Axelrod finally puts his degree to use

BULLY BOY PRESS & CEDRIC'S BIG MIX -- THE KOOL-AID TABLE

YESTERDAY THESE REPORTERS SCOOPED THE COMPETITION WITH THE NEWS THAT CELEBRITY IN CHIEF BARRY O WAS GOING BITCHY ("Who let the claws out?" AND "THIS JUST IN! NEW STRATEGY: GET BITCHY!").

ASKED IF THIS WOULD HURT HIM WITH MEN OUTSIDE OF N.Y.C., CAMPAIGN GURU DAVID AXELROD AGREED THIS WAS A POSSIBLE PROBLEM "BUT WE JUST HAVE TO TRY TO MAKE HIM APPEAR MANLY ELSEWHERE."

WHICH MEANT KEEPING HIM AWAY FROM THE BIG UGLY LAST NIGHT.  AXLEROD EXPLAINED, "I TOLD HIM, 'YOU GO STAND NEXT TO SARAH JESSICA PARKER, YOU MIGHT AS WELL BE IN SHORT PANTS.  SHE'S TIRED, SHE'S OLD, HER CAREER'S DEAD AND SHE'S THIS CENTURY'S MISS HAVISHAM.'  DIG ME, I MADE A LITERARY REFERENCE!"




FROM THE TCI WIRE:

Thursday, June 14, 2012.  Chaos and violence continue, War Criminal Colin Powell said his 2003 UN speech was about inspections but today let's slip the decision to go to war was already made, CJR self-embarrasses with a novel concept on journalistic ethics (If you marry, it wipes the slate clean -- quick, someone tell Stephen Glass, Janet Cooke and so many others!), the political crisis continues in Iraq, Senator Patty Murray has some tough questions for Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, and more.

 

Collie The Blot Powell continues to plug his bad and co-written (Tony Koltz) book It Worked For Me: Killing and Lying.  It's really amazing the way the liar keeps saying more than he means to.  But a War Criminal, like any other criminal, has a compulsion to confess (as Freud and Theodor Reik both argued).  You can't turn a trick without a john and a whore.  Presumably Colin played the role of the john for Kira Zalan (US News and World Reports).  We learn that Powell sees meaning when an elderly man is unable to pay attention to a discussion both due to age and to illness but to Collie it's a life lesson about division of labor.  As usual, he discusses the blot and for those fearing Colin's suddenly become part of the Neville family, it's not a facial blot.  It's the fecal smear on his public image that won't wipe off.  It's the lies he told the United Nations in an attempt at kick starting the war on Iraq.  Collie first floated the blot on TV in an interview he gave to Barbara Walters for ABC News.  After it aired, September 2005, Ava and I wrote about it:

 

 

 

Walters says, unable to look at him while she does -- oh the drama!, "However, you gave the world false, groundless reasons for going to war. You've said, and I quote, 'I will forever be known as the one who made the case for war.' Do you think this blot on your record will stay with you for the rest of your life?"
Powell: Well it's a, it's a, of course it will. It's a blot. I'm the one who presented it on behalf of the United Nations, uh, United States, to the world. And it will always be uh, part of my, uh, my record.

Walters: How painful is it?

Powell: (shrugs) It was -- it *was* painful. (shifts, shrugs) It's painful now.

Has a less convincing scene ever been performed?

Possibly. Such as when Powell informs Walters that the fault lies with the intelligence community -- with those who knew but didn't come forward. Unfortunately for Powell, FAIR's advisory steered everyone to a Los Angeles Times' article from July 15, 2004:

Days before Secretary of State Colin L. Powell was to present the case for war with Iraq to the United Nations, State Department analysts found dozens of factual problems in drafts of his speech, according to new documents contained in the Senate report on intelligence failures released last week.
Two memos included with the Senate report listed objections that State Department experts lodged as they reviewed successive drafts of the Powell speech. Although many of the claims considered inflated or unsupported were removed through painstaking debate by Powell and intelligence officials, the speech he ultimately presented contained material that was in dispute among State Department experts.

 

 

 

That's the blot.  His lies that he denies were lies.  A year after his speech, Martha Raddatz (ABC News) observed:

 

 

But instead of discussing Iraq's weapons in terms of "possibilities" or "estimates," Powell spoke before the United Nations last February with certainty.

"These are not assertions," Powell told the Security Council. "What we are giving you are facts and conclusions based on solid intelligence."

Powell qualified only one of his remarks during the 75-minute presentation, saying there was some "controversy" over the intended use of high-strength aluminum tubes. On all other issues, Powell left no room for debate. He used the phrase "we know" 32 times.

 

Jonathan Schwarz (Mother Jones) fact checked the lies here.

 

The lies that you tell

will leave you alone

they'll catch you and trip you up,

Keep you hangin' around

-- "Love You By Heart," written by Carly Simon Jacob Brackman and Libby Titus, first appears on Carly's Spy album

 

 

Yes, liars usually will trip themselves up.  Like today when Powell tells Kira Zalan:

 

 

And when I gave it, people stopped and listened. And the president by that time had already decided that combat would be necessary, he decided that sometime in January. And now it's 5 February and I'm simply telling people why it may be necessary.

 

 

Does Collie realize what he just let slip?  It's no surprise to the peace community.  But still he just admitted that the decision by Bully Boy Bush to go to war was made in January -- two months before the Iraq War started.  That wasn't a part of Colin The War Criminal Powell's speech to the UN.  Click here for the full speech at the Washington Post (warning, not everyone has the full speech even when they claim to -- for example, the Guardian's lost the last third of Powell's speech -- specifically the 'human rights' portion -- but insists that it's the 'full text').  Lot of words, none of which revealed that a decision had already been made to go to war.

 

These, these, these are the words

The words that maketh murder.

These, these, these are the words

The words that maketh murder.

-- "The Words That Maketh Murder," written by PJ Harvey, first appears on PJ's Let England Shake 

 

Today Colin Powell tells US News and World Reports that the decision to go to war on Iraq was made a month before his UN speech.  Strange because the day of his speech, CNN reported (February 5, 2003):

 

At a lunch that followed Powell's presentation, diplomats said he responded to the French foreign minister's concerns about the impact war with Iraq would have on the region by saying, "I wasn't talking about war, but about strengthening inspections."

The diplomats said Powell also made clear to Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin that the United States is not ready to go to war immediately, and is interested in hearing France's proposals to strengthen inspections with the added value of the evidence Powell presented.

 

 

So Colin didn't just lie to the citizens of the world in his UN speech, he continued to lie immediately after and lied to diplomats and France's Foreign Minister.  Colin Powell is a liar.  He can pretend all he wants but the record bears out the reality that he has repeatedly misled over and over.  That is lying.

 

And it's really sad that someone known for doing so little on a national level (other than War Crimes) gets so much press attention for a co-written clip job while former US Senator Russ Feingold put real thought and real work into While America Sleeps: A Wake-Up Call for the Post-9/11 Era and the press is far less likely to offer coverage (or swoon).  Randy Hanson (Hudston Star-Observer) provides coverage on a recent book discussion Feingold gave:

 

 

His chapter on the Iraq War is titled "The Iraq Deception."

"What I tried to do in the book is explain what happened because of our general strategy in Iraq,"  Feingold said. "Everything we did was defined on the basis of Iraq. And it was crazy, because Bush actually said in his speeches over and over again that there were 60 or 65 countries where al-Qaeda was operating. His list included Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, the Slavic republics, Ireland, England -- but not Iraq."

He said that while the United States was concentrating on holding Iraq, terrorist groups were expanding in other countries.

"What I thought 9/11 showed us is what happens when we're not alert. We learned what it felt like to be taken completely by surprise," he said, recalling how the big news story during the summer of 2001 had been shark attacks in the country's coastal waters.

 

 

One book is mature and thoughtful, the other pure piffle.  The one with nothing to offer gets the bulk of the media attention. 

 

It's the immaturity that the press repeatedly embraces while pretending to be 'high brow' in order to justify their refusal to cover actual news stories.  One example, refusing to explore serious ethical violations by using matrimony as an excuse:  "But that was in 2008, and they're married now."  Is that Margaret Carlson?  No.  No, it's much worse than columnist Carlson.  That's Erika Fry forced into covering the story for CJR.  I was on the phone earlier today with a CJR friend for a half-hour, it was a pre-emptive call asking me to please understand . . .  No, it doesn't work that way.

 

I will allow that Erika Fry got stuck with the assignment (that's what I was told, I do not know her and didn't speak to her).  But she's an assistant editor and it's Columbia Journalism Review.  I'm real damn sorry that your panties and boxers go dry when you have to critique someone your wet dream Barack loves -- Brett McGurk.  But I'm genuinely sorry that you're such whores that you rush to minimize what took place. 

 

Brett McGurk is Barack Obama's nominee for US Ambassador to Iraq.  He's gotten into a lot of trouble for numerous things but Fry ended up stuck writing about the e-mails.  E-mails became public last week (see the June 5th snapshot) that he had exchanged with Gina Chon in 2008 when both were in Baghdad -- he was working for the US government, she was working for the Wall St. Journal.  The Wall St. Journal let Chon go on Tuesday due to the fact that she had concealed the affair in 2008 when McGurk was not only a US government official but the primary source for her stories and she was let go because she had shared stories she was working on with McGurk to let him alter them (she stated in her defense that she was using him as a sounding board for input). 

 

Columbia JOURNALISM Review.  And they rush to dismiss it.  And they rush to treat it as no big deal.    "But that was in 2008, and they're married now."

 

Who gives a damn?

 

That doesn't change a thing.  You either start having standards or you don't.  Right now, CJR has no standards at all.  Judith Miller could go back to work for the New York Times tomorrow and any argument CJR might make would be pointless.  Because right now, they're telling us, that if you marry the source for whom you cater coverage too, it doesn't matter that you misled readers and your editor and it doesn't matter that your lover got copy approval of anything you turned in.

 

If that's the position CJR wants to take, then they are nothing but a joke. 

 

 

"We get that sex sells," Fry lies.  It's not about sex, it's about ethics.  If it were about sex, we'd talk about the doggie style encounter in a hallway.  We can do that.  Brett McGurk was very 'popular' in Iraq.  Gina Chon wasn't the first woman he cheated on his wife with.  (That may or may not be news to Chon.)  If Fry wants to make it about sex, we can do that.

 

But don't dimiss sleeping with a source, letting your lover vet your copy and misleading the public and your editor as it being about sex or as ethical lapses that expire because they two got married.

 

This is embarrassing and shame on CJR for this nonsense.  Again, I had to listen to  half hour of excuses today.  I hadn't even read the piece.  I return a voice mail and suddenly it's "Well we . . . and we . . and we . . ."  Wee wee?  That about sums it up.  CJR has just pissed on journalism ethics.  That's not a proud moment.

RECOMMENDED: "Iraq snapshot"
"The violence and the political crisis continue"
"The unsuited and unsuitable Brett McGurk"
"Again, personal"
"No to Brett McGurk"
"3 men, 3 women"
"why does barack hate families?"
"Trash walks"
"Camp Lejeune"
"For the sake of Iraqi women, McGurk should step aside"
"To cleanse . . ."
"McGurk needs to withdraw his name"
"Brett McGurk needs to withdraw his name"
"Who let the claws out?"
"THIS JUST IN! NEW STRATEGY: GET BITCHY!"