9/11

On the March 15 edition of "The View," Rosie O’Donnell brought up the news of Khalid Sheik Mohammed’s many confessions. Rosie, who believes radical Christianity is just as dangerous as radical Islam, was more outraged on unproven allegations of torture than the horrific atrocities Mohammed confessed to. On her latest rant she also demonstrated her lack of knowledge on the extensive al Qaeda network.

O’DONNELL: I think the man has been in custody of the American government, in secret CIA torture prisons in Guantanamo Bay, where torture is accepted and allowed, and he finally is the guy who admits to doing everything. They finally found the guy. It's not that guy bin Laden. It's this guy they've had since ‘93. And look, this is the picture they released of him. Doesn’t, he look healthy?

ABC’s Rosie O’Donnell has said some pretty disgraceful things on “The View” since her arrival. However, this might be the worst.

On Thursday’s installment, O’Donnell actually said that the only reason al Qaeda terrorist Khalid Sheikh Mohammed confessed to any of his actions is because he is being held and tortured by the United States government.

For any right-thinking American, this is some pretty disturbing footage of a so-called fellow citizen actually defending one of the most heinous terrorists in history (h/t and video available here courtesy of Ian at Hot Air, partial transcript available here courtesy of Justin McCarthy).

As Debbie Schlussel reported on this issue (emphasis mine throughout):

From the March 8 edition of James Taranto's Best of the Web. (H/t: Nathan Burchfiel):

Another Man's Victim?

Reuters has a cute little human interest story about funny people from Vermont holding "town meetings" where they call for President Bush's impeachment. What caught our eye was not the darling little Vermonters, though, but something in this paragraph:

As previously reported by NewsBusters, Friday’s “Real Time” on HBO was another in a litany of Bush bashes on this cable program. However, before Bill Maher indicated his regret that the recent assassination attempt on Vice President Dick Cheney failed, he interviewed one of the administration’s staunchest critics, the New Yorker’s Seymour Hersh.

Those tuning in to hear one of the White House’s most outspoken foes castigate the president and his staff like virtually no one else in the media were not disappointed (video available here courtesy of our friend Ms Underestimated).

After some introductory pleasantries, Maher asked: “I know from your latest article that we ought to be worrying about a war with Iran?”

Hersh disparagingly replied:

What was the refrain so often hurled at the right by the "good hearted" and "more civilized" left when Chelsea Clinton was brought into the campaign discussion in the 1990s? Didn't they all solemnly shake their heads in disgust over those eeevil Conservatives who were attacking the president's kid? Didn't they scold the right saying that a candidate's children should never be an issue? Well, apparently the New York Times has abandoned that genteel notion.

I sure remember the left wagging their fingers in the nation's face over this point repeatedly, don't you?

Yes, here we have, in Saturday's edition of the New York Times, an article dragging Rudy Giuliani's recently strained relationship with his two children into the public debate on his candidacy. Here we have the bastion of leftism trying to get at a candidate through his children in stark contrast to the tsk, tsking that the left indulged in during the Clinton years.

CBS News "PublicEye" editor Brian Montopoli suggested in a recent blog post that conservatives are unfairly attacking liberal Web sites for comments posted by readers that lament that a terrorists attack in Afghanistan did not succeed in killing Vice President Cheney.

Montopoli says that both right and left-wing sites have their share of nutty commenters, which, to some degree is a fair point. There are fring loonies and flamers on the Internet on both sides of the aisle.

What Montopoli seems to miss then is that the objection conservatives like Sean Hannity have raised is not so much the sin of commission by nasty commenters but the sin of omission by Web site administrators and editors.

It's a legitimate question to ask why people wishing for the assassination of the Vice President of the United States are not banned from a politically-oriented site.

The CBS blogger also has skewed the matter by comparing this controversy with the Ward Churchill row from a few years ago:

With Barbara Walters away, whom did ABC choose to guest host The View today? A woman who thinks a 9-11 nutcase is "so great." Singing the nutcase's praises in the screencap is Christine Ebersole, a Broadway actress and former Saturday Night Live cast member, I've learned. And there she was, guest hosting on this morning's View, when she let this drop:

"I'm going through 'the change' in my life."

That was good for a high-five with Rosie, who said she is, too.

Ebersole explained that one symptom is insomnia, which has turned her into a YouTube addict. Speaking of her YouTube favorites, she continued:

"There's a couple of political ones. The latest one I found, oh my God, I'm so crazy about this guy, it's called 'theresistancemanifesto.com.'"

View video here.

While the blog world churns over washingtonpost.com blogger William Arkin, the "On Balance" blog at the same website has a guest column today from Steve Fox, a former national political editor at the Post website about sharing 9/11 facts with his 8-year-old son. "On Balance" isn't about media bias -- it's about balancing work and family -- but Fox certainly demonstrated his political take, since his son was soon suggesting he would throw the F-bomb at President Bush:

My eight-year-old son recently came home with a book titled: September 11, 2001: The Day That Changed America.

My first reaction: What's THAT book doing in an elementary school? Then I remembered that whole censorship thing. As a journalist, I'm supposed to be against that. As a parent, I want all 9/11 books moved to the middle school library.

Nearly 3,000 Americans killed in a series of attacks on one single day -- the most American civilians ever killed in a single day with coordinated attacks -- was no big deal as far as David Bell writing for the L.A. Times is concerned.

The attacks were a horrible act of mass murder, but history says we're overreacting.

See, they know this because Russia had a bad time of it during WWII.

...imagine that the attacks had continued, every six hours, for another four years, until nearly 20 million Americans were dead. This is roughly what the Soviet Union suffered during World War II, and contemplating these numbers may help put in perspective what the United States has so far experienced during the war against terrorism.

Such a ridiculous comparison. WWII, a standard, symmetrical war, bears little resemblance to this threat we face today. The Russians were under arms facing Hitler. It wasn't a "nice" war, surely, but it was a standard war none-the-less. Hitler invaded and the Russians resisted.

Standard war stuff, really.

As NewsBusters has been reporting for the past couple of weeks, a battle is being waged between liberal bloggers and a conservative radio station in San Francisco. Those that are unfamiliar with this issue should read articles covering both sides of the matter here and here.

Two of the most outspoken voices on the Internet regarding this subject have been Mike Stark, who writes for Daily Kos and his own blog Calling All Wingnuts, and Noel Sheppard, a contributing editor of NewsBusters as well as a frequent contributor to the American Thinker.

In order to further an understanding of this complex issue, Sheppard and Stark have decided to debate one another at their various Internet venues. The ground rules are as follows:

NewsBusters readers are certainly aware of the controversy created by ABC’s docudrama “The Path to 9/11.” In fact, we reported extensively on this issue here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

To bring people back up to speed, the left and former President Bill Clinton went absolutely berserk the week before this program aired due to some of the content. In fact, it culminated in ABC finally giving into all the pressure, and cutting some scenes from the final version aired.

Vice President Dick Cheney squared off with CNN host Wolf Blitzer on Wednesday in a contentious, multi-part "Situation Room" interview. Blitzer seemed to openly adopt the mantra and talking points of the Democratic Party. In fact, in a tease for the interview, Blitzer promised, "The Vice President takes on his critics, including me." Cheney, whose wife Lynne aggressively sparred the cable anchor back in November, told Blitzer that a question about administration blunders was "hogwash." Elaborating on a clip of Democratic Senator Jim Webb, the "Situation Room" host asked Cheney about Bush failures:

Wolf Blitzer: "And it’s not just Jim Webb. It’s some of your good Republican friends in the Senate and in the House are now seriously questioning your credibility because of the blunders, of the failures. Gordon Smith– Gordon Smith--"

Dick Cheney: "Wolf. Wolf. I simply don’t accept the premise of your question. I just think it’s hogwash."

Blitzer: "That what? That there were no blunders? The President himself says there were blunders."

Here’s something you don’t see every day: a columnist at a liberal newspaper saying bad things about Democrats. In this case, it’s especially odd given that the targets of the disaffection were primarily media darlings Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.

Yet, there it was in Wednesday’s Boston Globe:

One of the common themes emanating from the media in recent years is that the world and the Middle East were much safer places before America invaded Iraq in March 2003. In their view, all of the geopolitical problems began that very month, and prior to that point, the earth was a happy place whose citizens all got along like two-year-olds in a sandbox.

Unfortunately, this position hypocritically and absurdly ignores what happened eighteen months earlier in Manhattan and Washington, D.C., as well as the hatred for America and its allies as depicted in the cartoon to the right published in a Bahrainian newspaper on June 10, 2002, fully nine months before America invaded Iraq.

For those interested, the Jewish caricature in the cartoon is demanding that the Bush caricature say “I Hate the Arabs!” In response, Bush is replying, “I hate the Arabs, I hate the Arabs!”

Here’s a shocker: The Council on American-Islamic Relations is unhappy about the hit television series “24”. Imagine that.

With that in mind, CAIR’s legal director, Arsalan Iftikhar, went on the “O’Reilly Factor” Friday to discuss his organization’s views on this subject (video available here). O’Reilly marvelously set the discussion up:

Isn't this political correctness gone crazy? I mean, let's face it, come on, you have a program that's a fictional program. Everybody knows it. You have in this world Muslim villains. They are on the other side of the war on terror from us. There are Muslims who want to kill Americans, you know that. So you combine fiction with reality in this program. And now you guys are complaining about it? And the far left nuts are complaining about it? What's going on?

Iftikhar answered:

With all the negative focus on an Emmy Award-winning television drama, one has to start wondering if the media are more afraid of “24” and any reference to terrorism than terrorism itself.

As NewsBusters has reported here, here, here, here, and here, the media have been in quite a lather about the first four episodes of the hit series' sixth season aired on Fox Sunday and Monday. Thanks to a report CNN did Tuesday (video available here, hat tip to Hot Air), we can now add Newsweek to the growing list of concerned media outlets. (Please be advised that it’s been difficult to identify whether this was just a web-broadcast on CNN.com, or something aired on television).

In his January 12 review, Newsweek’s Devin Gordon wrote: “Depending on your perspective, '24' is either a neocon sex fantasy or the collective id of our nation unleashed.” Much like other recent media carps and whines concerning this show, Gordon used his review as an opportunity to swipe at the current president:

It appears impossible for Time magazine to do anything without bringing its liberal bias into the equation, for in his January 14 review of the return of television hero Jack Bauer, writer James Poniewozik asked, “So, is 24 a conservative show?”

Checking that link about now to measure my veracity? Go ahead. I dare you.

Sadly, the answer seemed just as foolish as the question: “Yes, in the sense that the thriller is a conservative genre.”

He wrote that. I swear. Check if for yourself. But there’s more:

In this age of continual polling 24/7 about issues that largely support liberal positions advanced by a complicit media, I’d love to see someone ask the American people if they’re sick and tired of the constant carping and whining by the press concerning the absence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and the inability to capture Osama bin Laden.

Well, it seems that Fox News contributor Dennis Miller is similarly fed up with this amazing hypocrisy, and he let viewers know this in his hysterical “Real Free Speech” comment on Friday’s “Hannity & Colmes.” So, strap yourself into your favorite comfy chair, secure all beverages, flammables, and sharp objects, and join Dennis on a wild ride into post-9/11 sanity (video available here courtesy of our friend at Ms Underestimated):

There’s really no other way of putting this: Keith Olbermann is a disgrace, and the idea that any major media outlet would give him a daily platform to spew his vitriol from is similarly so.

Such an observation certainly comes as no great surprise to NewsBusters readers who have been regularly subjected to videos and transcripts of this man’s vapid and insipid rantings since this blog was first started. Though Thursday night’s “Special Comment” on MSNBC’s “Countdown” was not necessarily out of the ordinary for Olbermann, coming a day after President Bush’s speech to the nation concerning Iraq, its contents were all the more offensive (video available here).

It is always amazing when a "news report" is merely just a rehash of some press release, or is, at the very least, a completely one sided report.

Such is the case with a recent UPI "report", "Fight anti-Arab bigotry, Gonzalez told".

UPI is wagging its finger at U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez via a group of "Arab leaders" who are warning the government "to fight anti-Arab bigotry." The whole UPI "report" is nothing but the warnings of these so-called leaders about how filled with bigotry the USA is and how the government must fight it.

With all this hooplah, one would imagine that Arabs are being attacked, mistreated and discriminated against all across the country at an alarming rate. Arab "leader" James Zogby even makes the claim that the government must "reverse this disturbing and increasingly accepted trend of anti-Arab and Muslim bias".

In 2006, one of the most shameless Democrat pols in the media was certainly MSNBC correspondent David Shuster who repeatedly and consistently behaved more like a left-leaning political operative than a television journalist. On Wednesday’s “Hardball,” Shuster made it clear that objectivity and impartiality were not on his New Year’s resolutions list.

As NewsBuster Mark Finkelstein has been reporting, Chris Matthews has been virtually foaming at the mouth lately concerning his desire for American troops to be immediately withdrawn from Iraq. On Wednesday, his partner in crime nicely set up the 7PM EST installment with an antiwar rant that could have been performed by Cindy Sheehan (video available here).

After showing a brief clip of President Bush asking the new Congress to “set aside politics and focus on the future,” Shuster complained, “But the president made no mention of the Iraq War.” Then, the rant really began. The reader is hereby warned to put a lobster bib on to protect clothing from the foam spewing out of Shuster's mouth:

Here's another angle on a story previously covered by NB's Tim Graham.

Friday's New York Times editorial (requires registration) makes it clear, without having the courage to specifically say it, that it opposed the impending execution of the Iraqi dictator, even characterizing the three-year legal process as "The Rush to Hang" him.

The Times may have taken it too far this time. I would think more than a few in the Manhattan wine-and-cheese set, even those who oppose the war, will be astute enough to substitute the name "Osama bin Laden" and his "orchestration of the 9/11 attacks" for "Saddam Hussein" and his "vile and unforgivable atrocities" in the Times' Friday editorial. Here are a couple of easy examples:

Most NBers are familiar with an hysterical interview that former Partridge Family star Danny Bonaduce had on the streets of Hollywood with a 9/11 conspiracy theorist two weeks ago. On Thursday, Bonaduce was on “The O’Reilly Factor” with guest-host John Kasich to discuss the incident (video available here courtesy of our friend at Ms Underestimated):

I tell you what happened was I think I was eating dinner -- or lunch, rather, at an outdoor cafe. And I think this guy who -- I don't know if he believes in what he's doing or thinks he's helping, but I think, my belief was what he was saying was blatantly anti-American.

If you make the sitting president a murderer, you make my little brother-in-law who I've known since he was 6 a murderer, because he's on the ground in Iraq for his second tour and he's been shot.

Then, Bonaduce went after other Hollywoodans:

As the AP reports (Strip-Searched Muslim Woman Gets Apology), the Dept. of Homeland Security sent an apology letter to a Muslim woman who was strip searched on April 11th, 2006. Naturally, the AP uses the report as an excuse to bash the US government.

The Department of Homeland Security has sent a letter apologizing to a Muslim woman who was detained at the Tampa airport and strip-searched at a county jail.

Safana Jawad, 45, a Spanish citizen who was born in Iraq, was detained on April 11 because of a suspected tie to a suspicious person, authorities said. She was held for two days before being deported to England.

The Christmas break replay season offered a chance to catch up on shocking episodes of "The View" on ABC. On December 26, a replay of the December 6 program gave viewers in the Eastern and Central time zones the chance to see James Brolin pitch a government-set-up-9/11 website: "Can I tell you to have a look at www.911weknow.com? And then wait until I see you next time." The first broadcast was blocked in the East due to doting live coverage of the Iraq Study Group report release. (The eagle eyes at Hot Air lamented the dropout at the time. Hey, maybe that event was a government conspiracy to silence Brolin....) Video: Real (1.7MB) or Windows (1.9 MB)Plus: MP3 (292KB) The transcript is below.

An absolutely extraordinary discussion occurred on Thursday’s “Special Report” concerning the role of the media in wartime, and what the change in press coverage in the past sixty years has meant for the nation. Tastefully setting the table, host Brit Hume showed a clip of Clear Glass Productions' satirical film depicting how today’s liberal media would have covered World War II had this current iteration been around in the '40s (hysterical trailer of the film available here, video of Special Report segment here, hat tip to NB member Blonde):

ANNOUNCER: According to Pentagon sources, this now brings the official total of Americans killed overseas to 250,000. Congresswoman and House leader Ancy Lagosi took time out from her reelection campaign to mark the occasion.

REP ANCY LAGOSI: 250,000 of our finest coming home in wooden boxes, for what? To support a lie. What has Germany and Italy got to do with Pearl Harbor?

CROWD: Nothing!

LAGOSI: That's right, nothing.

CROWD: Roosevelt lied, millions died. Roosevelt lied, millions died.

Once the clip was over, Hume began:

As NewsBusters has reported here and here, there has been a shockingly deafening silence from the American media concerning revelations of former National Security Adviser Sandy Berger’s actions at the National Archives in 2003. In fact, it appears that only Fox News has much interest in a story about a top-level political official stealing and destroying top secret documents from the facility responsible for storing them.

With that in mind, “Your World” invited Ann Coulter on to discuss this issue on Thursday, and the conservative author was not shy (video available here courtesy of our friend at Ms Underestimated). After guest host David Asman gave some background, he asked his guest: “Ann Coulter, where is the outrage? Are you surprised that there is no outrage about this?”

Ann didn’t disappoint:

The AP obtained the November 4, 2005 report from the Inspector General of the National Archives and in a dispatch late Wednesday led with how “President Clinton's national security adviser removed classified documents from the National Archives, hid them under a construction trailer and later tried to find the trash collector to retrieve them, the agency's internal watchdog said Wednesday.” But despite the colorful details about how Sandy Berger cut the documents, about the Clinton administration's reaction to terrorist threats in 1999, into small pieces, the broadcast networks weren't interested Thursday morning or evening even though the report discredits Berger's claims he simply accidentally mishandled the documents.

The evening newscasts, which all began with the bad weather in the Rocky Mountain states and how four Marines were charged with murder for the alleged massacre in Haditha, didn't utter a syllable about Berger's apparent efforts to cover up an aspect of how the Clinton White House responded to a terrorist threat. Yet they made room for more frivolous topics even before the usual end of the newscast human interest piece. ABC's Charles Gibson allocated a full story to the recovery of race horse “Barbaro” and 30 seconds to how "a public health advocate" reported how much exercise it takes to work off holiday calories, such as 37 minutes of walking to "burn off" a gingerbread cookie. CBS devoted to a two-part Katie Couric interview, consuming nine minutes of air time, to the widow of the mountain climber found dead on Mt. Hood. NBC's Brian Williams had time to highlight how the Governor of New Jersey signed a civil unions law and NBC ran a full story on how “the first Muslim elected to Congress comes under attack by a colleague over religion.”

Actor Sean Penn received an award Monday evening from the Creative Coalition, and took the opportunity to slam virtually every Republican whose name he's familiar with while calling for the impeachment of President Bush and Vice President Cheney. Here are some of the more vitriolic segments of the prepared text as he accepted the first annual Christopher Reeve First Amendment Award (emphasis mine throughout):

Which is to say that, globally, the United States is number one at demanding accountability and backing up that demand with imprisonment. But, when it comes to our president, vice president, secretary of state, former secretary of defense...this insistence on accountability vanishes. All of a sudden, what's past is prologue. And we're just "forward-looking." But some people can't just look forward. Men and women stationed in Iraq at this moment, under orders of a Commander-in-Chief so sufficiently practiced in the art of deception, that he got vast numbers of American journalists and the most esteemed media outlets of this country, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, NPR, and PBS to eagerly serve his agenda-building for war. And the process also induced vast numbers of artists and performers (probably even some in this room tonight) to keep quiet and facilitate the push for an invasion in Iraq.

He's certainly come a long way from "Hey bud...let's party" hasn't he? Of course, on the flipside, someone should have cautioned the seemingly stoned recipient that people on drugs should not give speeches. Alas, Spicoli...er, I mean Penn was just getting warmed up: