Rep. John Murtha is no Cindy Sheehan, but the Washington Post's inability to do some simple reporting on Murtha's Iraq war record is reminiscent of its limited Lexis-Nexis skills last summer. As I documented at the time, the Post simply ignored Sheehan's wild ravings about President Bush being the biggest war criminal and a lying bastard, about liberal bloggers being the only thing preventing the U.S. from becoming a fascist state, about insurgents being freedom fighters and Iraq having held a sham election, etc., etc.
Now I see a story slated in the Post for Saturday's front page about an excitable evening in the House, which voted 400 million to 3 against an immediate withdrawal from Iraq: House GOP Calls For Vote On Iraq Pullout, by Charles Babington. And here's the nut graf on Murtha:
Murtha galvanized the debate as few other people could have. He is a 33-year House veteran and former Marine colonel who received medals for his wounds and valor in Vietnam, and he has traditionally been a leading Democratic hawk and advocate of military spending.
Which, just like yesterday's story by Babington is silent about Murtha's Random Position Generator, which since before the war began includes concern about Saddam's WMD, claims about being misled, dire unfulfilled warnings about a secretly planned callup of reserves, conviction that a pullout would be an "international disaster," a vote against a resolution saying the world was safer with Saddam gone, and a vote in favor of Rep. Charles Rangel's stunt to propose reviving the draft.
Reports like this show how mainstream media is an obstacle to finding out what's going on in the world--as already documented by MRC's Brent Baker and fellow Newsbuster Noel Sheppard.
Cross-posted at PostWatch
