Hannity cropped Clinton quote to accuse her of "hypocrisy" on Iraq
On the June 17 edition of Fox News' Hannity's America, host Sean Hannity cropped a December 2003 speech by Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) before the Council on Foreign Relations to accuse her of "hypocrisy." Hannity claimed that, in that speech, "when most Democrats turned their back on the president's decision to invade Iraq, Hillary maintained her support." As evidence, Hannity aired a part of her speech in which Clinton said, "I was one who supported giving President Bush the authority, if necessary, to use force against Saddam Hussein," but not her subsequent statement two sentences later in which she noted what she said were her "many disputes and disagreements with the administration over how that authority has been used." Hannity then skipped ahead 14 paragraphs to include this quote from Clinton: "We have no option but to stay involved and committed." Hannity later accused Clinton of "quickly chang[ing] beats" after opposition to the war grew and claimed that, in June 2006, "[a]lmost out of nowhere," Clinton "started to blame the president for misleading Congress." Hannity then pointed to Sen. John McCain's (R-AZ) remarks -- as quoted in Her Way: The Hopes and Ambitions of Hillary Rodham Clinton (Little, Brown & Co., June 2007) by Jeff Gerth and Don Van Natta Jr. -- that "I didn't see early on or at least for a couple of or three years ... the allegation surface that President Bush had 'misused his authority.' " In fact, as Media Matters for America has previously noted (here and here), Clinton accused Bush of misusing the authority given him in the Authorization For Use Of Military Force Against Iraq long before the June 2006 speech.
From Clinton's December 15, 2003, speech (emphasis added):
CLINTON: I was one who supported giving President Bush the authority, if necessary, to use force against Saddam Hussein. I believe that that was the right vote. I have had many disputes and disagreements with the administration over how that authority has been used, but I stand by the vote to provide the authority because I think it was a necessary step in order to maximize the outcome that did occur in the Security Council with the unanimous vote to send in inspectors. And I also knew that our military forces would be successful. But what we did not appreciate fully and what the administration was unprepared for was what would happen the day after.
[...]
CLINTON: So the question that I was asked most frequently when I returned was, well, are you optimistic or pessimistic, and I have to confess that my answer is neither. I am both a little optimistic and a little pessimistic, but what I'm trying to do is be realistic about where we are and what we need to be successful. We have no option but to stay involved and committed.
From the June 17 edition of Fox News' Hannity's America:
HANNITY: The woman who is now saying we shouldn't be there had multiple opportunities to vote against it, but she didn't. Fast forward to November [sic] of 2003, six months after the president announced that major combat operations in Iraq had ended. It was two days after Saddam Hussein's capture that she delivered a speech where she said we needed patience and to stay the course.
CLINTON: [video clip] I was one who supported giving President Bush the authority, if necessary, to use force against Saddam Hussein. ... We have no option but to stay involved and committed.
HANNITY: A year into the war, when most Democrats completely turned their back on the president's decision to invade Iraq, Hillary maintained her support.
Additionally, Hannity uncritically aired McCain's claim that he "didn't see early on or at least for a couple of or three years ... the allegation surface that President Bush had 'misused his authority.' " In fact, as Media Matters noted in rebutting Gerth and Van Natta's claim, which The New York Times published in an excerpt of Her Way -- that Clinton first accused Bush of misusing his authority in her June 2006 floor statement -- Clinton has consistently voiced this concern. For instance, she told the Poughkeepsie Journal during a February 9, 2004, interview: "And, finally, I think when you are asked by a president to give him authority to proceed in one manner with the ultimate decision to use force, granted, assuming the following steps would be taken, that doesn't seem to me to be unreasonable. What happened here is that we gave authority to a president who in my view misused the authority." Also, as early as October 2003, Clinton expressed her disagreement "with the way [Bush] used that authority," as she did in the December 2003 speech.
From the June 17 edition of Fox News' Hannity's America:
HANNITY: And welcome back to Hannity's America. As Hillary Clinton makes her run for the White House, one of the defining issues in her campaign is going to be her hypocrisy over the war in Iraq. In tonight's "Clinton Chapters," we look at another part of Hillary's record that she'd like to rewrite.
[...]
HANNITY: The woman who is now saying we shouldn't be there had multiple opportunities to vote against it, but she didn't. Fast forward to November of 2003, six months after the president announced that major combat operations in Iraq had ended. It was two days after Saddam Hussein's capture that she delivered a speech where she said we needed patience and to stay the course.
CLINTON: [video clip] I was one who supported giving President Bush the authority, if necessary, to use force against Saddam Hussein. ... We have no option but to stay involved and committed.
HANNITY: A year into the war, when most Democrats completely turned their back on the president's decision to invade Iraq, Hillary maintained her support.
[...]
HANNITY: As soon as she was being left out on her own, Hillary quickly changed beats. On June 14, 2006, a group of Democratic senators and their aides headed to a private room in the Capitol, and according to reports, the usual attendees were surprised to see Hillary in attendance. In that meeting, [Senate Majority Leader] Senator Reid [D-NV] offered to hear her thoughts. An unidentified participant recalls that day saying, quote, "It was odd to give her the stage on this."
Even Hillary's own party and colleagues were shocked to see her sudden turnaround. Almost out of nowhere, she started to blame the president for misleading Congress. Senator John McCain remarked on her 180 and said, quote, "I didn't see early on or at least for a couple of or three years ... the allegation surface that President Bush had, quote, 'misused his authority.' "
'Hannity's America....' I wonder how the air is up there in his fantasy land...
It's worse than that. This was a deliberate effort to falsify a position. To extract a large number of paragraphs in order to assert a false declaration on Clinton's part is patently dishonest.
Obviously pays well
SAVE DEMOCRACY, VOTE FOR A DEMOCRAT!!
Hannity's America is nobody's Democracy! He propagandizes for a place where truth is whatever promotes the Republican's power which has nothing to do with being an American; it's about being on of the ruling wealthy class.
American Fascism.
Save Democracy with the kind of wisdom of our Great Generation that brought us the Fairness Doctrine that would help lead to real election & campaign reform, and a restoration of our civil-liberties lost in the recent Republican treachery.
Happy Thoughts;
Dan Grady
P.S> if you want to see a mighty example of Republican sincerity, stream the Reform Committees' Hearing into the GSA Administrator Lucinda Doan!
Mr. Hannity,
You are a Grating American. Keep up the good work for the Cons and soon, you will be promoted to the level of that man of truth..Bill O'Reilly.
this guy is a pus pocket on the roid of life. Somebody hurry up and create a retroactive birth control pill and get him a scipt.
Hey, don't blame Hannity.
I'm certain the research department at Fox News already crops all their quotes to make Dems look bad before Hannity can get his mitts on them.
Rannity, O'Lielly, Limpballs, Bores, and all the rest are completely irrelevant to conversation in America. Like Bush, Cheney, Gonzales, Rice, and all the others in this most corrupt and unAmerican of all administrations, the only surprise is when they utter something honest. Aside from those rare occasions, they are merely background noise, wisely ignored by anyone with even half a brain. 18 more months.
Hannity is not relevant anymore, except that there is a voting block that actually believes the manipulated news he presents smiling at the camera. last night he was sucking on Liebermann while the banner below indicated Lieber was a democrat. And sen Lieberman didn't have the ball's to correct the banner on air
I hadn't heard Hannity's radio show lately.Like most of the rightys who do TV and radio, the radio is always a little nuttier and less scripted.
Anyway, I tuned in at lunchtime today, and it was like a loop tape of every time I've happened on it for a year; Undermining the troops, fomenting sectarian violence, activist judges, far left agenda, blah blah, it's insane.
At least Rush and O'Reilly take an occasional breath between BS talking points, or work them into an original thought or anecdote.Hannity is just this whiny droning list of buzzwords, and I have to wonder who those callers are buying tix to his Freedom Concerts.
Scary to even think, but is his audience the ones that find Rush too intellectual? Yikes!
FYI, HBL.
[link to www.hannityfreedomconcert.com]
hantywaste (since hannity sell his BS in the grease, sugar and bleached white flour belt, he has to have a nickname) said there is a 60-70 % chance there will be war in GAZA envolving Isreal very soon. I got that he hopes there is. this guy is the suppository of the ultra right. He is psychotic
Thanks, King. Looks like a pretty tempting line-up of talent.That Republican Big Tent seems to include both kinds of music- Country and Western.
Or at least to Country music what Air Supply is to Rock.
I think Valentinian lives in San Diego. Maybe I can crash on his couch after the concert and several hours of flag waving and drooling in the hot sun.
Sean & Ollie will be bringing the show to Great Adventure in NJ on September 11, 2007, and it's less than an hour from me.
If you or Val are anywhere on the right coast then, you're welcome to stay at my house.
They're already referring to it as "The Bedwetters Woodstock".
That my exact take on his radsio show when I tune in from time to time. same ol crap everyday. He literally repeats all of his talking point verbatim, it's very surreal. His favorite phrases are "Killing fields of Cambodia" and "Emboldening the enemy". If you think he's bad go check out his followers on his message boards. I never post there, but I do take a peek from time to time to see what the latest bit of nonsense is.
Thanks, MOnk- I can't believe I forgot "Emboldening the enemy".
and just for fun.
"No goal, no objective, not until we have those things and a compelling case is made, then I say, back out of it, because innocent people are going to die for nothing. That's why I'm against it...Explain to the mothers and fathers of American servicemen that may come home in body bags why their son or daughter have to give up their live?" - Sean Hannity, March 1999 <!-- END TEMPLATE: bbcode_quote --><!-- BEGIN TEMPLATE: bbcode_quote -->
Quote:"Why should one U.S. airman give up his life when our national security is not in imminent danger?" - Sean Hannity, March 24 1999 <!-- END TEMPLATE: bbcode_quote --><!-- BEGIN TEMPLATE: bbcode_quote -->Quote:"Number one is the president has really failed to lay out before the American people the reason why we need to be involved militarily. That's number one. And then we go back to Harry Kissinger's test, which is number one, is there a vital U.S. national interest? And do we have a plan to disengage? What's the exit strategy? I don't see that we've met that test either. And why does it have to happen this second, this hour? Why don't we have a national debate first?" - Sean Hannity, March 24 1999 <!-- END TEMPLATE: bbcode_quote --><!-- BEGIN TEMPLATE: bbcode_quote -->Quote:"But you know what? There's a lot of massacres going on in the world. As you know, 37,000 Kurds in Turkey, over a million people in Sudan. We have hundreds of thousands in Rwanda and Burundi. I mean, where do we stop?" - Sean Hannity March 24 1999 <!-- END TEMPLATE: bbcode_quote --><!-- BEGIN TEMPLATE: bbcode_quote -->Quote:"Sure Milosevic's a bad guy...but that doesn't mean we should go to war...He's an evil man. Horrible things are happening. I agree with that. Are you saying we go to Rwanda, Burundi, Somalia, Sudan? Where does this stop? And when you look at sheer numbers, 2000 - and I'm not minimizing death. Its horrible. What this man is doing with ethnic cleansing is abhorrent, but sheer numbers - 2000 killed in the last year versus hundreds of thousands, millions in some cases in other parts of the world. Are you saying the United States should go to all those places?" - Hannity on the O'Reilly factor April 5, 1999Sorry
"Why should one U.S. airman give up his life when our national security is not in imminent danger?" - Sean Hannity, March 24 1999
"Number one is the president has really failed to lay out before the American people the reason why we need to be involved militarily. That's number one. And then we go back to Harry Kissinger's test, which is number one, is there a vital U.S. national interest? And do we have a plan to disengage? What's the exit strategy? I don't see that we've met that test either. And why does it have to happen this second, this hour? Why don't we have a national debate first?" - Sean Hannity, March 24 1999
"But you know what? There's a lot of massacres going on in the world. As you know, 37,000 Kurds in Turkey, over a million people in Sudan. We have hundreds of thousands in Rwanda and Burundi. I mean, where do we stop?" - Sean Hannity March 24 1999
"Sure Milosevic's a bad guy...but that doesn't mean we should go to war...He's an evil man. Horrible things are happening. I agree with that. Are you saying we go to Rwanda, Burundi, Somalia, Sudan? Where does this stop? And when you look at sheer numbers, 2000 - and I'm not minimizing death. Its horrible. What this man is doing with ethnic cleansing is abhorrent, but sheer numbers - 2000 killed in the last year versus hundreds of thousands, millions in some cases in other parts of the world. Are you saying the United States should go to all those places?" - Hannity on the O'Reilly factor April 5, 1999
Nice work. Keep it up.
BTW, where'd you get this stuff?
Google sean hannity hypocrite
Sorry
Google sean hannity qoutes
On Hannity and Colmes , it looks like Hannity is sitting on a highchair compared to other guests and Colmes. If this is true, he is a bigger jerk than I had imagined. That plus he is always throwing cheap, petty digs at Colmes and liberals whenever he gets a chance.
If you had your frontal lobes removed, THEN you could imagine the depths of his madness. He is a stain on the boxers of life.
I've said this before, but Hannity doesn't seem to be the sharpest knife in the drawer. He's a typical pretty face that the media often puts on TV to read the teleprompter...he just happens to be reading Karl Rove's talking points instead of the weather report. As someone pointed out earlier, at least Rush Limbaugh throws in an original thought between lies. Hannity is just a Talking Points Robot.
Of course, it's all about a candidate's "electability", the oxymoron that you should vote for someone "because they'll win", and you have to at least wrest the vicarious satisfaction from a moot event, of obtuse selection, having absoutely no relationship to yourself.
Otherwise you'll be depriving yourself of the only tangible thing you stand to gain from paying any attention to obtuse selection in the first place: bragging rights. It's considered impolite to press the point beyond those sufficiencies accorded in all politeness, after that it's the bum's rush. The student body officers always know the right thing to say and when their patience is no longer required.