Richard Bennett

Apparently we all agree that the Knight-Ridder newspaper chain has a political bias; liberal ex-blogger John Kowalski accused them of pro-Bush bias and Stephen Hayes accuses them of anti-Bush bias.

Knight Ridder itself cops to the Hayes charge, which no doubt confirms the Kowalski theory:

By Wednesday, Knight Ridder had posted a correction. “President Bush’s comments about terrorism were incorrectly reported in that saying the president insisted there was an operational link between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein. The president suggested that such a link existed, but didn’t explicitly make that connection.”

It strikes me that it’s difficult to tar all the writers for all the Knight-Ridder papers with the same brush, so I won’t play. In the last election, their San Jose paper endorsed Gore, and their paper in the next country endorsed Bush, so do the math.

Sharkansky is all over the AP’s coverage of the Butler Report. Here’s an actual quote:

…even now it is premature to reach conclusions about Iraq?s prohibited weapons. But from the evidence which has been found and de-briefing of Iraqi personnel it appears that prior to the war the Iraqi regime:

a. Had the strategic intention of resuming the pursuit of prohibited weapons programmes, including if possible its nuclear weapons programme, when United Nations inspection regimes were relaxed and sanctions were eroded or lifted.

b. In support of that goal, was carrying out illicit research and development, and procurement, activities.

c. Was developing ballistic missiles with a range longer than permitted under relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions.

d. Did not, however, have significant – if any – stocks of chemical or biological weapons in a state fit for deployment, or developed plans for using them.

Blair got a strong vote of confidence from an interesting source:

Blair received some supportive words Wednesday from former U.S. President Bill Clinton, who said Britons needed to remember that “it was very difficult in the aftermath of 9/11 for any world leader not to act on his intelligence.”

“And the British intelligence, whatever Lord Butler says about it, was clearly even more forward-leading than the American intelligence in believing that Saddam was trying to get nuclear materials, in believing that Saddam had some kind of relationship with al-Qaida,” Clinton told British Broadcasting Corp. radio.

See the report here and the AP’s spin here.

Fifty-six Deceits in Fahrenheit 911 by Dave Kopel is the definitive point-by-point takedown of the movie.

According to John Kowalski and to Michael Moore, Saddam Hussein’s Iraq was an idyllic paradise where everyone was happy, healthy, and well-fed, where nobody had any complaints. The trains ran on time, the government was sovereign and legitimate, no government employees worked with banned weapons, and terrorists were the enemy of the state.

I wonder what these boys are smoking.

If you haven’t made up your mind about just how vile Michael Moore really is, go read Jonathon Foreman’s review:

But you certainly don’t have to be a fan of Bush or his policies to be offended by “Fahrenheit 9/11” lies, half-lies and distortions, or by Moore’s shockingly low expectations of his audience:

Moore’s favorite anti-administration interviewee is former National Security Council aide Richard Clarke. Yet the film never mentions that it was Clarke who gave the order to spirit the bin Laden family out of America immediately after 9/11. Moore makes much of this mystery; why didn’t he ask Clarke about it ?

At one point of the film, he portrays GIs as moronic savages who work themselves up with music before setting out to kill. Later, he depicts them as proletarian victims of a cynical ruling class, who deserve sympathy and honor for their sacrifice.

The film’s amusing (if bordering on racist) Saudi-bashing sequences rely for their effect on the audience having forgotten that President Bill Clinton was every bit as friendly with Prince Bandar (or “Bandar Bush,” as Moore calls him) and the Saudi monarchy as his successor. In general, the movie is packed with points that Moore assumes his audience will never check, or are either lies or cleverly hedged half-lies:

Moore says that the Saudis have paid the Bush family $1.4 billion. But wait ?the Bushes aren’t billionaires. If you watch the film a second time you’ll note Moore saying that they paid $1.4 billion to the Bush family and (added very quietly and quickly) its friends and associates.

Moore asserts that the Afghan war was fought only to enable the Unocal company to build a pipeline. In fact, Unocal dropped that idea back in August 1998. Turkmenistan, Afghanistan and Pakistan are looking at the idea now, but nothing has come of it so far, and in any case Unocal has nothing to do with it.

In a “congressmen with no kids at war” stunt, Moore claims that no one in Congress has a son or daughter fighting in America’s armed services, then approaches several congressmen in the street and asks them to sign up and send their kids to Iraq. His claim would certainly surprise Sgt. Brooks Johnson of the 101st Airborne, the son of Sen. Tim Johnson (D-S.D.). And for that matter the active-duty sons of Sen. Joseph Biden and Attorney General John Ashcroft, among others.

The most offensive sequence in “Fahrenheit 9/11″‘s long two hours lasts only a few minutes. It’s Moore’s file-footage depiction of happy Iraq before the Americans began their supposedly pointless invasion. You see men sitting in cafes, kids flying kites, women shopping. Cut to bombs exploding at night.

What Moore presumably doesn’t know, or simply doesn’t care about, is that the building you see being blown up is the Iraqi Ministry of Defense in Baghdad. Not many children flew kites there. It was in a part of the city that ordinary Iraqis weren’t allowed to visit ? on pain of death.

The most offensive — and most blatantly false — part of the movie is the depiction of life under Saddam. Had Saddam been a Republican, Moore would have painted a very different picture.

Lefties never tire of telling us of the depth of their compassion for the poor and downtrodden; it’s probably their favorite mantra. But so often, when the tire hits the road we find that this pretension is bullshit and they’re really the party of hate:

Think about the Seattle area — Bainbridge Island to be exact — and you think scenic views and liberal-minded tolerance.

At least the killer views are still there.

The bucolic island’s deep reputation for civility got a gut check this week during the annual Grand Old Fourth of July celebration.

That’s when Jason Gilson, a 23-year-old military veteran who served in Iraq, marched in the local event. He wore his medals with pride and carried a sign that said “Veterans for Bush.”
Walking the parade route with his mom, younger siblings and politically conservative friends, Jason heard words from the crowd that felt like a thousand daggers to the heart.

“Baby killer!”

“Murderer!”

“Boooo!”

To understand why the reaction of strangers hurt so much, you must read what the young man had written in a letter from Iraq before he was disabled in an ambush:

“I really miss being in the states. Some of the American public have no idea how much freedom costs and who the people are that pay that awful price. I think sometimes people just see us as nameless and faceless and not really as humans. … A good portion of us are actually scared that when we come home, for those of us who make it back, that there will be protesters waiting for us and that is scary.”

This much of the Liberation of Iraq is just like Vietnam.