Fox News pundit says Iraqi civil war a ‘positive’ for U.S.

December 30, 2006

Stuart Varney, filling on for Neil Cavuto yesterday on Fox News, did his level best to come up with “something positive” about conditions in Iraq. You won’t believe what he came up with.

“Well, let me put out something positive about Iraq, if I may for a second. Look, we took the fight to the enemy. We divided the enemy. The enemy is now fighting itself. America’s interest is surely being well-preserved and well-protected. We are in a fact, in a way, winning and preserving our interests.”

Silly me, I didn’t think anyone in this country could possibly perceive of the Iraqi civil war as a good thing. I stand corrected.

For that matter, it’s good to know that, when necessary, Fox News can find guest “news personalities” who are even less connected to reality than the network’s usual line-up. That, in and of itself, is an impressive feat.

Can you imagine if Fox News was a person’s only outlet for news and analysis?

I was channel surfing yesterday and briefly landed on Faux as Mr. Varney was bloviating. The headline at the bottom of the screen read something to the effect of will the New York Times mourn Saddam’s death. I wonder if their is a screen capture out their.

  • i really ought to know better by now, but i read things like this and i say “what process went on in someone’s brain to come up with something this stupid?”

    i honestly can never answer the question.

    meanwhile, apparently, according to varney, the “enemy” is the entire population of iraq, since we took the fight to “them” and they are now fighting among themselves….

  • My brain hurts. I guess we have liberated them by getting them to annihilate each other. By FOX’s logic, if we can get 7 more wars going, we’ll be 7 times safer.

  • “I didn’t think anyone in this country could possibly perceive of the Iraqi civil war as a good thing.”

    You are kidding, right? Rush has been making a fine living saying such things to adoring audiences for 20 or so years. Someone is in denial.

  • When the Dems get back the White House in 2008, one thing they should do is mandate that cable systems must offer all channels a la carte. Once this is in place, progressives can, en masse, eliminate Fox from their lineups. Because Fox’s revenues are tied to the number of subscribers who receive Fox (whether they watch or not) this would strike a financial blow against Fox. And be emotionally satisfying to boot.

  • Using Varney’s logic, 9/11 was a good thing for New York City because with almost 3,000 dead there is more room to drive on the streets, a few more Manhattan apartments opened up and there is less competition for dinner reservations and Broadway tickets.

    Noticing that Varney has a funy accent, why did Fox hire a foreigner and take that job away from a good, upstanding American. Has anyone seen Varney’s green card lately?

  • http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2006/11/15/democrats_dont_wimp_out.php

    From Paul Waldman: So Democrats should say the following to Fox: You want to spread GOP propaganda all day? Be our guest. After all, it’s a free country. But don’t expect any Democratic newsmakers to legitimize you with their presence. We’ll go on every other network, be interviewed by every legitimate news organization. But we don’t consider ourselves under any obligation to pretend that buffoons like Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly and John Gibson are news professionals who deserve a moment of our time. We’re not going to try to fight you; we’ll just act like you don’t exist.

    This can be a lesson to the rest of the media—not a threat, but an indication that they need to change the way they think about Democrats. For years, journalists have looked on Republicans as tough, smart and skilled—in short, winners. Democrats, in turn, were viewed as wimpy, stupid and weak—losers. If Democrats want the media to treat them like winners, they should start acting accordingly. Stop worrying about getting reporters to like you, and start thinking about getting them to respect you. And if the David Broders of the world start complaining that you aren’t playing nice, that’ll be evidence that you’re doing something right.

  • What rock do they find these morons under? The mind just simply boggles.

    I’m with JimBOB, let us pick and choose which cable channels we pay for. Out of the 80+ channels on basic cable I only watch four or five so why should my money go to all that other dreck?

    Pause.

    The answer, from the rational side of my brain, is that probably very few channels could actually survive that way so we would probably lose a lot that we would miss very much along with all the others we’d never miss at all.

    Darn you, rational side of my brain. 🙁

  • If you are in the military serving over seas, Fox News is pretty much all you get. A little CNN headline news and limited NPR, but mostly Fox telling you over and over that Democrats don’t respect you.

  • Can you imagine if Fox News was a person’s only outlet for news and analysis?

    I can — his name is Dick Cheney.

    “Well, let me put out something positive about Iraq, if I may for a second. Look, we took the fight to the enemy. We divided the enemy. The enemy is now fighting itself. America’s interest is surely being well-preserved and well-protected. We are in a fact, in a way, winning and preserving our interests.”

    The mindless cheerleading of this type of rhetoric is tiresome. It’s almost pointless to debate assertions such as these because of teh false premises used as a basis for them. Other than attempting to curry favor with the administration by “saying something positive about Iraq”, what merit do comments like these have?

    Reichwing-speak makes my head hurt.

  • Can you imagine if Fox News was a person’s only outlet for news and analysis?

    Easily. Half of my extended family rely exclusively on Fox News, except for NASCAR on ESPN (during which they frequently grunt and roar and bump their over-sized bellies together). They’re inclined to wear clothing made of flag material. They adore George Bush. They regard me as a communist (a word which I doubt any of them could accurately define). I rarely visit them anymore.

  • hey vern? is stuart varney any relation to jim varney?
    that seems to be the level of his understanding, know what i mean?

  • Actually having Dem politicians just avoid Fox is essentially what the Republican leadership has done to force the news to the right. What to interview us – then hire someone to the right. quid pro quo.

  • If you are in the military serving over seas, Fox News is pretty much all you get.
    ——————J Bean

    And the troops still—by a majority—speak out against the cheezy chimp-in-chief? Imagine the day that they get the opportunity to select the channel all by themselves, and discover the “real” news. But then again, maybe that’s why Herr Bush and his band of scary-marys want to keep the army overseas….

  • When the Dems get back the White House in 2008, one thing they should do is mandate that cable systems must offer all channels a la carte. Once this is in place, progressives can, en masse, eliminate Fox from their lineups. — jimBOB, @5

    But then, how would we know what they’re saying? Keeping a beady eye on the oppo is a sound policy — lets you prepare yourself. Suppose no progressives were watching Faux? Would it disappear or would we be caught with our pants down come election time, not knowing what stink bombs they planted to sway the voters and not having any chance to counteract?

    And then there’re also the reasons Curmudgeon mentions, @8…

  • As I have said many times before, the right is mainstreaming the idea of ethnic cleansing as a “win”. Think tanks have been pushing the “tension release” rebranding ever since it became clear civil war was inevitable. They can’t stop it, so they have to embrace it because to do otherwise is to admit failure.

    Most disturbing about this attempt to re-vamp the war’s image is that it requires that we take part in–there’s just no other way to put this–genocide. Because if the genocide is good, then we must be the architects oto make it appear as though we are in control. So it doesn’t matter if these guys can slaughter each other just fine on their own, we are going to make our soldiers bloody their hands, too, so we can say we brought order to the chaos.

    It’s the same way these guys fought global warming. First, claim it’s not occurring. Then, claim it’s actually good for you. Then, claim there’s nothing we can do about it because we acted too late.

    We can no longer deny the civil war, so we must say it’s a good thing. Next, we’ll claim there’s nothing we could have done to stop these savages, and generations’ old ethnic rivalries.

  • Ah, if only America had a big enough Army to go over and occupy China, and then subsequently start a civil war there. Then a few American manufacturers might get their jobs back. This going over to other peoples’ countries and occupying them for a few years in the name of helping them be free, then wrecking everything you touch and starting a civil war is actually a pretty kick-ass foreign policy – as long as you’re not particularly sensitive to what people think of you.

  • He tried the other day to get Wesley Clark to agree with him on that. Clark wasn’t buying it.

    You can see Clark’s appearances on Fox by going to securingamerica.com, then to the CCN community from there, and look for Ruth’s posts. She usually puts them up on the internet within 24 hours of airing.

    It’s good to watch the way he doesn’t let those Fox people trap him, while getting out the message that HE wants to. People like Hannity and O’Reilly have learned to tread more carefully with him, since he made them look like fools when he first began appearing on Fox.

    Fox’s agenda has clearly been to try to get Clark on tape saying something he’ll regret. Clark’s agenda, I assume, has been to give Fox viewers a different perspective, while keeping himself in fighting form against these ‘gotcha’ so-called journalists. His sensible, calm words is also likely to make an impression on Fox’s more moderate viewers, which would help him in the general election.

  • Can you imagine if Fox News was a person’s only outlet for news and analysis?

    YES ITS CALLED GW BUSH’s BASE

    THESE are the 30 PERCENT OF THE ELECTORATE THAT APPROVE OF HIS HANDLING OF HIS JOB!!!!!

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