Fox News to the (administration’s) rescue

June 12, 2006

This might be funny if it weren’t so sad.

Was [tag]Saddam Hussein[/tag] a security threat to the United States? Did the [tag]Iraqi[/tag] dictator have connections to [tag]Al Qaeda[/tag] or other terrorist ties? What happened to the [tag]weapons of mass destruction[/tag] everyone believed were in his possession? Did [tag]Saddam[/tag] move them? Did they ever exist?

All of those questions have been dogging President George W. [tag]Bush[/tag] and his administration since the start of the Iraq war. Politicians and respected U.S. military and intelligence officials have weighed in publicly on both sides of the debate, but until recently the general public has had little of the information necessary to make a fully informed decision on its own.

But that is changing.

Please. The questions have been “dogging” Bush for years because they’ve been answered — and the conclusions don’t match what the administration told the world. The public has had ample information to make an informed decision (Duelfer report, Blix report, congressional reports, Robb-Silverman report, etc.).

And yet, FNC reported yesterday that a military operations research analyst will work with a “small cadre of independent translators” in a Fox News “exclusive series” called “[tag]The Saddam Dossier[/tag].” The network and their analysts will comb through declassified documents and “dig out” unreported secrets.

Are we not past this? The Iraq/al Queda question has been answered: at the most, there may have been low-level, episodic contact between Saddam Hussein’s regime and the terrorist network. The 9/11 Commission concluded that Saddam and Al Qaeda did not have a “collaborative operational relationship.” Saddam didn’t try and establish a connection to al Qaeda; he did the opposite, warning his Iraqi supporters to be wary of the network. As for WMD, the chief U.S. weapons inspector in Iraq found that pre-war Iraq posed a diminishing threat at the time the United States invaded and did not possess, or have concrete plans to develop, nuclear, chemical or biological weapons. Period.

But [tag]Fox News[/tag] is going to set the record straight. I’m sure it’ll be fascinating.

Oh C’mon CB…..I’m sure it will be “fair and balanced”….sigh. I accidentally made the mistake of mentioning something I saw on CNN (GASP) to my redneck friend (STAUNCH redneck here boys and girls, and I really try never to get into stuff like this with him….musta been the beer.) to which he said “how can you watch that crap? You should watch Fox News…at least it’s ‘fair and balanced”” The mind reels.

  • and then, as soon as Fox conducts its exhaustive analysis, the little right-wing propaganda robots will repeat its findings ad nauseum. it’s an amazing little system.

  • Maybe they can also look into the mystery of who killed O. J. Simpson’s ex wife.

  • Faux News is a validation of the Lincoln quote that some of the people can be fooled all of the time.

  • Von Fox News—crooked as a swaztika. “Fair and Balanced” is defined by these cretins as “fair to us, and balanced against Truth.” They’re one of the reasons we kicked DirectTV out of our home—to protect our children from their xenophobic, criminal madness….

  • Will Geraldo host this, al a “Al Capone’s Vault” ? Open it up and there’s………………………………NOTHING!

  • They need to create doubt in facts (supported by real evidence) to counter all the anti-Bush, anti-war sentiment. This is the same plan used on the global warming issue. There is a set of facts about global warming and the results are conclusive. Go see “An Inconvienent Truth” for more details but the anti-warming crowd had created a false doubt in the face of overwhelming evidence. We are doing little about global warming due to a lack of public outcry (they are in doubt remember). Same plan for November 2006. Create false doubt about Iraq, Saddam, WMD, and Bush’s blundering so that Republicant’s who supported and still support the war and these BS evils can argue they are correct.

    After this, Tony Snow and every Republican’t up for re-election can point to “News” reports about the connections between Saddam and Al-queda, WMD’s etc. etc. It has to be an unresolved issue if there are still discussions about it, right?

  • In the back of their narrow little minds, is the thought that you can never prove a negative.

    What do you mean there were no WMD? I’ve still got sites to search (not that I’m trying).

    What to you mean there was no connection between Al Qaeda and Saddam? I’m still searching through documents!

    Ditto on finding a nuclear program.

    MNProgressive is right. All the Bushites want is for their mindless Faux News watching drones to believe that there might still be a reason to believe Boy George II rather than have to accept he is a lying stinking crook so they can be dragged out to the polls one more time.

  • Plausible doubt, or more accurately, a fig leaf for irrational belief, is key to maintaining the effect of the kool aid. This is one they learned from the Big Tobacco playbook. People who are addicted to nicotine want to stay on it. Intellectually, they hear about links to cancer, and convince themselves they need to overcome the addiction, which is hard. So the tobacco industry worked to create doubt — anything from fake science (“no proven link between smoking and cancer”) to outright lies (seven execs swear before Congress they are unware their products kill people) to subtle shadings to increase acceptability (“light” cigarettes). To the non-addicted, this looks silly. To the addicted, it gives them just enough cover necessary to do what they already want to do: keep smoking.

    Same effect with Rethugs. Addicted to power and lies and culture wars, faced with facts contrary to their addiction, they will cling to the slightest reed of ambiguity to avoid having to admit they are wrong.

  • Actually, in the Fox News alternate universe, none of this has actually been revealed yet. Those of us in the reality-based community have known all of it for some time, but I’m sure it would all come as a surprise to the cultists, er, viewers of Fox News.

    Do you suppose this astonishing investigative report will actually report what we out here already know? It would be easy, since the work’s already been done. But I’m thinking the exclusive series will resemble a SciFi channel miniseries for connection to reality.

  • In a related “Faux News” story on the Radio Factor today, Bill O’Reilly compared the situation of the detainees at Gitmo to that of the television show Hogan’s Heroes. To be fair, it was a passing reference, but it was a reference nonetheless.

  • Was George Bush a security threat to the United States? Did the U.S. dictator have connections to Tom Delay or other terrorist ties? What happened to the gay marriages of mass destruction everyone believed were in his imagination? Did Jeffgannon marry them? Did they ever tango?

    There. I fixed that first paragraph for Faux.

  • There’s a bunch of (actually, supposedly thousands of high-level) documents captured by our forces that are slowly being translated and released (carried in such outlets as NY Sun and WorldNetDaily) that recently wingers have been relying upon in their pro-Bush/pro-Iraq arguments – also giving lack of coverage of the documents as further “proof” of the perfidy of the liberal MSM who want the public to remain ignorant of the “real” situation. I don’t know what the deal is the with the documents, and why the NYTimes et al doesn’t give a whole lot of coverage to them – but the wingers that I’ve argued with on other websites seem fairly convinced that the documents DO (or, rather, WILL) prove the existence of WMDs and Saddam/AQ co-operation.

  • Andy, please note that our man Ahmed Chalabi couldn’t muster even one half of one percent of the Iraqi vote to keep his parliamentary seat. I haven’t seen an exhaustive list (which makes me scratch my head) of the ministerial positions doled out by this Iraqi government, but I haven’t seen Chalabi’s name tossed around as an appointee. This means he has plenty of time on his hands to return to his primary business as an outlet of ForgeriesRUs.

    If Curveball was good enough for Fox Propaganda the first time around, what makes you think Fox Propaganda will change its stripes and not repeat manufactured lies?

  • what, no mention of fazlur rahman khalil, co-signatory to OBL’s 1998 fatwa against the US or Maulana Rahman, “father of the taliban” meeting with Sadam’s VP to establish a relationship between Mullah Omar and Saddam as detailed in the translated document? Now why would you not bother to mention that little gem?

  • neocon,

    You forgot to mention the WMDs sent to a street address in Damascus.

    AND on Monster Island.

  • OK. Let us assume that FOX does reveal some “new” truths about WMDs and the Al Queda connection. Is this the case, then they should be jumping up and down and screaming about why GW, Cheney and the boys screwed it up so badly by not planning the fight and the recovery to end the fight. I hope that FOX does revisit all those bunkers of high explosives that we did fail to secure and that continue to kill Americans and civilians in mass. That might be a little too fair and balanced though.

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