Fox News' Garrett distorted Obama's debate comments on Wright, falsely claiming they contradicted his March speech
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SUMMARY: Fox News' Major Garrett falsely claimed that Sen. Barack Obama's comments about Rev. Jeremiah Wright made during the April 16 Democratic presidential debate were "in conflict with his speech on that very subject." But in purporting to contrast Obama's reference during the debate to "comments not made by me but somebody who is associated with me that I have disowned" with Obama's assertion during his March 18 speech that "I can no more disown [Wright] than I can disown the black community," Garrett left out the next two sentences said in the debate exchange during which Obama made clear that he was not claiming to have "disowned" Wright, but to have disowned "[t]he comments" Wright made.
On the April 17 edition of Fox News' Special Report, correspondent Major Garrett falsely claimed that during the previous evening's Democratic presidential debate, Sen. Barack Obama "gave yet another explanation" on Rev. Jeremiah Wright, former pastor of Obama's church, "one in conflict with his speech on that very subject." Garrett then aired a clip from the debate in which Obama said of the controversy surrounding Wright: "[T]he notion that somehow that the American people are going to be distracted once again by comments not made by me but somebody who is associated with me that I have disowned, I think doesn't give the American people enough credit." Garrett then purported to contrast that statement with Obama's assertion during his March 18 speech that "I can no more disown [Wright] than I can disown the black community." But Garrett left out the next two sentences said in the debate exchange, during which Obama made clear that he was not claiming to have "disowned" Wright, but to have disowned "[t]he comments." Immediately following the clip aired by Garrett, debate moderator George Stephanopoulos asked Obama, "You've disowned him?" to which Obama responded: "The comments, comments that I've disowned."
From the April 17 edition of Fox News' Special Report with Brit Hume:
GARRETT: On the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, Obama gave yet another explanation, one in conflict with his speech on that very subject.
OBAMA [video clip]: Yeah, the notion that somehow that the American people are going to be distracted once again by comments not made by me but somebody who is associated with me that I have disowned, I think doesn't give the American people enough credit.
GARRETT: Here's what Obama said about disowning Wright before.
OBAMA [video clip]: I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community.
From ABC News' April 16 Democratic presidential debate:
OBAMA: And, you know, the notion that somehow that the American people are going to be distracted once again by comments not made by me but somebody who is associated with me that I have disowned, I think doesn't give the American people enough credit.
STEPHANOPOULOS: You've disowned him?
OBAMA: The comments, comments that I've disowned. Then that is not something that I think --
STEPHANOPOULOS: But you do believe he's as patriotic as you are?
OBAMA: This is somebody who's a former Marine. And so, I have --I believe that he loves this country. But I also believe that he's somebody who, because of the experiences he's had over the course of a lifetime, is also angry about the injustices that he's seen.
Thanks, ABC! You amassed the sleazy, tabloid debate question fodder that Fox News was unable to score themselves via their own Democratic "debates."
Yep, that was the whole point of the line of questioning that the ABC guys did - getting those "gotcha" comments, that could be analyzed and used to find some slight difference in, compared to previous comments on the subject.
I hope the beating ABC takes for this will help for the better for the future debates between McCain and the Democratic nominee. I doubt it, but I hope.
Have Republicans "disowned" Trent Lott? Scooter Libby? Tom Delay?
Has John McCain "disowned" Jerry Falwell? Or John Hagee?
And what does this question posed by Stephanopoulos mean: But you do believe he's as patriotic as you are?
Are we now to grade everyone on a patriotism scale? This person is more patriotic than A but less patriotic than B?
Absolutely ridiculous...
Hold it right there... Am I reading you correctly? Are you saying John Ashcroft is more patriotic than Oliver North? I think we need Sean Hannity for a ruling on that one. ;>)
Well, John Ashcroft has a nicer singing voice than Ollie North, and he never sold weapons to the Contra rebels ....
Has Ashcroft ever killed anyone for his country?
Did any prisoners die at Gitmo during his watch?
Has Ashcroft ever killed anyone for his country?- IRONY 101
Not that I know of, not directly, but he at least went to war. Ashcroft sang a song about an eagle, which rates higher on the Jingometer®. Remember it doesn't read true patriotism, just the superficial display of it. More like a camera than an Xray.
I believe that he loves this country. But I also believe that he's somebody who, because of the experiences he's had over the course of a lifetime, is also angry about the injustices that he's seen.
This seems to be a concept that the Right is unable to grasp, that you can love your country and dissaprove of it at the same time. I guess they can't wrap their warped little brains around the fact that these are feelings are not mutually exclusive.
Yeah, reality isn't their friend either.
Reality tends to give neo-cons wedgies and put their pants up the flagpole.....
Its the new America.......
Claim to be more patriotic than the next guy....especially when you know you have been part and parcel to the selling off of America to Saudi Arabia and China......
And when you are called on it..... claim to be more patriotic than your accuser by wearing some piece of jewlery on your colar so that when that other guy doesn't do so, it proves he's less patriotic than you.....
Or claim that those that differ in your view of America are not patriotic at all because they don't see you as the next great leader.....
Or simply send out your paid-for political pundits and let them scurry about the notion that those that disagree with you aren't patriotic enough because they dare do what the founding fathers expected us to do!
STEPHANOPOULOS: But you do believe he's as patriotic as you are?
STEPHANOPOULOS should have his journalistic degree reassessed for adding the patriotism card. takes real balls to be a real patriot, just ask our forefathers. and stop dividing up the national intellect into patriots and not. That is stupid and not productive.
Just once in one of these debates I'd love to see someone ask the interrogator: Exactly how are you defining patriotism?
Perhaps in the future, if this keeps up, every American will be issued a patriotism score. Just amazingly asinine...
Just once in one of these debates I'd love to see someone ask the interrogator: Exactly how are you defining patriotism?
It looks like they're defining "patriotism" as toeing the GOP party line - and if you're not with us, yer agin us.
Wolf, I guess the sarcasm in my statement wasnt obvious enough, my bad. It was a joke.
We all know how much rightwingers REALLY appreciate the soldiers who fought for the US. The direct attacks on the military records of John Kerry showed that once and for all.
fawlty,
Had Kerry not abandoned his brother's and arms and called them murderers, torturers, and criminals when testifying before Congress it might have been different.
And, for the record, I think he was quoting testimony from the "Winter Soldier" hearings, was he not? I think your beef is with those witnesses, not Kerry.
The "abandoned" can be interpreted two ways. When he left after four months or when he hurled those false accusations in that Senate hearing.
My beef is with Kerry. He helped set up the Winter Soldier hearings along with Al Hubbard, who btw, was a fraud. He purposely and knowingly libeled his comrade in arms. In other quotes he said the military was murdering 200,000 Vietnamese a year. Need I go on?
Need I go on? - anotheramerican
Nah, I think you're done.
Vietnamese civilian casualties during the conflict are estimated at 4 million. Given the higher quantity and exponentially greater lethality of US weapon munitions (both air and ground) it's a fair assumption that 75% of these were inflicted by us, but let's go with just half to be "fair and balanced".
Now we're down to "just" 2 million. Hmmm..I'm just a knuckledragging squid but when I divide that by the 9 years from Gulf of Tonkin to the Paris Accords I get a number that's greater than 200,000 per year. The majority of these casualties weren't deliberately targeted, so "murder" may be a strong word - maybe if they weren't brown people who talked funny we'd have an easier time with it.
To coin a phrase, "oops". Kerry's Congressional testimony in April 1971 contained zero references to murderers, torturers, and criminals. The acts of which he spoke were related by over honorably discharged and decorated 150 veterans during that year's "Winter Soldier" investigation. Interestingly, the only persons Kerry did condemn in his remarks were leaders who deserted their troops - kind of like the "leaders" we have now. McCain still says he "hasn't had time" to read the proposed legislation revamping the GI Bill and evidently has no issues with a 100-year stop-loss program.
Also, a recently declassified Pentagon report from the same period details 320 alleged incidents that were substantiated by Army investigators — not including My Lai in 1968. However, they did include 7 massacres from 1967 through 1971 in which at least 137 civilians died, 78 other attacks on noncombatants in which at least 57 were killed, and 141 instances in which U.S. soldiers tortured civilian detainees or prisoners of war with fists, sticks, bats, water or electric shock. I only visited the Pentagon once (fortunately) during my own military service, but I'm pretty sure that they don't have an "Office of Marxist Propaganda" there.
Painful as it is to admit, this stuff really happened and judging by Abu Ghraib, never went away. Like Kerry, we don't place the ultimate responsibility on the troops (although it is every servicemember's obligation to question an unlawful orfer). We blame the suits in charge.
This is probably why no LEGITIMATE veterans' group like the VFW or American Legion ever came out against Kerry. It was a calculated smear job, plain and simple.
Thank you, Spartacus.
Any english teachers out there care to evaluate the statement for whether, grammatically, Obama was referring to Wright or the comments by the way he structured his sentence?
If the above sentence is correct, he was definitely referring to his comments in the first statement. Steffie immediately spun it, so Obama had to clarify, but the first sentence, by all accounts, is referring to his comments alone.
Either way, IT DOESN'T F***ING MATTER (not yelling at you specifically ;))
"Yeah, the notion that somehow that the American people are going to be distracted once again by comments not made by me but somebody who is associated with me that I have disowned, I think doesn't give the American people enough credit."
Add a couple of commas, and the meaning could change:
"Yeah, the notion that somehow that the American people are going to be distracted once again by comments, not made by me but somebody who is associated with me, that I have disowned, I think doesn't give the American people enough credit."
It might have been more clear had he said:
"Yeah, the notion that somehow that the American people are going to be distracted once again by comments that I have disowned, not made by me but somebody who is associated with me , I think doesn't give the American people enough credit."
In the end, it's really not all that important. It's a bogus issue.
Case closed.
Obama simply chose not to participate in this Jingoist charade, and I applaud his courage for taking a stand against these fascists.
It's also interesting to note that all the pricks who are questioning his patriotism are also NOT wearing label pins. How absurd is this?
How absurd is this?
About as absurd as the notion that a person must wear a flag pin to demonstrate patriotism.
Or the person has to wear pink thongs instead of underwear and hang out in bathroom stalls looking for a chance to drive while in public he denounces homosexuality and calls for it's eradication from the face of the earth.
Oops, I used my outside voice again, didn't I?
Nerz, I totally agree, I have yet to see one of these media crazyfaces wearing a lapel pin...The only people who still wear them are the GOP in congress who insist on this false sense of patriotism.
What's really sad is "let's talk about the issues" has become this buzz phrase that rings hollow in the noise of the sheer idiocy in today's media. It's like it goes in their ear, bounces around the empty space, latte foam and failed political aspirations, and oozes out the other side without ever sticking.
They're pushing silly crap like this as far as they can, risking embarrassment, just to see what kind of crap their sycophantic audience will swallow. Rush LImbaugh does it all the time.
Here we have these self-righteous blowhards, not wearing flag pins, berating Obama for.....not wearing a flag pin. I must grudgingly admire their audacity.
I don't see what it has to do with Zulu, which depicted events at Roark's Drift. I guess it got a lot of play because there were survivors and many were awarded the VC.
Personally, I preferred Zulu Dawn, the prequel which related events at Isandlwana that unfolded the day before the battle began at Roark's Drift.
I had occasion to speak with a friend the other night who travelled to South Africa and spent a night near both places and was able to tour the battlefields.
"When context defeats your lies, eliminate it and continue lying."
- quoted from the Fox News memo NEVER Let Facts Get in Your Way
Randy
Cliff Claven (sic), is that you?
obama osama always defends the reverend ...rumple
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Thanks, once again, for proving beyond a reeasonable
doubt that you are a complete idiot!! :)