I Cogitate
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The Sophistry Of Many In The Mainstream Media
Why can't they see it? Is it really that difficult to connect the dots? A few have done so but far too intermittently.
From my local newspaper's plea for less national political rancor in the Republican-Democrat arena to the oh-so-fearful-of-the-Bush-Administration they-piss-in-their-pants cowering of the vast majority of the national press, it seems to be a media contest between either putting on rose-colored glasses or holding blinders securely in place.
You ink, pixel and bad lighting-stained news collectors and disseminators, the Bush Administration makes no move without first fully considering the partisan political ramifications. Yes, all presidential administrations are guilty of such but it is the ONE and ONLY standard for the Bush Administration.
To his great frustration, Karl Rove cannot control Mother Nature nor Iraqi insurgents but EVERY move emanating from the White House is determined SOLELY by partisan political benefit. All is simply an on-going, four-year presidential campaign. Morality? Not a chance. Ethics? Yep, that'll get you real, real far. Doing right because it is the way to act? C'mon, Karl Rove hasn't exactly been channeling Fred Rogers all these decades.
'Ah, you kook' is probably the best response I would receive from those I have accused.
Well, four examples highlight my point:
1) In a March 2, 2004 article on MSNBC.com, NBC news correspondent Jim Miklaszewski reported that on three separate occasions the Pentagon drew up plans to 'take out' weapons lab creator and uber-terrorist Abu Musab Zarqawi (the current bogeyman in Iraq suspected of masterminding hundreds of deaths) only to never receive the go-ahead from the White House. The article quotes terrorism analysts Michael O'Hanlon of the Brooking Institute and former National Security Council member Roger Cressley:
O'Hanlon: “Here we had targets, we had opportunities, we had a country willing to support casualties, or risk casualties after 9/11 and we still didn’t do it.”
Cressley: “People were more obsessed with developing the coalition to overthrow Saddam than to execute the president’s policy of preemption against terrorists."According to Miklaszewski:
Military officials insist their case for attacking Zarqawi’s operation was airtight, but the administration feared destroying the terrorist camp in Iraq could undercut its case for war against Saddam.No other national media outlets followed up and printed/aired any further investigation of this matter.
2) In a September 30, 2005, speech in San Diego, President Bush spit shines his own shoes while just spitting on previous presidents, withholding mention of his own decision to hold back on Zarqawi for political benefit:
"They terrorists) looked at our response after the hostage crisis in Iran, the bombings of the Marine barracks in Lebanon, the first World Trade Center attack, the killing of American soldiers in Somalia, the destruction of two U.S. embassies in Africa, and the attack on the USS Cole. They concluded that free societies lacked the courage and character to defend themselves against a determined enemy… After September the 11th, 2001, we’ve taught the terrorists a very different lesson: America will not run in defeat and we will not forget our responsibilities."3) Shifting from terrorism to flat out opportunism, NBC news anchor Brian Williams, to his credit, reported in his September 16, 2005, blog entry (not sure if this ever made it to the NBC Nightly News):
"I am duty-bound to report the talk of the New Orleans warehouse district last night: there was rejoicing (well, there would have been without the curfew, but the few people I saw on the streets were excited) when the power came back on for blocks on end. Kevin Tibbles was positively jubilant on the live update edition of Nightly News that we fed to the West Coast. The mini-mart, long ago cleaned out by looters, was nonetheless bathed in light, including the empty, roped-off gas pumps. The motorcade route through the district was partially lit no more than 30 minutes before POTUS drove through. And yet last night, no more than an hour after the President departed, the lights went out. The entire area was plunged into total darkness again, to audible groans. It's enough to make some of the folks here who witnessed it... jump to certain conclusions."4) Staying with this subject, New York Times reporter David Sanger deserves props for his September 25, 2005, article about the cancellation of President Bush's plan to be seen in San Antonio monitoring Hurricane Rita. Sanger opens with:
"President Bush was supposed to land here on Friday afternoon on the first stop of a tour intended to make clear that he was personally overseeing the federal government's preparations for Hurricane Rita's landfall. But the weather did not cooperate.He finishes:
It was too sunny."
"...Another White House official involved in preparing Mr. Bush's way noted that with the sun shining so brightly in San Antonio, the images of Mr. Bush from here might not have made it clear to viewers that he was dealing with an approaching storm."Credit goes to the exceptions but my prescription for the mainstream media is to chant this as a mantra to counter the self-induced fright: Sy Hersh. Yes, his reporting on various evils has just so severely limited his inside contacts and news-gathering ability that he been consigned to the dustbin of history. Right.
All the members of the mainstream media need to do is determine their personal priorities: do you want to be remembered as an Edward R. Murrow-type reporter or be recalled for how many political roundtable gabfest appearances, book-pimping tours or changes of hair color you made?
As for our born-again President, the wristband he wears doesn't carry the letters WWJD (what would Jesus do?). No, his states WWPD (what would Pilate do?)
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