough to pay for reconstructing Iraq and restoring its economy.

Despite White House claims that everything is going very well, the oversight of Iraq reconstruction efforts has been reshuffled again, delegating a more prominent role to the White House. Bush claims this new public relations offensive is an effort to "get the truth out" about Iraq, and yet the White House refused to grant interviews to PBS' Frontline for a hardhitting documentary on the Iraq war. Neither Rice, Powell, Rumsfeld or Cheney would avail themselves for interviews and the White House canceled a scheduled interview between PBS and Douglas Feith, Paul Wolfowitz's Deputy, with only two hours' notice.

This is the third or fourth such publicity tour the White House has embarked on. For everyone, administration officials are only willing to talk to handpicked audiences of the party faithful who guarantee applause and ovations and softball questions. Media outlets that ask challenging questions find their access to the White House increasingly restricted while those who promote the Bush agenda, like FOX, are granted exclusive interviews with the president.

These public relations tours have nothing to do with explaining policy to the people and everything to do with Bush's 2004 re-election campaign, all on the taxpayer's dime. As long as the bodybags are kept off the news, Bush & Co. can say with straight faces that everything is going great in Iraq. How many loved ones of those dead Iraqis and dead US soldiers agree?

Thu, 09 Oct 2003 22:52:17 GMT

Wimpy Wimpy Wimpy Bill O'Reilly

Bill O'Reilly's favorite word is defamation. Anyone who has anything negative to say about O'Reilly is defaming him. Yesterday on Fresh Air, an NPR show hosted by Terry Gross, O'Reilly accused Al Franken and at least two book reviewers of defaming him. Why was O'Reilly giving an interview to NPR, whom he had previously blasted as a bastion of the liberal media ever since they revealed that, contrary to his claims of being a registered independent, he was actually a registered republican? You be the judge.

Attempting to be fair and balanced, Gross invited O'Reilly to appear on Fresh Air once his new book was published. She had interviewed Al Franken the month before about his book Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them, and Franken was highly critical of O'Reilly in the book and on the show. In the past O'Reilly has complained more than once that NPR had never interviewed him regarding one of his books, calling it an "outrage." NPR points out, that O'Reilly did appear on NPR and was invited several times to appear again but did not respond.

Gross prefaces the pre-recorded O'Reilly interview with a clip of O'Reilly lambasting her on his FOX show. In the clip, O'Reilly boasts about how he "told Gross off" and walked out on the interview. He whines that Gross asked him tougher questions than she had asked Franken, and claims the interview was a setup, saying, "I knew these people were not going to be fair."

To be fair, O'Reilly had a point. In her introduction, Gross referred to him as 'controversial,' a term with negative connotations. Conversely, she merely referred to Franken as a satirist.

The first question Gross asks O'Reilly is whether he regrets suing Franken. He points out that FOX sued Franken and disavows any involvement in pressing for the suit. He told a New York Times reporter the same thing in September, yet when the suit was dismissed, O'Reilly stated "we never thought we were going to win the lawsuit. We wanted to expose the vicious tactics being used by the far left." This contradicts the notion that he had nothing to do with the lawsuit. In a September article, Ben McGrath of the New Yorker pegged O'Reilly as the instigator for FOX's lawsuit, quoting an unnamed FOX employee.

O'Reilly tells Gross he considered suing Franken but because O'Reilly has the number one book, the number one show, and a radio show on 400 stations, he can't prove he's suffered damage, but he adds that "there's no question it was defamation and that's what this guy traffics in."

Next Gross mentions the Book Expo incident (fast forward 41 minutes). At the Book Expo, Franken accused O'Reilly of lying for claiming that Inside Edition, a show O'Reilly once hosted, had won a Peabody award, and O'Reilly screamed at Franken to "shut up." Gross asks whether Franken's assessment of O'Reilly as a bully is fair. O'Reilly, once again defensive, retorts that his success proves Franken wrong, because if Franken were correct, nobody would watch O'Reilly's show. "Americans are fair people, by and large," he says. But then he makes the stunning assertion that "there are people who enjoy reading and listening to people who attack other people with whom they disagree personally." Does this include fans of his show who watched him tell Ann Coulter that Al Franken was a "vile human being" or enjoyed his rants against Bill Moyers? Backstage, O'Reilly threatened Franken with a lawsuit from Fox regarding unauthorized use of his picture: "Fox lawyers will handle this," he said.

Gross follows up this question with one about O'Reilly's infamous interview with Jeremy Glick, the son of a man killed on 9/11 at the World Trade Center whom O'Reilly told to "shut up" and kicked out of the FOX studio. She asks "how much is theater and showmanship?" to which O'Reilly replies "none." Then he tells her to read the complete transcript, which he says shows that Glick "...said that the attack at 9/11 was alleged and then proceeded to blame President Bush and his father for orchestrating the attack on their own country."

What Glick actually said was:

Our current president now inherited a legacy from his father and inherited a political legacy that's responsible for training militarily, economically, and situating geopolitically the parties involved in the alleged assassination and the murder of my father and countless of thousands of others.

It's unclear to what Glick meant by alleged assassination. It clearly doesn't refer to the 9/11 deaths since in the same sentence he called those "murders." Did it refer to the untrue White House claim that one of the hijacked planes was targeting Air Force One and the president? O'Reilly never asked Glick to clarify but instead accused him of calling America a "terrorist nation." Glick calmly replied:

What I'm saying is...starting in the Carter administration and continuing and escalating while Bush's father was head of the CIA, we recruited a hundred thousand radical mujahadeens to combat a democratic government in Afghanistan, the Turaki government.

O'Reilly said he didn't want to discuss world politics with Glick and added "I don't really care what you think." Later they had this exchange:

O'REILLY: All right. You didn't support the action against Afghanistan to remove the Taliban. You were against it, OK.

GLICK: Why would I want to brutalize and further punish the people in Afghanistan...

O'REILLY: Who killed your father!

GLICK: The people in Afghanistan...

O'REILLY: Who killed your father.

GLICK: ... didn't kill my father.

O'REILLY: Sure they did. The al Qaeda people were trained there.

GLICK: The al Qaeda people? What about the Afghan people?

O'REILLY: See, I'm more angry about it than you are!

Indeed, O'Reilly was angry about it. On a previous program he had commented this about the situation in Afghanistan:

taking out their [Afghans] ability to exist day-to-day will not be hard. Remember the people of any country are ultimately responsible for the government they have. The Germans were responsible for Hitler, the Afghans are responsible for the Taliban. We should not target civilians but if they don't rise up against this criminal government, they starve, period.

As Moyer pointed out in the earlier linked article, non-governmental Afghans were mostly orphans and war widows who had suffered under years of brutal oppression. Yet O'Reilly believed they should starve for failing to oust the Taliban. Were Jews, the non-governing faction of Germany, ultimately responsible for Hitler because they didn't "rise up"? It's an absurd sentiment.

Then Glick asked:

GLICK: So what about George Bush?

O'REILLY: What about George Bush? He had nothing to do with it.

GLICK: The director -- senior as director of the CIA.

O'REILLY: He had nothing to do with it.

GLICK: So the people that trained a hundred thousand Mujahadeen who were...

O'Reilly ordered Glick's microphone cut, said he was disrespecting his dead father and wouldn't let Glick speak anymore. Glick never accused George W. Bush of being behind September 11. Nor did he accuse Bush's father of being behind September 11, although he may have been getting around to suggesting some culpability on the part of the US because they trained the mujahadeen rebels who later became the Taliban.

O'Reilly tells Gross that Glick was irrational and that he tried to solicit Glick for proof of his allegations and only aborted the interview when Glick offered none. But O'Reilly never asked Glick for proof and instead suggested Glick's parents would be ashamed of Glick and told him repeatedly to shut up before kicking him out of the studio. O'Reilly, uses his favorite word and tells Gross that Glick's remarks were "defamatory allegations."

Gross then asks O'Reilly about his unhappiness with Janet Maslin's New York Times review of Al Franken's book. Gross quotes O'Reilly as calling Maslin a "character assassin" and saying "that is why few journalists will ever criticize the Times, they know the paper will come after them in a very personal way." O'Reilly was angered when Maslin repeated Franken's now famous allegation that O'Reilly claimed his tabloid journalism show Inside Edition was awarded a Peabody. Maslin took a dig at O'Reilly for denying that he ever said such a thing and daring anyone to find a transcript of him doing so. O'Reilly said this after Franken and the Washington Post confronted him about it privately, at which point he told them he misspoke and that it was a Polk, not a Peabody.

Franken actually found three transcripts; in two of them, O'Reilly claimed Inside Edition had won two Peabodies, referring to the Peabody as "the most prestigious journalism award." Clearly O'Reilly didn't merely misspeak, since nobody defines the Polk as "the most prestigious award in journalism." He meant Peabody. But giving O'Reilly the benefit of the doubt, perhaps he believed Inside Edition really had won Peabodies. Correct it and move on, right? Not if you're Bill O'Reilly.

He never corrected the record until after Robert Reno of Newsday chastised O'Reilly for falsely claiming to have won a Peabody. O'Reilly ripped Reno on his show and insisted that no one could find a transcript anywhere of him ever saying Inside Edition had won a Peabody because he had never said it. Since Franken had privately informed O'Reilly that he had said just such a thing, O'Reilly lied and smeared Reno in the process.

Remarkably, O'Reilly repeats the lie to Gross: "I never said I won a Peabody award at any time." He insists he "mislabeled" the Pope award as a Peabody and that he corrected himself at least twice and that what he said was "the absolute truth." While he did correct himself eventually, it was only after Franken called him to the carpet. As for mislabelling the award, his elaboration of "the most prestigious award in journalism" denies that. "Who cares?" O'Reilly asks Gross. O'Reilly clearly does since he still can't bring himself to come clean about the incident. O'Reilly is not a stupid man. He knows he's dissembling.

O'Reilly then takes another swipe at Franken's book and at Gross: "If you can't tell that this book is defamation, then you can't read." Defamation requires damage to have been inflicted to his reputation or character. If O'Reilly believes it's unquestionable that he has been defamed, why doesn't he sue? Perhaps he fears another "wholly without merit" verdict.

Here are comments O'Reilly made that ambitious fact checkers should check out and report back to me!

--O'Reilly claims that he and Bob Woodward are the only authors in the past ten years to have hit the New York Times best seller list three times, with three separate books. I assume he means the hardcover non-fiction list, because all the Harry Potter books have blown O'Reilly's out of the water.

--Claims that "everybody else" (without saying who everybody else is) says the New York Times gave Moore's new book a "great review."

--Claims that his mother was a Kennedy because her mother was a Kennedy. Oddly he doesn't claim that he is therefore a Kennedy.

One falsehood O'Reilly tells Gross is that "spin" originated with the Nixon White House, a very dubious claim. Most scholars attribute the practice of spin to Ronald Reagan although some offer Franklin Delano Roosevelt as the original spinmeister. Nixon doesn't seem to get much credit for the concept. Does O'Reilly mean that the Nixon team coined the word spin? If so, he's mistaken. In a 1986 article on spin, William Safire, a former Nixon speechwriter, attributed its first political use to Jack Rosenthal in the New York Times, in reference to a 1984 Reagan-Mondale debate. It's been postulated that the term is derived from the old cliche "spin a yarn," which sprung from the practice of 17th century women meeting together to spin their yarn and spread gossip.

Next, O'Reilly tells Gross that our government was founded on Judeo-Christian ethics and claims to have every letter ever written between Jefferson and Madison, letters he says prove that neither wanted a secularist United States. First, on the matter of Judeo-Christian ethics: the Constitution does not address any of the religious aspects of Judeo-Christian ethics, such as worshipping false idols or taking God's name in vain whereas ancient non-Judeo-Christian societies had laws against murder, rape, theft, and adultery. These are common sense morals, not Judeo-Christian ones.

As for his claim to possess every letter Jefferson and Madison ever exchanged, did the two keep master lists documenting every letter in and out? How does O'Reilly know he has "every letter ever written" between the two?

O'Reilly goes on to tell Gross that the ACLU is responsible for "Christmas Holiday" being removed from school calendars across the country. He mentioned this in a column entitled oddly enough "Somewhere Santa is Weeping." He relates a decision by the Covington, Georgia, school board to change Winter Break to Christmas Break (a sort of in-your-face move by the Christian element) and then ultimately to Holiday Vacation. This was done without any lawsuit filed by the ACLU. O'Reilly has a point, however, that there are schools and government groups who take the separation of church and state a little too far, such as a St. Paul courthouse that banned red poinsettias from a holiday display after one person complained they were a "Christian" symbol. But this seems like over-correcting--an extreme reaction to the continual push by Christian groups to insert Christianity into our schools and government.

After 10 minutes of questions that put O'Reilly on the defensive, Gross spends the next 20 lobbing softballs, allowing him to talk about Vietnam, his parents, where he grew up, his religious beliefs ("I don't believe in the big bang" he says and mentions that he threw in with the supreme being "just in case").

Gross then mentions his voter registration card. Some time ago, NPR discovered that O'Reilly was a registered republican and had been for some time, instead of the independent he always claimed to be. O'Reilly says he never knew he was registered as a republican and then almost as a nonsequitor launches into another tirade against Franken. O'Reilly counters Mrs. O'Reilly's claim that the O'Reilly family went to Florida every summer. He insists they only went once, by Greyhound. Then he jumps on Gross and says he hopes she was as tough on Franken as she has been on him and that he hopes "NPR is fair and balanced." He meanders back to Franken's book again and says "If you're on board with that then I don't respect you."

Gross changes the subject and inquires about O'Reilly's reaction to a negative People Magazine review of his previous book. She mentions how O'Reilly ridiculed the author on his show and asks whether any author negatively reviewing O'Reilly's book can count on getting blasted. People Magazine "reviewed me and not the book," he says and accuses other negative reviewers of the same thing. He suggests Gross read Publisher's Weekly to see how his book should be reviewed. The Publisher's Weekly review of his recent effort reads more like a description than a review. However, Publisher's Weekly did review The O'Reilly Factor very positively, commenting that "He [O'Reilly] is very entertaining and can charm with his wit..." Apparently positive reviews of O'Reilly the person are okay.

It is when Gross goes to read the People Magazine review that O'Reilly throws his tantrum. "Why? Why? Look I’m getting the feeling in this interview that this is just a hatchet job on me and I don't like it. Now there's no reason for you to read that People Magazine review of the book," he rants. "I came on this program to talk about my book...you've thrown every kind of defamation you can in my face." He becomes argumentative and confronts her over whether she challenged Franken as much as she challenged him and she acknowledges that she did not because Franken is a satirist and it was a different type of interview.

O'Reilly gets peeved any time someone calls Franken a satirist. "Satire, now was it? Distorting their faces on the book cover?" By this he is referring to the picture on Franken's book of a very splotchy O'Reilly. Franken writes that when O'Reilly saw the cover at the Book Expo, he exploded and insisted he didn't look like the picture. Slate uses the same picture in an article chronicling how often O'Reilly has told people to "shut up." The background on the Slate picture differs from Franken's, but the splotchy-faced O'Reilly is the same. While less severe than on Franken's cover, you can see a touch of splotchiness in this photo of O'Reilly giving a commencement address. Official FOX photos of O'Reilly have a rather airbrushed look, where O'Reilly's forehead appears completely unlined. Given that he's in his fifties, this is rather unbelievable unless O'Reilly had a forehead tuck.

O'Reilly's rant isn't finished. "...you're easy on Franken and you challenge me...I think we all know what this is...don't we? don't we? 50 minutes of me defending defamation against me in every possible way!" Actually it was 38 minutes into the interview, and 20 minutes of the interview consisted of easygoing 'get-to-know-you-better questions.

What set O'Reilly off? Was this a spontaneous outburst of righteous indignation or was O'Reilly merely doing what O'Reilly does best: distorting the situation to reinforce his viewers' preconceived notion of NPR as a vanguard in the evil liberal media?

On his show later that day, O'Reilly describes the interview as getting "completely out of hand" and says he "knew people were not going to be fair and that he "enjoyed telling the woman off" and exposing "the ridiculous truth about NPR and Fresh Air."

It's unfortunate that O'Reilly does his best to convince people that he and his "fair and balanced" FOX cohorts are the only valid source of news. Before O'Reilly's next tirade about how Franken is a propaganda artist and Gross is nothing but a shill for his propaganda, he should read this study, which showed viewers who claimed FOX as their main news source were, by overwhelming margins, more likely to believe erroneous information about the war in Iraq. NPR viewers were by far the least likely to believe falsehoods about the Iraq war. O'Reilly should also learn the difference between criticism and defamation because he uses the word far too loosely.