Essay: The Media’s Pelosi Troop-Slander Cover-Up

If the Speaker vilifies U.S. soldiers and praises their Iranian killers, and the Jurassic Press doesn't report it, does it make a sound?

Last Thursday, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, third in line to the Presidency and currently the highest ranking Democrat on Planet Earth, sat down for an 80-minute chat with reporters and editorial board members of her home district's San Francisco Chronicle. 62 minutes in, Madame Speaker, pontificating on the Iraq surge, offered up the following:

"Whatever the military success and any progress that may have been made, the surge didn't accomplish its goal. ... And some of the success of the surge is that the goodwill of the Iranians -- they decided in Basra when the fighting would end, they negotiated that cessation of hostilities -- the Iranians."

This is, from Pelosi, a clear and willful defamation of our soldiers in Iraq, and a diminution of the great and growing success we have seen there, paid for with their blood, toil and tremendous sacrifice.

Add to it her speaking so positively of the Iranians who are killing them, and whose cat's paw proxy influence they have had to overcome to get Iraq to where it is, and you have a potent mix of profound anti-troop sentiment and wanton and ready appeasement-on-demand.

The many members of the Chronicle staff present to hear this, however, all seemed to find it completely unworthy of note. NOT ONE of the articles written about the interview reported the gratuitous Speaker slam.

What the rag in question did do was post the audio of the Pelosi discussion in its entirety on their website (which is where we got it). Bereft, of course, of any reference to the offending clip. But there it was, for anyone willing to wade in and actually report it.

Count NBC, ABC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC and the New York Times amongst those disinclined to do so, for none of these alleged news organizations deigned to report on her comments on either Thursday or Friday.

For Pelosi, the media's silence is golden. Damage control as easy as a friendly press letting her troop disparagement disappear into the ether.

Juxtapose this uniform quiet with how these same outlets were all indistinguishably disquieted by the Rush Limbaugh phony "phony soldiers" fiasco.

On September 26, 2007, Limbaugh was on his syndicated show discussing Jesse Macbeth, a disgraced Army Ranger candidate who flunked out of boot camp and later rose to liberal media prominence by telling tall tales of atrocities he and other soldiers were supposed to have committed in Iraq.

Macbeth of course had never been there. The media of course had not checked out Macbeth's story or his biography. His lies fit their Mesopotamian template, so they ran with them, only to later again appear the fools when the truth about their unexamined source came to light.

With Limbaugh, the press took a single two word phrase, "phony soldiers" -- which he had correctly used in reference to Macbeth and others like him who had similarly risen to media prominence -- and went nuts, twisting and contorting the specificity of Limbaugh's comment into a bogus broad-based slur of any American combatant opposed to the war.

Following the lead of the George Soros-funded liberal hatchet outfit Media Matters, the networks and newspapers all incessantly hammered home the false storyline and Democrats' indignation. The press frenzy rose to such a fever pitch that the Donkeys felt emboldened enough to offer up a formal congressional resolution condemning Limbaugh.

All before the house of cards came tumbling down, leaving everyone involved looking foolish and used.

So we had then a radio commentator having his innocent and accurate words contorted by the media into journalistic libel, who then put on the full-time full-court press to try as best as they can to bring him down.

And we have now an elected official, indeed the Speaker of the House of Representatives, impugning the blood honor and accomplishments of our troops, and ascribing their success to our Iranian enemy, whom she also thanks for their "goodwill" in lessening the pace at which they are murdering our brave men and women.

And the media say NOTHING. Another proud journalistic moment in America.