Military

Editor's Note (Ken Shepherd): The 9/11 conspiracy nuts behind "Loose Change" are supposed to be guests on the May 24 "The View." It's odd that Rosie wouldn't be on to share her thoughts about fire being unable to melt steel.

After Rosie O'Donnell's now infamous fight with Elisabeth Hasselbeck on the May 23 edition of "The View," Rosie hinted on her blog that she may not co-host the show tomorrow. The homepage of rosie.com starts with a rambling poem ending with, "tomorrow [Rosie's partner] Kelli turns 40. I will not be at work."

Update (14:17 EDT): Summary and transcript by Justin McCarthy posted below.

At first Rosie insisted she wouldn't debate Hasselbeck:

"Here's how it gets spun in the media. Rosie, big, fat lesbian, loud Rosie attacks innocent, pure Christian Elisabeth. And I'm not going to do it."

That didn't last long, as you can see from the highlight reel:

Video (4:07): Real (3.02 MB) or Windows (2.52 MB), or MP3 (1.87 MB)

Allahpundit at Hot Air has video too and makes this observation:

For the past five years, CBS’s “60 Minutes” has been a safe haven for any Republican to voice his or her displeasure with the Bush administration. In fact, the program has been a walking billboard for such sentiments.

With that in mind, given former Sen. Bob Kerrey’s rather eye-opening op-ed in today’s Wall Street Journal (h/t Allah at Hot Air), it seems safe to assume the outspoken Democrat will be on an upcoming installment of “60 Minutes” to share his disagreements with the foreign policy positions of many members of his Party.

I for one am looking forward to seeing the look on the face of whichever “60 Minutes” host gets the assignment when Kerrey says the following (emphasis added throughout):

Here's another example of how blogs can be a great outlet for objective reporting, even if the outlet in question is traditionally biased to the Left.

[Update (18:26 EDT): NewsBusters' own Warner Todd Huston wrote about congressional travel expenses 10 days ago.]

At the "Anderson Cooper 360" blog, CNN correspondent Drew Griffin took a look at "Spring break travel... Congress-style.":

Flying in military jets is especially important when our leaders need to go to Iraq, or remote parts of Africa, Afghanistan -- places that are hard to get to or dangerous to visit.

But the Virgin Islands, Trinidad, London? At $10,000 a flight hour, those places are where some of your representatives took these military planes over spring break.

On the May 21 edition of "The View," co-host Rosie O’Donnell responded to the fall out from her moral equivalency rant on Thursday. Rosie claims some cable news outlets "twisted" her words, and then got personal with token non-liberal Elisabeth Hasselbeck, calling her critics the "crappy shows" that "Elisabeth watches."

"But I didn't say it. You know who said it? Those crappy cable shows said it. The ones Elisabeth watches. Those shows."

Hasselbeck harshly reacted to those comments and it prompted Rosie to personally attack her more.

HASSELBECK: I watch all cable news, number one. I watch all of the, because that's part of my job and as an American citizen I try to broaden as many concepts as possible by watching all those news programs, okay. I do, obviously, like, like certain shows. I'll throw them out if you want me to. Like "Hannity and Colmes," they're one of my favorites, because they hold debates [applause] They hold debates on that show and I think that is, that is like what we do here only, you know, we have four women. And I think it's special here. But to say that, you know, someone can't hold two thoughts at the same time just because I believe in terrorism when there are Democrats out there running for office who don’t want to believe in terrorism and they want to treat it like the boogeyman. How are they going to protect us from something--

A television program came out strongly against the war on terror and the war in Iraq Thursday evening, but Katie, Charlie, Brian, and Wolf weren’t involved.

Video (1:42): Real (1.23 MB) or Windows (1.04 MB), plus MP3 (1.12 MB).

In this instance, it was NBC’s hit series “ER,” and the show – about doctors, nurses, and patients in a hospital emergency room if you couldn’t guess – didn’t wait very long to take a jab at the White House (h/t NBer SpinyNorman).

In fact, the episode began with the staff being informed by desk clerk Frank Martin: “Homeland Security raised our threat level to orange this morning.”

Leading character Dr. Neela Rasgotra asked, “Well what does that mean exactly?”

Dr. Gregory Pratt quipped as he was walking by:

HBO’s Bill Maher is quickly becoming a walking billboard for the concept that hate is blinding.

In a blog published at the Huffington Post Wednesday, Maher actually implied that he knows more -- from his residence in Southern California -- about what’s going on in Iraq than America’s troops that are risking their lives there (emphasis added throughout):

Since this war began the number of soldiers in Iraq who think Saddam Hussein was responsible for 9/11 has stunned us all. We continue to be surprised by the number of troops over there who still think we're winning, convinced we're doing good, and that if America pulls out they will follow us home.

Well, Bill, if this is what the troops on the ground are saying, shouldn’t we listen to them? Apparently not:

Updates at bottom: 

I want my MTV! Somewhere a soldier or sailor in Iraq or Afghanistan is probably thinking that today. According to the AP, on May 14, the Department of Defense blocked “worldwide” the US troops who use its networks and computers from accessing 12 popular websites that include, YouTube, MTV, MySpace, Blackplanet and Photobucket. The Defense Deparmene which the DoD said“take up a large amount of bandwidth, and others that can open up department computers to hackers and viruses.” (emphasis mine throughout)

US Forces Korea Commander (USFK) Gen. B.B. Bell explained in a memo sent out Friday that the new policy will not impact the military's ability to send and receive email, but the “Department of Defense has a growing concern regarding our unclassified DoD Internet, known as the NIPRNET. The Commander of DoD's Joint Task Force, Global Network Operations has noted a significant increase in the use of DoD network resources tied up by individuals visiting certain recreational Internet sites.”

The AP delved into some of the issues involved:

Updates at bottom of post.

The CBSNews.com blog "Public Eye" reported today that a retired general who has appeared in anti-Bush TV ads has been dismissed as a CBS News military analyst due to his political activism. Yet the CBS executive who defended the move seemed to almost blame CBS's at-home audience for the personnel decision.

Maj. Gen. John Batiste (US Army, Retired) may still be quoted on CBS's newscasts, he just won't get paid for it.

"We might still go to the general to ask about things, but not as a consultant to CBS News," CBS News Senior Vice President for Standards Linda Mason was quoted by editor Brian Montopoli.

Montopoli quoted Mason's rationale for asking Batiste to leave (emphasis mine):

FoxNews.com is following up on the Fort Dix terror plot by probing how the three illegal immigrant suspects got into the country in the first place.

Below the jump I've posted a creencap taken shortly after 2 p.m. EDT from the Fox News front page.

Fox News correspondent Catherine Herridge contributed to the story, entitled, "Sources: Brothers Charged in Alleged Fort Dix Terror Plot May Have Been Smuggled Into U.S.":

FORT DIX, N.J. — The three brothers being charged as part of the alleged Fort Dix terror plot may have been smuggled across the border, FOX News has learned.

[...]

Four of the arrested men were born in the former Yugoslavia, one was born in Jordan and one came from Turkey, authorities said. Three were in the United States illegally; two had green cards allowing them to stay in this country permanently; and the sixth is a U.S. citizen.

Federal investigators are now checking whether the latter three lied on their immigration paperwork to remain in the United States.

Three of the six Fort Dix terror suspects are in the United States illegally, so I thought I'd look at how three major metropolitan newspapers reported that fact in today's papers.

Looking through coverage in the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, and the Washington Post, I found that the first two put mention of the illegal immigration status of the Duka brothers one-quarter of the way through their respective articles, while the Post buried the mention more than halfway through the article, paragraph 14 out of 26 to be exact.

Here's how each paper reported the illegal status of three of the suspects:

Los Angeles Times (paragraphs 8-9 of 36)

The suspects include three brothers, ethnic Albanians from the former Yugoslavia: Dritan, Eljvir and Shain Duka.

[U.S. Attorney for New Jersey Christopher] Christie said they were living illegally in the United States and working at a roofing business in Cherry Hill.

Earlier today I wondered if MSNBC.com was bored with the Fort Dix terror plot story.

Well, here's an update. It appears they still are.

As of 7:00 p.m. EDT tonight, both FoxNews.com and CNN give the Fort Dix terror plot story prime real estate. Not so for MSNBC. See MSNBC screencap below and check here and here for Fox and CNN screencaps respectively.

What's the big story this morning? Both FoxNews.com and CNN.com are still going with the Fort Dix terror suspect arrests as the top story. But as the screencap below (taken at 11:15 EDT) shows, MSNBC.com has "Major Flood: Rising Midwest rivers spark comparison to deadly '93 deluge" as the top story. (screencap included after the jump)

Granted, disaster stories are big news, particularly so close on the heels of the Greensburg, Kansas, tornado. But six immigrants, all of whom are suspected radical Muslims and three of whom are here in the United States illegally, is certainly a more compelling story for a top story.

Update below (May 8, 12:52 EDT)

Late Sunday evening, the AP reported Governor Kathleen Sebelius' (D-Kan.) opinion that recovery efforts from the devastating tornado that struck the town of Greensburg, Kansas "will be hampered because some much-needed equipment is in Iraq."

This morning, co-host John Roberts interviewed Sebelius on "American Morning." In one of his questions, Roberts gave the governor an opportunity to repeat her opinion on the National Guard equipment from Kansas that was sent to Iraq. "You have illuminated a problem that you've got here, in terms of the National Guard's ability to be able to react to this crisis because of the Iraq war. What's going on?"

How often in the past couple of years as the antiwar voices in the media have gotten louder and more visible have you seen a report about the supposedly poor condition of the American military and troubles with recruitment?

So often that it's nauseating, right?

Well, with virtually no fanfare from a press with a clear agenda, the Army National Guard reported in April that it had achieved a goal it had not been able to attain since 1999.

As reported by the National Guard Bureau (h/t Glenn Reynolds, emphasis added throughout):

You’ll Miss Me When I’m Gone

Now that Rosie O’Donnell has announced she’s leaving "The View," her left-wing rhetoric seems to have gotten even more extreme. This week, the liberal comedienne smeared U.S. troops by saying they only join the military because they’re mostly uneducated and poor. (This isn’t true, but why bring facts into the debate?)

Meredith Vieira in: The I Word

While discussing the troop surge plan with Democrat John Murtha, "Today" host Meredith Vieira revealed where her mind is. She asked, "Is impeachment really off the table?"

What Was He Doing Before?

This week, "Good Morning America’s" weatherman (and liberal environmentalist) Sam Champion touted the left-wing advocacy of actor Robert Redford. Oddly, he tried to persuade GMA viewers that Redford’s positions were somehow new.

Are the media intentionally downplaying or ignoring reports that indicate a growing al Qaeda involvement in Iraq?

Late Thursday evening, CNN.com reported (h/t LGF, emphasis added):

American soldiers discovered a girls school being built north of Baghdad had become an explosives-rigged "death trap," the U.S. military said Thursday.”

This was a compilation of a report that CNN’s Wolf Blitzer did earlier in the day on “The Situation Room.”

However, Stars and Stripes actually reported Tuesday that military officials shared this information on Monday (emphasis added):

Joan Baez?

Yeah, before my time too, but the Vietnam Era folk singer/protester (pictured at right on the washingtonpost.com front page earlier) scored a publicity coup today. In addition to space in the letters-to-the-editor section, the Post dispatched writer Teresa Wiltz to cover Baez. So what was so deserving of giving an aging Vietnam Era folk singer so much attention?

Why, a complaint against Army brass, of course.

Apparently the Army couldn't accomodate her planned appearance at Walter Reed Army Medical Center with rocker and liberal Iraq war critic John Mellencamp. (A Post music critic covered Mellencamp's set in the April 28 paper)

Of course nowhere in Wiltz's article did she interview any concertgoers to see if anyone really missed the earth-shattering experience that is hearing Baez's music.

What's more, Wiltz left unconsidered how negatively injured soldiers might receive Baez's decidedly politically-infused folk music and ultra-left wing leanings. Mellencamp is no Bush fan, but it's hard to accuse the rocker of being opposed to the institution of the military itself. (see correction below)* (continued...)

One great thing about liberal journalists blogging is that without the constraints of editorial oversight, they can let their hair down even more than usual, unleashing their biases as fast as their fingers fly over the keyboard.

Time magazine's Joe Klein is no exception. The journalist and formerly anonymous author of "Primary Colors" shared with readers of the "Swampland" blog today his complaints about a Bush administration that "trafficks" in publicity stunts such as the May 1, 2003, carrier landing. Klein went on to complain that Donald Rumsfeld was the worst Secretary of Defense in the history of the Republic who, along with "the spinners who gave us the Abraham Lincoln stunt" should be "emptying bed pans at Walter Reed."

Klein's ire draws from liberal talking points about the four-year old "major combat operations" speech. You know the meme "Mission Accomplished" and an end of "major combat operations" were impossibly rosy scenarios in light of the ongoing insurgency.

But for the record, Klein himself described the war as having been won shortly after President Bush's USS Abraham Lincoln speech.

From the May 19, 2003, Time magazine, emphasis mine:

The Washington Post is tsk tsking the U.S. Army and Walter Reed Army Medical Center today for their uninviting of aging 60s' war protester Joan Baez from appearing in a concert for wounded soldiers with John Cougar Mellencamp last Friday. In a sympathetic article the Post can't seem to understand why the Army wouldn't want an over the hill, anti-establishment activist to appear before our wounded heroes.

But even a look at just some of the quotes in their article -- much less any perusal of all her wild-eyed rants of the last 40 years -- seems to explain pretty clearly why a patriotic American soldier would not find her brand of "entertainment" desirable.

It's hard to believe the Post could be at all confused.

Update/Video link at bottom.

Update at bottom with other blogs covering story.

The May 1 edition of "The View" marked the fourth anniversary of President Bush’s famous "mission accomplished" announcement with Rosie O’Donnell’s predictable rants against the war and the administration. The co-host mysteriously claimed Afghanistan had nothing to do with September 11 and downplayed the Al Qaeda threat, claiming it is simply a U.S. government scare tactic. Additionally, Rosie, with the aide of guest co-host Ricki Lake, followed Charles Rangel and Andy Rooney to assert that U.S. soldiers are not patriots, but losers who join out of desperation.

O’DONNELL: Wait, can I just say something? Why do people enlist in the Army?

RICKI LAKE: To get an education, and they're poor-

O’DONNELL: Thank you.

LAKE: -and that’s the only way to get one.

O’DONNELL: The vast majority– Yes, Elisabeth. It’s true!

Because of Tuesday’s testimony by former Army Pvt. Jessica Lynch, the media have renewed the stories about the government “lying” about Lynch’s heroism and only correcting it later, but the conservative blog American Thinker dug up that first article which supposedly gave the details of Lynch’s rescue and found the “government warned against this fight-to-the-death story line… at the time of the initial reporting by the media,” not later.

Writing at AmThinker, Ray Robison said that the Washington Post was the first to publish the super-soldier story, and even though they had been cautioned by the government, they ran with it anyway, adding a little paragraph that mentioned the warning but giving more prominence to the unnamed “US official” (emphasis added throughout; in this post, I changed AmThinker's highlighting and pointed out the AT's "emphasis added" text to differentiate from mine. Follow link to see original form):

Lynch, a 19-year-old supply clerk, continued firing at the Iraqis even after she sustained multiple gunshot wounds and watched several other soldiers in her unit die around her in fighting March 23, one official said...

"She was fighting to the death," the official said. "She did not want to be taken alive."

Several officials cautioned that the precise sequence of events is still being determined, and that further information will emerge as Lynch is debriefed.

Although a quick search of the Web draws up the speech, available here (with video and audio links), rare is the online news service that links to President Bush's remarks on May 1, 2003, aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln.

Notice, for example, no link to the speech in this story at CBSNews.com that follows Sen. Hillary Clinton's (D-N.Y.) latest swipe at the Iraq war. (see related post here)

Since the media don't reprint excerpts of the speech nor give readers the links to the original source material, here are some comments from May 1, 2003, that point to President Bush warning Americans of an ongoing struggle to establish Iraqi democracy and counter the threat of terrorism (portions in bold are my emphasis):

Putting aside the obvious question ("Why are you an LA Times reader?") for the moment -- Apparently you'll get closer to the truth of what's happening in Iraq by reading a Times columnist than you will by reading reports from Times reporters actually assigned to deliver that information.

Here are the first few paragraphs of what columnist Max Boot had to say a few days ago:

An Iraq success story
Once-violent Ramadi, which now enjoys relative calm, shows that Iraqis can achieve peace -- with our help.
April 24, 2007

'A FEW WEEKS ago you couldn't drive down this street without being attacked. When I went down this street in February, I was hit three times with small-arms fire and IEDs." Col. John Charlton was describing Ramadi as we drove down its heavily damaged main street, dubbed Route Michigan by U.S. forces. Even though this was an unlucky day — Friday the 13th (of April) — we did not experience a single attack on our convoy of Humvees.

New New York Times reporter Alissa Rubin issued another ideological piece from Baghdad, "Frustration Unites Sunni and Shiite in Opposition to Baghdad Wall," for Sunday's front page.

Rubin's piece reads more like one of the Times' liberally slanted "news analysis" pieces then straight reporting, and sounds a lot like the Times' hand-wringing coverage of another protective "wall," the one separating Israelis from Palestinians who threaten suicide bombings. And Rubin brought some Steven Erlanger-style moral outrage to her story -- the horror of waiting in line.

"The unexpected outcry about the proposed construction of a wall around a Sunni Arab neighborhood has revealed the depths of Iraqi frustration with the petty humiliations created by the new security plan intended to protect them.

Ian over at Hot Air posted this early this morning. The portion in bold is his emphasis:

Covering the burial of a Blue Angels pilot who crashed his plane last weekend, Fox News anchor Shepard commented on the flag draped coffin shown on screen. Smith compared the showing of this pilot’s flag draped coffin to the flag draped coffins troops are laid to rest in. He used the death of a pilot to bash an administration war policy.

[...]

SHEPARD SMITH, FOX NEWS ANCHOR: “This is a scene we are not accustomed to see during war times. They don’t allow us to see the victims — uh, heroes who died for us in Iraq. We don’t get to see their caskets come back. It’s a wonderful honor to be able to pay tribute to this man in this way. Wouldn’t it be nice if we were able to do this with the hundreds upon hundreds who have died for us in Iraq?”

To show the feeding frenzy that is the MSM -- as well as the constant inaccuracy -- reports abounded yesterday with rebukes to Rudy Giuliani from Democratic candidates for the 2008 Presidential election over something they all merely assumed he said at a campaign appearance.

Every single paper out there quoted the stern rebukes of each of the front running Dem. candidates and nearly every source of MSM news, from TV to the internet, repeated what it was that Rudy "said" to force the rebukes.

Unfortunately for all concerned, it appears that Rudy never said the phrase attributed to him.

Yet, not a soul in the MSM (except Fox's Brit Hume) took the time to do the research necessary to fact check and assure the story was correct.

On his blog at National Review, talk-show host and longtime conservative legal eagle Mark Levin reports that New York Times reporter William Glaberson called him for comment, but couldn't seem to abide putting conservative counterpoints in his story on attempts to limit the attorney-client communications surrounding terrorist suspects at Guantanamo: "Apparently my comments didn't fit his scenario." Levin described his conversation with the Times reporter:

I told him that prior to 2004, unlawful enemy combatants held outside the United States had no access to federal courts; that if these lawyers had access to classified information they would be ethically compelled to discuss it with their clients in order to properly and zealously represent them; that they were constantly trying to move the bar by expanding the supposed due process rights of the detainees; and many other things. Of course, none of this made it into his story. I could tell when he interviewed me that he was basically carrying water for the terrorists' lawyers when he took exception to my calling them "defense counsel." I said, "If they're not defense counsel, then what are they?" He had to concede the point, which seemed rather obvious to me.

A few sources, not the least of which is Michael Barone, are reporting that the Democrats are ignoring important Iraq briefings conducted by General David Petraeus in an apparent effort to stymie efforts in Iraq. It is well known that they are not supportive of the troops in Iraq and the president's "surge" plan they are currently conducting, but whether they like the plan or not, to skip these briefings is an act of blatant negligence that borders on the criminal. So where is the MSM's outrage? Why are we not being told of this Democrat negligence?

Barone, one of the best political pundits out there today, closed his recent Real Clear Politics Report with the following: