Iraq

Reporting for Thursday's NBC Rock Center, chief foreign affairs correspondent Richard Engel ranted over the lack of infrastructure spending to protect against Hurricane Sandy and tried to blame it on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan: "...the thing we've spent the most money on, a trillion-plus dollars, the most American lives on, and that has been bringing democracy to Iraq and Afghanistan, with very questionable results." [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump]

Rather than be in Lybia covering the growing scandal over the Obama administration's botched response to the terrorist attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Engel sat in the NBC News New York studio and proclaimed: "People I've spoken to, experts in this field, say we would be a lot safer, not just richer, if we had spent a lot of that money on improving infrastructure."

CNN's Piers Morgan just couldn't let his Republican guest denounce President Obama's foreign policy. He spouted the White House spin on all the President's accomplishments while not holding him accountable for the Libya fiasco, on his Monday night show.

"I would say one of the things that Barack Obama has done incredibly successfully is restore a lot of America's very damaged reputation around the world since the eight years of George Bush and all the warfare that came with it," claimed Morgan. [Video below the break. Audio here.]

NewsBusters continues to showcase the most egregious bias the Media Research Center has uncovered over the years — four quotes for each of the 25 years of the MRC, 100 quotes total — all leading up to our big 25th Anniversary Gala on Thursday, September 27.

Click here for blog posts recounting the worst of 1988 through 2006. Today, the worst bias of 2007: ABC fawns over newly-installed Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi; Rosie O’Donnell insults the troops; and a McClatchy headline writer finds a downside to good news in Iraq. [Quotes and video below the jump.]

NewsBusters continues to showcase the most egregious bias the Media Research Center has uncovered over the years — four quotes for each of the 25 years of the MRC, 100 quotes total — all leading up to our big 25th Anniversary Gala one week from tonight.

Click here for blog posts recounting the worst of 1988 through 2005. Today, the worst bias of 2006: ABC’s Terry Moran gets a thrill for Barack Obama (“Is he the one?”); AP touts the “comforts” of Castro’s communist dictatorship; and daytime talk show host Rosie O’Donnell declares: “Radical Christianity is just as threatening as radical Islam.” [Quotes and video below the jump.]

Since September 2, NewsBusters has been showcasing the most egregious bias the Media Research Center has uncovered over the years — four quotes for each of the 25 years of the MRC, 100 quotes total — all leading up to our big 25th Anniversary Gala next week.

Click here for blog posts recounting the worst of 1988 through 2004. Today, the worst bias of 2005: NBC’s Brian Williams equates America’s Founding Fathers with the zealots running Iran; ex-New York Times editor Howell Raines goes on a post-Katrina rant about the human carnage caused by the Bush administration’s “churchgoing populism,” and Ted Turner tries to defend North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Il . [Quotes and video below the jump.]

Call it "Politico Protection."

Clay Waters at NewsBusters has already exposed the passive-aggressive anti-Semitism in Maureen Dowd's Sunday rant ("Neocons Slither Back") at the New York Times. So did Politico's Dylan Byers, who nonetheless thought that the Obama campaign's tweet supporting Dowd's column via its "Truth Team" (and, by inference,their  endorsement of her "neocon puppet master" premise) was so unimportant that he didn't mention it until his final paragraph. Excerpts from Byers weakly headlined item follow (HT Twitchy):

CNN's Soledad O'Brien on Monday felt the need to defend Barack Obama from criticism that his policies are at least partially responsible for the recent anti-American hostilities transpiring in the Middle East and other parts of the globe.

During a heated debate with Congressman Peter King (R-N.Y.) on Starting Point, O'Brien got a much-needed education on the President's "apology tour" (video follows with CNN transcript and commentary):

For the past two weeks, NewsBusters has been showcasing the most egregious bias the Media Research Center has uncovered over the years — four quotes for each of the 25 years of the MRC, 100 quotes total — all leading up to our big 25th Anniversary Gala September 27.

If you’ve missed a previous blog, recounting the worst of 1988 through 2002, they are here. Today, the worst bias of 2003: The New York Times compares the U.S. bombing of Baghdad to the horror of September 11; Peter Arnett goes on Iraqi state TV to propagandize against the U.S.; and we find out what a “comfort” Ted Kennedy’s liberal policies would have been to Mary Jo Kopechne, “if she had lived.” [Quotes and video below the jump.]

For the past two weeks, NewsBusters has been showcasing the most egregious bias the Media Research Center has uncovered over the years — four quotes for each of the 25 years of the MRC, 100 quotes total — all leading up to our big 25th Anniversary Gala September 27.

If you’ve missed a previous blog, recounting the worst of 1988 through 2001, they are here. Today, the worst bias of 2002: Bill Moyers gets the vapors after Republicans win control of Congress; ABC’s Barbara Walters champions Cuban dictator Fidel Castro’s dedication to “freedom;” and Reuters charges that “human rights around the world have been a casualty of the U.S. ‘war on terror.’” [Quotes and video below the jump.]

Introducing a report on the ongoing civil war in Syria on Monday's NBC Nightly News, anchor Brian Williams made sure to promote PR from the White House: "...the State Department and the Pentagon are now working together on plans for Syria after Assad, hoping to avoid the chaos they believe broke out because of the lack of planning for a post-Saddam Iraq." [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump]

However, the report that followed by chief foreign correspondent Richard Engel seemed to undermine the notion of a well-planned U.S. strategy in Syria against the Assad regime: "A rebel commander with a hundred fighters in [the city of] Aleppo told us today if the rebels don't receive a massive influx of weapons within the next 72 hours, they'll have to give up the fight."

One hundred and six people died in Iraq on Monday, a bloody milestone that CBS's morning show ignored. Good Morning America's Josh Elliott recounted, "And oversees, this has been the deadliest day in Iraq since U.S. troops withdrew last year." CBS This Morning skipped the story. ABC provided the fullest context.

On his Political Punch blog, Jake Tapper recounted, "President Obama Praises Self for Ending War in Iraq on Bloodiest Day of the Year in That Country." He wondered, "Is it bad timing or irrelevant?" Tapper featured a video that the Obama campaign released touting the end of the war.

On June 13, the CBS Evening News devoted a story by David Martin to the Afghanistan death count reaching 2,000, as Martin interviewed a mother of a fallen Marine. CBS was alone. There was no story last week on the Afghanistan death “milestone” on ABC, NBC, the PBS NewsHour – or even on the MSNBC programs found in Nexis, including Rachel “Our Military’s In a Perilous Drift” Maddow.

But the networks were all more aggressive when the 2,000 mark arrived in Iraq on October 25, 2005. The Big Three networks devoted 14 morning and evening news stories to the death toll from October 24 through the end of October, and another 24 anchor briefs or mentions. They used the number to spell “disaster for this White House.”

Conservative author Ann Coulter made an outstanding observation on Fox News's Hannity Monday about the ongoing national security leaks controversy.

"When the New York Times is printing classified intelligence under a Republican administration, it's to make the Republican administration look bad. When they’re doing it under a Democrat administration, they’re doing it to make the Democrat look good" (video follows with transcript and absolutely no need for additional commentary):

While President Obama and his adoring media did a victory lap on the one year anniversary of Osama bin Laden's assassination, Fareed Zakaria had a completely different take about how the War on Terror is going.

On CNN's Fareed Zakaria GPS Sunday, the host said, "We don't look like people who have won a war. We look like scared, fearful losers" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

A week ago, National Journal's Michael Hirsh quoted an unnamed State Department official who claimed that "The war on terror is over. Now that we have killed most of al Qaida, now that people have come to see legitimate means of expression, people who once might have gone into al Qaida see an opportunity for a legitimate Islamism." If it's so over, then why were government officials referenced in Kimberly Dozier's Associated Press report this evening about the state of Al Qaida a year after Osama Bin Laden's death "on condition of anonymity because they say publicly identifying themselves could make them a target of the terrorist group"?

Dozier is a noteworthy exception to the usually dreadful reporting at the wire service, and has a personal reason for having her eyes open. While she was with CBS News in May 2006, she was critically injured by an IED in Iraq. After nine months, she returned to work. According to Wikipedia she joined the AP in the spring of 2010.

The New York Times, laboring under the false impression it participated in George W. Bush's "rush to war" in Iraq, is pushing back hard against the prospect of preemptive action against Iran's nuclear threat, raising the specter of another Middle East quagmire for the United States.

Mark Mazzetti and Thom Shanker reported Tuesday's lead story, "U.S. Simulation Forecasts Perils Of Strike At Iran."

In an interview with British Prime Minister David Cameron aired on Wednesday's NBC Rock Center, Nightly News anchor Brian Williams cautioned Cameron about one of his predecessors: "You'll concede, Prime Minister Blair may never recover from that label that was attached to him. Someone used the word 'poodle' to describe his relationship with President Bush as the march to war [in Iraq] continued."  

Moments earlier, Williams touted Cameron's criticism of the Iraq war: "Cameron, whose wife was in New York on 9/11, gave a speech in '06 criticizing the Iraq war, in which he said, 'Democracy cannot quickly be imposed from the outside. Liberty grows from the ground. It cannot be dropped from the air by an unmanned drone.'"

Newsweek's Eleanor Clift and National Review's Rich Lowry got into quite a heated debate on PBS's McLaughlin Group this weekend.

With the topic being President Obama's Middle East policy, after much back and forth, Lowry scolded, "If you’re honest about it, that is your bottom line. You are okay with [Iran] getting a nuclear weapon" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

On Friday's Inside Washington on PBS, liberal columnist Mark Shields seemed to show mor skepticism than other panel members about whether Iran is really trying to build nuclear weapons, as he brought up the failure to find an advanced nuclear program in Iraq, asserting, "I've seen this movie before."

He later defended the rationale for Iran locating its nuclear program under a mountain as being a response to threats by other countries to bomb the program.

Shields began:

Tom Brokaw is the man that our Brent Bozell recently described as having "used NBC and [his] anchor chair as a platform to promote Democratic agendas and delight in Republican setbacks for more than 20 years."  But every once in awhile, perhaps out of Greatest Generation nostalgia, Brokaw has something kind to say about a Republican.

As was the case on Morning Joe today, when, after reciting a list of the 41st president's accomplishments, Brokaw called George H.W. Bush "the most underrated modern president of our time."  Video after the jump.

This could go down as some of the worst political advice ever.  Then again, consider the source.  Chris Hayes isn't exactly in the business of helping conservatives lead . . . or win elections.

On his MSNBC show this morning, Hayes advised conservatives to call the war that President Bush led against Iraq "criminal."  Yeah, that's the ticket. Video after the jump.

On Monday, Calvin Woodward, with help from Martin Crutsinger and Pete Yost, produced a "Fact Check" on the budget proposal the White House released earlier that day.

After properly criticizing the administration's plan to use "about $850 billion in savings from ending the wars and steers some $230 billion of that to highways" (and actually quoting someone knowledgeable, who pointed out that "Drawing down spending on wars that were already set to wind down and that were deficit-financed in the first place should not be considered savings"), Woodward went off the rails:

Appearing as a guest on Thursday's The Colbert Report on Comedy Central, ABC's Christiane Amanpour characterized conservatives as several years ago "frog-marching" the U.S. to war with Iraq as she and host Colbert discussed the likelihood Israel will soon attack Iran to prevent the Islamic state from producing nuclear weapons. (Video below)