Fox News Sunday is latest program to call Iraq invasion proponents "critics" of the war
During an August 5 interview on Fox Broadcasting Co.'s Fox News Sunday with Brookings Institution scholars Michael O'Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack, authors of a July 30 New York Times op-ed that argued in favor of continuing the Bush administration's Iraq war escalation "at least into 2008," host Chris Wallace introduced O'Hanlon and Pollack as "two critics of the way the Bush administration has conducted the war." But, as Media Matters for America has noted, both were influential proponents of the Iraq war before the invasion, and O'Hanlon wrote a column in support of President Bush's troop escalation, as Media Matters has also documented.
O'Hanlon wrote that, while "[c]ritics rightly argue that it may well be too little, way too late" for a troop increase, "for a skeptical Congress and nation, it is still the right thing to try -- as long as we do not count on it succeeding and we start working on backup plans even as we grant Bush his request." O'Hanlon added: "However mediocre its prospects, each main element of the president's plan has some logic behind it." O'Hanlon further argued that "the president wants to move in the right direction on economic reconstruction" and that he "is rightly telegraphing to Iraqi leaders that they must reach compromises with each other." O'Hanlon concluded that "for now, Congress should also give the president the money and support that he requests."
This is not the first time a Fox News host has asserted that O'Hanlon and Pollack were Iraq war critics who have now become more supportive of the war without noting their early support of the Iraq war or O'Hanlon's January 14 column. As Media Matters documented, during the July 30 broadcast of Fox News' Special Report, host and Fox News Washington managing editor Brit Hume described the two as "[a] pair of longtime opponents of President Bush's policies in Iraq."
From the August 5 edition of Fox Broadcasting Co.'s Fox News Sunday:
WALLACE: This week, there was an op-ed column called "A War We Just Might Win" that said the U.S. troop surge is creating significant changes on the ground in Iraq. What made it noteworthy was who wrote it -- two critics of the way the Bush administration has conducted the war, Kenneth Pollack and Michael O'Hanlon from the generally liberal think tank the Brookings Institution. And gentlemen, welcome to Fox News Sunday. You're just back from eight days traveling all over Iraq. Ken, why don't you start? What did you see over there that led you to believe that this troop surge might actually work?
[...]
WALLACE: Which brings us to the bottom line of your article -- and let's put it up. "The surge cannot go on forever. But there is enough good happening on the battlefields of Iraq today that Congress should plan on sustaining the effort at least into 2008." Ken, you've got to know there are a lot of people in this town who don't want to hear that.
POLLACK: We've heard that very loudly from those people over the course of the last week. But, you know, the fact of the matter is that Mike and I are most interested in what's in the best interest of the country, and we're going to call things exactly as we see them, and we felt that it was important to say that, you know, we saw some progress over there.
[...]
WALLACE: Here's what you wrote: "Iraqi politicians of all stripes continue to dawdle and maneuver for position against one another when major steps towards reconciliation -- or at least accommodation -- are needed." Michael, do you see any signs that the Maliki -- Prime Minister [Nouri Kamal al-] Maliki and the Parliament are getting their act together and absent serious moves towards national reconciliation, does the surge make sense?
Well there is nothing like FOX News to lead the way in an era of misinformation and revision of recent American History. To me Wallace has become as much a GOP talking point as Hume, BO and Hannity.
Still, O'Halon and Pollack are getting a lot of screen time as supposed war critics, who now see good things there. I'm getting lost in the smoke screens, but clear on the base errors involved. These guys are part of those errors and not to be trusted.
They're obviousely blowing with the winds of popularity. Opportunist's is the word that comes to mind.
You've just seen Gen. Petraeus's report. That's how it's gonna play: It'll wear the same thin patina of positivivity* that these guys spew and be used to bludgeon real war critics into silence, or cause them to be silenced by being ignored by the MSM in favor of these types of "doves."
*I know, probably not a word, but if not, it should still stand, not only for the alliteration but also for the falseness of it, just like the "positive results" now being yielded in Iraq. 3,644 U.S. soldiers and who knows how many Iraqi civilians now dead from this crap.
The word "positivity" is used in science, even if not yet accepted for general use by Webster. It's synonymous with "positiveness."
Another unseen benefit...
I can't wait to hear one of these revisionist regurgitators offer more proof of how things have improved over there by citing the decrease in the number of accidental electrocutions.
Just call them all, in 72-pt headlines, "Iraq War Flip-Flop-Flippers". That will differentiate them from all those who had second thoughts, and began to regret the illegal invasion. These guys and all the others who supported that invasion, and supported that surge, but "wish bungle had done it differently", are our enemy just as much as the insurgents in Iraq, for without these guys, we wouldn't be there, and life would be better for at least (3650 + 16,500) of us, perhaps a million or more Iraqis. We would also still have the $ trillion or so Bungle has squandered on the invasion. Oh, and we might have caught up with bin Laden.
BTW, those figures may now be out of date, since I am so depressed about this mess that I cannot bear to look up the most recent available.
For all the great progress Pollack and O'Hanlon failed to note that they were escorted by the US military. The sites that they saw this "progress" was picked out by the US military.
These people are pathological liars. They wouldn’t know the truth if it bit them in the a**.
The Joints Chiefs Chairman nominee Admiral Michael Mullen said that political progress by the Iraqis is a must and barring that, no amount of troops in no amount of time will make the difference. And yet the Iraqis government has taken the month of August off. No progress will be made except the killing of more American soldiers. Today the people in Iraq have no power, clean water or sanitation but the Iraqis government is on vacation for the month of August.
Shame on all those who want to continue allowing the deaths of Americans just to save the political skin of a few.
Critics? Pollack and O'Hanlon are war critics? These guys are like two dogs sniffing each other's tail, and that qualifies them as a critic? What do they get called if they start humping your leg?
"What do they get called if they start humping your leg?" -Snoopy
um....switch to repuglican mode.......
Patriots?
Chris Wallace introduced O'Hanlon and Pollack as "two critics of the way the Bush administration has conducted the war."
There is nothing wrong with the way in which Wallace introduces these two Brookings scholars. Wallace never states (nor implies) that O'Hanlon and Pollack were opposed to the original military action in Iraq. Rather, the introduction correctly states that the authors of the NYT op/ed piece have been CRITICAL of the Bush admins miserable handling of the war.
I'll have to call this one for Fox news -
By leaving off relevant and material information, Fox News provides inaccurate information that does not allow the viewer to have a complete picture of the position of those two men.
Let's say that a person who disagreed with the invasion as well as the way the occupation has been handled (a critic of the way the war has been waged, just like these two guys) now said that they had visited Iraq and seen enough military progess that they thought the surge should continue. That would have much greater import to most people, and would have entirely different meaning than when it comes from these two guys who both believed in the initial mission.
Leaving off the support of the invasion in describing these two men deceives the audience.
Go read the MMfA mission statement. Leaving off that info about these two men leads to unreliable and misleading conclusions. That forwards the conservative agenda, and that's wrong for a news organization to do!
Although Wallace did describe them thus, I got the clear impression that they wanted 90 % to think they were antiwar. The entire idea that their arriving at such an opinion is "news" suggests this. What is the news story if they are prowar but felt that the tactics were wrong then when the tactics change they see progress. Why would thius sequence of events be news worthy? While FOX didnt lie they clearly were trying to create a false impression. Antiwar critics now see the light. Complete curve ball.
what drives me nuts is that when we pull out, as we eventually will, and when Iraq dissolves into an even more-desperate hellhole, as it inevitably will, people on the right will blame those on the left for not trying hard enough to "win the war." It won't occur to them to blame the idiots who got us into this in the first place.
It's just Vietnam all over again, and has been from the start.
You are probably right. If you'll notice, the troglodytes have done a masterful job of keeping "how we got there" off the table. Congress is not investigating it, as far as I know, and it rarely even comes up on the Cable TV talk shows any more. The only place I hear anything about it any more is on Liberal talk radio, and on the Liberal blogs.
In other words, it's off the radar screen of the MSM, and the Bush Junta will probably get away with what may be the biggest War Crime in U.S. history.
Vietnam is not really an accurate analogy, more like Cromwell in Ireland, an invasion that led to hundreds of years of animosity and sectrarian bloodshed.
Accordig to Fox News, O'Hanlon and Pollack are Iraq war critics. Nothing that comes out of this "news" network surprises me.
This network and the chast of characters on it have become the laughing stock of news organizations. I can see why people leave this network. It will never change as long as Roger Ailes is in charge.
I can't wait for the day Ailes retires from this network.
Well they have been practicing with Armitage. Armitage is now almost described as antiwar. They will call anything any name they want. Truth is not an obstacle.
"The philospher Isaiah Berlin once said that the trouble with academics and commentators is that they care more about whether ideas are interesting than whether they are true"-NYT Michael Ignatieff
Disclaimer: This is in no way an endorsement of the the New York Times. They are what helped ME get into this mess in the first place. Yes, I bought all that carp about a calaphyte.
Another sunday fiasco , the soundbites on these programs make them irrelevant.
Hey, maybe they mean "critics"...as in "movie critics". They give Bush's optional war "two thumbs up".
Technically, calling these war whores war critics is acceptable. Like Siskel and Ebert (and what's his name) they can give a war the thumbs down or the thumbs up.
They've been consistently giving this war a thumbs up, but not telling us up what?
As a taxpayer, I fear that it is "Up yours".
I dunno, folks. I couldn’t find previous articles in the NYT written by these guys, but even the links cited in the MM intro to this thread seem to indicate that these two, at least through January of this year, thought the Iraq mission was failing. Moreover, all of their writings that I could find talk of a failed mission with poor prospects for improvement and mismanagement. Contrast that with their recent and highly publicized reassessment.
I watched the Chris Wallace interview on Sunday and both O’Hanlon and Pollack seemed quite comfortable with Wallace’s introductory characterization of them as “two critics of the way the Bush administration has conducted the war” - both in their expressions and lack of any sort of correction to this characterization.
If this is the best that MM has, then it looks as if there really is such a turnaround in the Iraq campaign, i.e. even adults on the left see a chance for success. Based on the consternation and outrage spewing from the fringe left (that would be most of you on this blog), one can only conclude that success in Iraq is a totally unacceptable message.
I guess I’ll have to withdraw my offer to hear odds on the Democrat controlled congress successfully terminating or modifying the original war powers given to Bush, or defunding the Iraq operations as well. Obviously, no one wants to take me up on that.
Okay, how about the odds that, EVEN IF THE DEMOCRAT PARTY WINS BOTH CONGRESS AND THE WHITE HOUSE IN 2008, that they will get this done prior to 2010?
"Based on the consternation and outrage spewing from the fringe left (that would be most of you on this blog), one can only conclude that success in Iraq is a totally unacceptable message."--OldMarine
How stupid are you if that's the only thing "one can conclude"?
My consternation and outrage stems from the following: We've lost almost 4000 troops; Thousands more have been wounded--many permanantly; 10's of thousands of Iraqi's have been killed; We haven't caught or killed BinLaden; We pulled much our forces from Afghanistan to fight in Iraq, We were lied into the Iraq war; Abu Graihb; And your pissy attitude about the one's who have been correct every step of the way--WE ON THE FRINGE LEFT.
My consternation and outrage have NOTHING to do with success or failure. But you can keep hoping.
Well, actually, I conclude that from more than just what has been said in this thread. The Democrats in congress and in the federal bureaucracy continue to do everything in their power to sink the campaign in Iraq and the war in general: hamper intel collection efforts, release classified info to the press, poor-mouth the administration and our military continuously both to the U.S. media and overseas, drag their feet on needed funding, and try to micromanage the war effort. The reason is obvious: they deem political power more important than winning the war against the jihadists. If we are successful in Iraq or even Afghanistan for that matter, it diminishes their chances for victory in the ’08 elections.
Now that the good news is hard to suppress, they and their media buddies will soon be working hard to convey the impression that the success was due to their enlightened assistance in the legislative branch and by way of their statements to the media.
The troops you speak of are by and large motivated to win the campaign in Iraq as evidenced by the reenlistment rate of front line combatants and troop morale in general. You’re misinformed on the pulling out of troops from Afghanistan and the implication that Afghanistan has been short changed in terms of military attention. Don’t forget that NATO troops are also in Afghanistan.
No we were not lied to about the reasons for invading Iraq and you and I will probably never agree on all of the issues related to that assertion. This is the reason for my continued attempt to interest someone on your side of the political divide in the idea of stepping up to your assertion that the Democrats were voted into a congressional majority because of Iraq. If that is so, why can’t someone give me odds that the congressional Democrats will, in fact, live up to that “mandate” if it’s true? I’m even giving you until 2010 to do the job - and assuming even that the Democrat party wins both the congress and the presidency. What are the odds?"Well, actually, I conclude that from more than just what has been said in this thread."--OM
Please, show me any real evidence that any Democratic politician wants to us lose in Iraq. [I put the letters t, i,and c in bold to show you the proper use of the word. Example: He/she is a Democrat, they are honest members of the Democratic party. I don't know why you guys have such a problem with that. My guess is because Rush Limbaugh porposely misuses it that way, and I know how much you conservatives admire this draft dodging, three times divorced, womanizing, bigoted, college dropout, pedophile.]
"Now that the good news is hard to suppress..."--OM
Show me proof that Democrats are trying to supress good news. BETTER YET, show me some good news!
"... they and their media buddies will soon be working hard to convey the impression that the success was due to their enlightened assistance in the legislative branch and by way of their statements to the media."--OM
WOW! I got a look into the future, and I didn't even put a nickle in the slot.
"The troops you speak of are by and large motivated to win the campaign in Iraq as evidenced by the reenlistment rate of front line combatants and troop morale in general."--OM
Please provide a link to the reenlistment rate, otherwise I might think you're just making sh*t up.
"You’re misinformed on the pulling out of troops from Afghanistan and the implication that Afghanistan has been short changed in terms of military attention. Don’t forget that NATO troops are also in Afghanistan."--OM
Yeah, Afghanistan is short changed by the 130k to 160k that we have in Iraq. In fact, in my opinion (and it is just an opinion) we could effectively finish the job in Afghanistan with only 1/2 of the troops in Iraq. The other half could be on alert here at home to defend possible terrorist threats.
"No we were not lied to about the reasons for invading Iraq and you and I will probably never agree on all of the issues related to that assertion."--OM
Yes, we were. You and I won't agree, only because you choose to ignore the facts.
"...Democrats were voted into a congressional majority because of Iraq."--OM
I completely agree. I'm pissed plenty that my party has done very little to fix any of these problems. If and when they finally grab some balls I will stop calling, writing emails, and sending them letters. Until then, I continue to do what I can to hold their feet to the fire.
"If that is so, why can’t someone give me odds that the congressional Democrats will, in fact, live up to that “mandate” if it’s true? I’m even giving you until 2010 to do the job - and assuming even that the Democrat party wins both the congress and the presidency. What are the odds?"--OM
Let's play poker instead. 7 card stud, you get 7 I'll take 6, and I'll kick your butt. Then I'll give the money to your favorite charity. :-)
Oldmarine-- views like yours reduce the odds. I thought from the outset-- 2002 that we were being lied to about why the pres. wanted the war. I thought it was clear as could be that he wanted to invade for reasons not related to the reasons being stated. Lots and lots of evidence shows that to be the case. Downing Street memo, R. Clarke, Paul O"Niell, the carelessness of Armitage, Libby, Rove and Fleischer when the choice was intelligence secrets or the Iraq invasion. Do these independent indications that intelligence was manipulated to create the invasion mean zero. Open your eyes.
For an old marine, you don't seem to read the intel very good. 5 years pointless operations, with no endgame in sight, the war is not progressing favourably, key strategic points completely overlooked, a clueless general staff and a criminal government in command. That spells out one word....DEFEAT. If you can't read this in the overall sitrep....
Funny me being a civilian and understanding the military situation far better than the entire Pentagon. Guess our generals were asleep when the teachers was reading from the classics. But that's what happens when the officer corps is full of political martinets, chosen to head pork projects, who have no clue how to even prepare grand strategy.
I wanna be the Green defense minister. I'd have the Taliban done in three months, Iraq evac'd in 6, Afghanistan would be top priority. I'd slash the army into a lean cadre unit like the old Reichswehr, where every private was trained to be a officer in case of war. The Navy can live with four fleet carriers, not 12. The Marines would be reduced to a few battalions to man four light carrier/amphib groups, make them do humanitarian missions all the time to atone for Fallujah. I'd expand the National Guards and Reserves, introduce more ecletic and less euphamistic training, create more elite units, like ski troops and state rangers.
The overall strategy needs changed from conquest and empire to drastic belt tightening and internal reform. So sayeth the situation.
Ken Pollack's beef with Bush is that he hasn't delivered a Democratic Iraq--not that the whole thing was a bad idea in the first place. The guy was one of the most prominent cheerleaders for Shrub's war from day one. To call him a war critic is more than misleading--it is a lie. He disagrees only with the execution, not the plan.
Pollack was on NPR the other day, pushing his spin, and the first caller absolutely blasted him, calling him out on the fact that he was wrong about the whole war so far, and why the hell should he have any credibility on this issue.
That's my question: why do any of these people have any credibility? They are either liars or they are idiots. Either way...