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Monday, December 4. 2006
Deception 101
Meet the Press moderator Tim Russert
The so-called “Liberal Media” — the Washington Post, the New York Times, NBC, CBS and ABC all went along with the charade, even going so far as to question Ambassador Joe Wilson when the White House began their smear campaign against Wilson and his wife, Valerie Plame.
It blows my mind — still — knowing that there are people who think the institutions listed above are “liberal.”
On Sunday, over four years late, Tim Russert of NBC’s Meet the Press finally — FINALLY — got in the face of an administration official over lies told in the past and the lies the administration is currently foisting on the American public.
Stephen Hadley, National Security Advisor to President Bush, answered Russert’s questions with
National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley
Russert’s interview began with the newly publicized Rumsfeld memo from November 6 of this year, a day before the Mid-term elections. The memo spelled out a variety of options for change, actions Secretary Rumsfeld said the U.S. should try.
Russert asked: “One of the things that Mr. Rumsfeld suggests in his memo — a day before the election — was redeployment. A quick reaction forces, take U.S. troops out of Iraq, put them into Kuwait, surrounding areas. When the Democrats suggested that, they were accused by your White House of cutting and running.”
In an effort to spin that memo into something it was not, Hadley answered: “I think maybe you misunderstand a little bit what the memo was about. The president, as you know, before that date had called for a review of where we were heading in our approach and the way forward on Iraq. It drew on work that had already been started in a number of agencies in the government. And one of the things the president said is, ‘I want to look at new ideas, I want to have an open door to ideas.’ And what I think that Rumsfeld memo represents is kind of a laundry list of ideas that have been considered. Some he, he put, as he said, above the line, some of them he put below the line, but it was an effort, I think, to broaden the aperture of the debate. It was a useful memo, and we used it in that way to trigger discussions. But this was not a game plan or a set of — an effort to sort of try to set out the way forward in Iraq.”
When Russert pointed out the tone of Rumsfeld’s memo treated the Iraqis as if they were children, i.e.: “Perhaps we should consider taking our hand off the bicycle seat and letting the Iraqis ride alone,” Hadley completely side-stepped the question altogether.
When asked about his own memo, which said Iraqi Prime Minister al-Maliki couldn’t be trusted, Hadley spun that to something it was not. In fact, Hadley claimed his assessment wasn’t his assessment, that it was merely talking points for the meeting in Jordan. Hadley also proclaimed the good news, “But the good news is it is a unity government coming out of an election in which 12 million Iraqis voted, and it is committing to taking more responsibility.” Basically more of the same, staying the course.
Senators Carl Levin (D-MI) and John Warner (R-VA)
President Carter’s interview is quite insightful, considering his provocative new book, but what was really eye opening was Senator Warner. Before these last elections, Warner was talking tough about Iraq, talking about forcing a change in Iraq policy if things hadn’t gotten better by now. When confronted with the reality that things in Iraq were indeed much worse, Warner went back to providing cover for the president’s policies. What a cheap suit.
On the Meet the Press web site you can also watch the broadcast and see the emotion of Tim Russert, something the transcript doesn’t convey. Someone in the mainstream press told truth to power on national TV. He may not have said, “I don’t believe you, Mr. Hadley,” but Russert’s tone said it quite effectively.
Clearly, in his announcements concerning the Iraq Study Group, the president has no intention of changing the course of policy in Iraq. What ever time and energy the commission has put into their work has been for nothing and we are destined to see this war continue for years to come.
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