McCarthy: Obama not a Muslim, but he has "Islamist sympathies"

Book jacket: Obama's "Islamist sympathies run deep." From the dust jacket of McCarthy's book:

In The Grand Jihad: How Islam and the Left Sabotage America, bestselling author Andrew C. McCarthy provides a harrowing account of how the global Islamist movement's jihad involves far more than terrorist attacks, and how it has found the ideal partner in President Barack Obama, whose Islamist sympathies run deep.

McCarthy: "[N]o reason to doubt" Obama's profession that he is a Christian, but his "faith" is "neocommunism." From The Grand Jihad:

[T]he president's Islamic heritage is deeply rooted. As we shall see, to the extent Obama had a religious faith in his formative years, it was Islam. That doesn't make him a Muslim, much less the Muslim "Manchurian candidate" of anti-Obama paranoia. There is no record of his ever having professed Islam as an adult (profession of the faith being the first pillar of Islam). While much about Obama remains a mystery -- despite the 850 pages' worth of autobiography and policy prescriptions he had published by the age of forty-five - the religion he publicly professes is Christianity, and there is no reason to doubt him on that score.

No reason because his formal religion is nearly irrelevant. The faith to which Obama actually clings is neocommunism. It is a leftism of the most insidious kind: secular and uncompromising in its rejection of bourgeois values, but feverishly spiritual in its zeal to tear down the existing order, under the banner of its all-purpose rally-cry: "social justice." [pages 11-12]

McCarthy: Obama "seem[s] ... disposed" to "advance the cause of Islam in the world." McCarthy wrote:

Finally, there are the Islamists -- those hundreds of millions of Muslims who take their sharia quite seriously but, as we've seen, take it with varying degrees of nuance. Most of them believe that all humans, regardless of parentage, are called to Islam at birth. The question for them is whether, as an intellectual matter, a person affirms or rejects this call. Such Muslims are apt to see in Obama a man who, while never clearly affirming the call, has never really rejected it either. To the contrary, they see a man who not only has been solicitous of Muslim concerns but wants very much to be understood as being solicitous of Muslim concerns. These legions of Muslims are also apt to see Obama as a very powerful and useful man: A man in a position, if so disposed, to advance the cause of Islam in the world.

He certainly does seem so disposed. [page 212]

McCarthy: Like Islamists, Obama does not like "America as it is," his agenda "jibes perfectly with the Islamist scheme to destroy America from within." McCarthy wrote:

Obama professes a love for this country. So does many an Islamist. What they love, however, is a vision of America, not America as it is: E Pluribus Unum -- the Many who are transformed into One by freedom, not ideology. For the president as for the Islamists, the object of their affection is not our Unum, the glorious inheritance we pluribus cherish through generations past, present, and (one prays) future. That Unum earns only their disdain.

Move through Obama's career as a community organizer, his embrace of ACORN, his radical associations: the common denominator is a purpose to break down the Unum at its foundations, what he calls the "grass roots." For America, he plans an atom bomb. Or, to be precise, an atoms bomb: countless communities in cities and towns across the land, organized along Saul Alinsky's brand of Marxism, into socialist enclaves. It fits hand in glove with Yusuf Qaradawi's voluntary apartheid, the enclave strategy of the Muslim Brotherhood. Each atom smothers the individual freedom and enterprise that have defined the American character, replacing them with welfare states that prize dysfunction and reward the rabble-rousers.

To be sure, there is an Unum that Obama sees. It is in his mind's eye -- clearer on the horizon now than when he began his project twenty-five years ago. It will arrive when the atoms reach critical mass and finally devour the hollowing carcass of our present society. This, too, jibes perfectly with the Islamist scheme to destroy America from within, the Grand Jihad. [pages 225-226, emphasis in original]

McCarthy obsesses over alleged "bowing," Obama's middle name

McCarthy: Obama "bowed" to Saudi leader to honor their "shared dream" of Islam. McCarthy began his book by referencing an alleged bow by Obama toward a world leader, a regular focus of right-wing commentators:

And so he bowed.

Barack Hussein Obama swept into the royal reception hall. With the election won and power assumed, it was suddenly all right to hype "Hussein" again, and the new president had adjusted accordingly. All successful politicians are manipulators of language, of course, but even masters of the game had to marvel at Obama's prowess. This wasn't just the routine squaring of "equal protection" with "affirmative action" or transforming "abortion" into "choice." This guy had actually managed to morph his own name from calling card to epithet and back in nothing flat, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. Which, for him, it was. No wonder that even here, in Buckingham Palace, he was the center of rapt attention, as he had been for each of the seventy-two days since his inauguration. In fact, it had been this way ever since his improbable run caught fire two years before.

Suddenly his purposeful strut came to a halt. Then it happened, for all to see.

The 44th President of the United States of America bowed deeply, reverentially, before King Abdullah bin Abdul Azziz, Keeper of the Two Holy Mosques, the absolute monarch of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

[...]

What could Obama have been thinking instead? That there was an American presidency owed to sheer defiance of this majestic setting. That there was a United States owed to America's exceptionalism - the historically unique determination, forged in the blood of patriots, to refuse submission to a tyrannical power. This history is the steel in America's backbone. It is why United States presidents look foreign royalty straight in the eye, with a dignity befitting leadership of the world's most powerful, most munificent, most freedom-loving nation. They don't bow.

Obama had seemed to grasp that ... at least when it came to the United Kingdom, that bastion of Western imperialism so reviled by his Kenyan Marxist forebears.

[...]

So, of all the planet's potentates, why would an American president demean his station in homage to this one? Because Saudi Arabia is the cradle of Islam. More specifically, it is the bottomless purse and symbolic crown of a movement which aims at nothing less than supplanting Western political, economic, and cultural values. The subversion of those values is Obama's fondest wish: the work of his presidency, the Hope behind the Change. The president was bowing to a shared dream. [pages 1-2, 4-5]

McCarthy: Obama "deployed" middle name as "code" to "antiwar leftists in America and their Islamist allies." Echoing another right-wing obsession from the 2008 presidential campaign, McCarthy focused on Obama's middle name, asserting that Obama "deployed" it as part of a "code" to "antiwar leftists in America and their Islamist allies." McCarthy also suggested that Obama was "intentionally evoking images of Islam's Prophet," Mohammed, when Obama told PBS, "I am the messenger who can deliver that message." From Grand Jihad:

Long before humbling himself to Abdullah, Barack Obama had signaled his intention to steer the United States toward submission and appeasement. This was back in October 2007, the heady days before the Democrats' nomination battle intensified and invocations of Obama's middle name by political adversaries ignited fusillades of media indignation. The candidate grew downright whimsical when he told PBS,

Well, I think if you've got a guy named Barack Hussein Obama, that's a pretty good contrast to George W. Bush. ... If you believe that we've got to heal America and we've got to repair our standing in the world, then I think my supporters believe that I am the messenger who can deliver that message.

Such beliefs were indeed shared by Obama's acolytes, to whose ears the incantation "Barack Hussein Obama" was music. This progressive vanguard ached for the antidote to "Bushitler" and his "war on Islam" -- a.k.a. the "war on terror" or what, in Obama parlance, is now called the "overseas contingency operation."

[...]

"I am the messenger who can deliver that message," the candidate had told PBS. Would anyone seriously believe that believe that Obama, a deft communicator and no stranger to celestial imagery, was not intentionally evoking images of Islam's Prophet in remarks fashioned for Islamic consumption? For Muslims, after all, Mohammed is the "excellent model of conduct" who ceaselessly announced himself as "the messenger" -- the last in a line of "messengers," including Moses and Jesus, sent by Allah to call mankind to the one true faith. For argument's sake, though, let's pretend this thought never crossed Obama's mind. There can still be no denying that the candidate was seeking to highlight the incandescent power of his middle name, "Hussein." It is, after all, a name straight out of Islam's glorious lore. Hussein, Mohammed's grandson, was a central figure in the triumphant campaigns of the Islam's original "rightly guided" caliphs. His is among the most common names in the Muslim world.

As Obama deployed it, Hussein was not merely a name. It was a cipher. The sleepy American press would not break the code, but antiwar leftists in America and their Islamist allies worldwide instantly got the message. For those dreaming jointly and hungrily for the anti-Bush, Obama was offering an overture of empathy, of like-mindedness. They would seize on Obama's ties to Islam, and the "hope" those ties portended for undermining the last remaining superpower, the object of their mutual disdain. [pages 8-9, 10; emphasis in original]

McCarthy: Obama "flaunt[ed] his Muslim roots" in interview as "fitting warm-up act" for bow to Saudi king. Describing Obama's interview with the Arabic TV network al-Arabiya, McCarthy wrote:

The president also used his first interview to flaunt his Muslim roots. It was another reversal for Obama: he'd initially played up his heritage as a post-American calling-card; then -- once it was clear that America wasn't quite ready to ride off into the sunset -- he bridled at the mere mention of his middle initial. But now he changed his tune again: "I have Muslim members of my family," Obama now exclaimed. "I have lived in Muslim countries."

It was a fitting warm-up act for his prostration before the Saudi king at Buckingham Palace. [pages 241-242]

McCarthy repeats discredited smears of Obama

McCarthy on Pakistan visit: "Was Obama a citizen of an Islamic country?" McCarthy wrote that Obama visited Pakistan in 1981 "during the height of Pakistan's Islamicization under the martial law imposed by General Zia ul-Haq," adding, "While there was not a categorical ban, there was a State Department advisory against Americans traveling to Pakistan." McCarthy continued:

Of all places, why would Obama travel to Pakistan at that time? And how did he enter the country? Did he use an American passport to enter a police state in which it was dangerous for Americans? If not, did he have travel documents from another country -- which would raise the question also posed by his Indonesian years: Was Obama the citizen of an Islamic country? Those questions weren't pursued. [page 208]

In fact, NY Times, State Dept. gave instructions in 1981 on how to enter Pakistan. A June 1981 New York Times article stated that "Tourists can obtain a free, 30-day visa (necessary for Americans)" to enter Pakistan "at border crossings and airports." Further, an August 1981 State Department travel advisory explained how Americans could obtain visas for visiting Pakistan.

McCarthy falsely claimed that Obama "lamented" Warren Court didn't address "redistribution of wealth." McCarthy wrote:

The Warren Court "wasn't that radical" after all. Barack Obama, now a state legislator in Illinois, was giving an interview to Chicago Public Radio in 2001. Sure, the Supreme Court justices who held sway in the Sixties and Seventies had invented abortion rights under the rubric of "privacy," forged a revolution in the rights of criminals against the society on which they preyed, and put down the markers for today's imperial judiciary. In the end, though, they'd flinched. They had failed, Obama lamented, to confront "the issues of redistribution of wealth, and of more basic issues such as political and economic justice in society."

[...]

By 2001, as he eyed national office, Obama put on mainstream airs. He couched his radicalism in soothing euphemisms like "economic justice." This is the finance angle of "social justice," the idée fixe of Obama and his coven of Change-agents. Such Leftists give the Warren Court high marks on non-economic "progress," but flunk the justices on redistribution: the purported right of society's ne'er-do-wells to pick the pockets of its achievers through the coercive power of government. As Obama sees it, the Warren Court failed to "break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the founding fathers in the Constitution." Instead, the justices clung to the hoary construction of the Constitution as "a charter of negative liberties": one that says only what government "can't do to you." Obama explained that real economic justice demands the positive case: what government "must do on your behalf" (emphasis added).

This philosophy is a reprise of what Jonah Goldberg elegantly calls the "apotheosis of liberal aspirations." [pages 221, 222]

In fact, Obama was saying that Warren Court wasn't as radical as some have claimed. In the 2001 interview on Chicago radio station WBEZ, Obama did not "lament" that the Supreme Court under Chief Justice Earl Warren did not address "redistribution of wealth"; rather, he was explaining that the fact it didn't do so is evidence the court "wasn't that radical." From the interview:

OBAMA: I mean, I think that, you know, if you look at the victories and failures of the civil rights movement and its litigation strategy in the court, I think where it succeeded was to vest formal rights in previously dispossessed peoples so that I would now have the right to vote, I would now be able to sit at the lunch counter and order in, as long as I could pay for it, I'd be OK. But the Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth and sort of more basic issues of political and economic justice in this society.

And, to that extent, as radical as I think people try to characterize the Warren Court, it wasn't that radical. It didn't break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution, at least as it's been interpreted, and Warren Court interpreted it in the same way that, generally, the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties -- says what the states can't do to you, says what the federal government can't do to you, but it doesn't say what the federal government or the state government must do on your behalf, and that hasn't shifted.

Obama went on to say that the court is "just not very good" at addressing redistributive issues. Contrary to McCarthy's suggestion that Obama wanted the Court to address "redistribution of wealth," Obama said later in the same interview that he was "not optimistic about bringing about major redistributive change through the courts, adding that "the court's just not very good at it, and politically, it's just -- it's very hard to legitimize opinions from the court in that regard." From the interview:

OBAMA: You know, maybe I'm showing my bias here as a legislator as well as a law professor, but, you know, I'm not optimistic about bringing about major redistributive change through the courts. You know, the institution just isn't structured that way.

You know, you just said -- look at very rare examples wherein, during the desegregation era, the court was willing to, for example, order, you know, changes that cost money to a local school district. And the court was very uncomfortable with it. It was hard to manage, it was hard to figure out. You start getting into all sorts of separation of powers issues, you know, in terms of the court monitoring or engaging in a process that essentially is administrative and takes a lot of time.

You know, the court's just not very good at it, and politically, it's just -- it's very hard to legitimize opinions from the court in that regard. So, I mean, I think that, although, you can craft theoretical justifications for it legally -- you know, I think you can, any three of us sitting here could come up with a rationale for bringing about economic change through the courts -- I think that, as a practical matter, our institutions just are poorly equipped to do it

McCarthy falsely claimed Obama judicial nominee "barred state legislators from uttering the name of Jesus Christ," approved "the name of Allah." Repeating attacks by other conservatives, McCarthy wrote that Obama's "very first judicial nominee to the all-important federal appellate courts was the Leftist jurist David F. Hamilton," who once "infamously ruled that the First Amendment's Establishment Clause barred state legislators from uttering the name of Jesus Christ in any invocations ... but that referring to the name of Allah was fine" [page 350].

Hamilton struck down "sectarian" prayer in Indiana legislature, noted that "Allah" can be used in non-sectarian way. Using Supreme Court precedent, Hamilton ruled in Anthony Hinrichs, et al. v. Brian Bosma that prayer in the Indiana House of Representatives "should refrain from using Christ's name or title or any other denominational appeal" and that such prayer "must be nonsectarian and must not be used to proselytize or advance any one faith or belief or to disparage any other faith or belief." Hamilton wrote that the "sectarian content of the substantial majority of official prayers in the Indiana House therefore takes the prayers outside the safe harbor the Supreme Court recognized for inclusive, non-sectarian legislative prayers in Marsh v. Chambers, 463 U.S. 783 (1983)." In a post-judgment motion, Hamilton wrote that "[t]he Arabic word 'Allah' is used for 'God' in Arabic translations of Jewish and Christian scriptures" and that "[i]f those offering prayers in the Indiana House of Representatives choose to use the Arabic Allah, the Spanish Dios, the German Gott, the French Dieu, the Swedish Gud, the Greek Theos, the Hebrew Elohim, the Italian Dio, or any other language's terms in addressing the God who is the focus of the non-sectarian prayers contemplated in Marsh v. Chambers, the court sees little risk that the choice of language would advance a particular religion or disparage others." He continued: "If and when the prayer practices in the Indiana House of Representatives ever seem to be advancing Islam, an appropriate party can bring the problem to the attention of this or another court."

McCarthy pushed debunked claim that Obama campaigned for Kenyan candidate

PolitiFact: "no evidence to indicate that Obama 'openly supported' Odinga." As Media Matters previously documented, Chapter 13 of The Grand Jihad is built around the debunked claim that Obama, during a 2006 visit to Kenya as a senator, campaigned for presidential candidate Raila Odinga. PolitiFact.com found "no evidence to indicate that Obama 'openly supported' Odinga." McCarthy also claimed that Obama's purported campaigning and his criticism of Kenyan corruption during his trip violated the Logan Act; in fact, a Congressional Research Service report stated that the Logan Act is designed to "prohibit unauthorized persons from intervening in disputes between the United States and foreign governments," and that no one has been prosecuted under it in its more than 200 years of existence.

NY Times classifies Ingraham's book as "nonfiction" while describing it as "a satirical fictional journal"

NY Times contradicts its own classification of The Obama Diaries as "nonfiction." On July 23, Laura Ingraham's The Obama Diaries debuted as number one on The New York Times' list of bestselling hardcover nonfiction; this week, it fell to second behind Justin Halpern's ---- My Dad Says. Despite classifying the book as "nonfiction," the Times describes it as a "satirical fictional journal with commentary, by the conservative political commentator."

Ingraham acknowledges her book is partly a "fictional account" of Obama's presidency. ;In the final section of the book, Ingraham admits that it is at least partly a work of fiction. From The Obama Diaries:

This book was designed to open your eyes to the true agenda and motives of Team Obama. For those of you who haven't gotten the joke yet, these diaries were my way of pulling back the curtain on Barack Obama's Theater of the Politically Absurd. My musings - raw and uncensored - are informed by actual events and, on many occasions, by the main characters' own words.

[...]        

What you do with the insights in this true and fictional account of the historic presidency of Barack Obama is up to you. [p. 350]

Ingraham's supposedly "nonfiction" commentary is filled with fictitious claims

Ingraham ignores economic realities to attack Obama on "the welfare state." On page 60, Ingraham claims "Obama's policies are disempowering the family...and leaving future generations holding the bag." Ingraham also claims that "As the economy contracted, President Obama did manage to grow one thing: the welfare state." Ingraham writes that "welfare programs like housing and food stamps will have increased a staggering 30 percent" during Obama's first two years in office. However, Ingraham fails to mention that the economy's "contract[ion]" predated Obama's presidency, and that the economy has actually improved under his administration. 

Ingraham misleads on DC voucher policy. On page 61, Ingraham claims "[t]he D.C. voucher program was a raging success, with 1,700 children participating each year." Ingraham accuses Obama of sitting "back while Congress defunded this program in 2009," and suggests that "[h]e would rather condemn poor children to failing schools than offend the teachers unions." But, according to the Department of Education's June report, there is "no conclusive evidence" that the program "affected student achievement overall," and "students themselves rated school satisfaction and safety the same whether they received a voucher or not."

Ingraham ignores context of Obama 2008 remarks on sexual health to attack his stance on abortion. On page 44, Ingraham repeats often-distorted quotes from then-Senator Obama's 2008 speech at a rally in Pennsylvania, attacking Obama for saying, "I've got two daughters -- nine years old and six years old. I am going to teach them first of all about values and morals. But if they make a mistake, I don't want them punished with a baby." Ingraham falsely suggests that Obama was discussing abortion, and comments: "Of all the deeply troubling remarks made by this president, there is none that I find more offensive or tragic than this one. It reveals President Obama's true feelings about human life and gives us a unique perspective into his notions of family."

Ingraham ignored the fact that Obama was reportedly responding to a question about "the issue of HIV and AIDS and also sexually transmitted diseases with young girls," and that he went on to say: "I don't want them punished with an STD at the age of 16. You know, so, it doesn't make sense to not give them information. You still want to teach them the morals and the values to make good decisions.

Ingraham repeats tired falsehood that health care reform legislation funds abortion. In her book, Ingraham writes that "Representative Stupak's House career was effectively ended by his decisions to break with his pro-life supporters - and his own pro-life rhetoric - by voting for a health-care bill that will use government funds to pay for abortions." [p. 344] As Media Matters has repeatedly documented, the claim that the health care reform bill funds elective abortions is false. The final bill forbade use of federal subsidies for abortion services except in cases allowed by the Hyde amendment.

Ingraham baselessly claims nuclear posture review "weakened our national security." Ingraham writes:

"In a staggering announcement on April 6, 2010, President Obama revamped U.S. nuclear policy and weakened our national security. CBS News reported that, for the first time, the United States had "limited the circumstances under which the U.S. would resort to nuclear weapons." This meant if a nonnuclear state were to attack America with a biological or chemical weapon, the United States would no longer consider a nuclear response." [p.297]

Media Matters previously noted that this policy applies only to "non-nuclear weapons states that are party to the NPT [Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty] and in compliance," and that "there remains a narrow range of contingencies in which U.S. nuclear weapons may still play a role in deterring a conventional or CBW attack," and that the United States reserves the right to adjust the policy. Additionally, nuclear experts and military brass rejected the notion that the review weakens America's national security.

Ingraham repeats old, discredited claim that DHS right-wing extremism report targeted "the Tea Party activists." In her book, Ingraham writes:

"To understand this particular Obama tactic against the Tea Party activists, we have to go back to April 9, 2009. That's when Obama's Department of Homeland Security issued a report titled "Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment." It was distributed to law enforcement officials all over the country. The report suggested that the Obama presidency had spurred a rise in activity among racist groups, hate groups, and antigovernment groups.

[...]

For those who might have missed it, the Obama administration had officially classified pro-lifers, anyone hostile to high taxes, veterans, and any citizen opposed to illegal immigration as 'right-wing extremists.' " [p. 306-307] 

As Media Matters repeatedly documented, while the DHS report addressed potential issues that could spur right-wing extremism, it did not allege that someone is an extremist simply because he or she holds conservative views.  Also, before it issued the memo on right-wing extremism, DHS released a memo on left-wing extremism, warning of the threat of increased cyber attacks. Nonetheless, many conservative media figures freaked out over the DHS report soon after it was issued.

Ingraham revives tired "death panel" falsehood. Purporting to represent Office of Management and Budget director Peter Orszag, Ingraham revives the long debunked falsehood that the health care reform bill contains "death panels." Ingraham purports to quote Orszag, writing: "We got the death panel through the door ...This is a killer panel! And I mean killer! Every financial model indicates that the only way to restore fiscal sanity to this country is for people to die." [p. 120]

Ingraham also recycles tired right-wing smears

Ingraham rehashes old attacks on Michelle Obama's patriotism. Ingraham rehashed old attacks on Michelle Obama, suggesting repeatedly that she is unpatriotic. On page 6, Ingraham writes: "Michelle and Barack Obama have a truly lamentable track record when it comes to celebrating America as the greatest country on the face of the earth." Ingraham baselessly speculated that it's "[p]robably because they don't believe it's true." Ingraham quotes Michelle Obama's February 2008 statement that "for the first time in my adult lifetime, I am really proud of my country," and asked "Can you imagine reaching the age or forty-four and never having been proud of your country?" Later, in Michelle Obama's "diary," Ingraham wrote "After I unpack Sasha's room, I've got to get dressed and go to some damn military thing. Just what I need today. All that flag-waving, hillbilly music, hand-on-the-heart crap." [p. 8]

Ingraham continues right-wing's attempt to psychologically "diagnose" Obama. In chapter eight, entitled "The Audacity of Narcissism," Ingraham continued the right-wing media's attempt to "diagnose" Obama:

There are certain traits of narcissistic personality that help physicians identify the condition. To be diagnosed with Narcissistic Personality Disorder, the patient must show signs of at least five of the eight criteria. Some mental health experts have suggested that Barack Obama may suffer from NPD. [p. 255] 

Ingraham invokes "apology tour." Revving another tired conservative claim, Ingraham labels Obama's foreign policy an "apology tour," consisting of "so many 'sorry' statements" that "many of us began to wonder whether Michael Moore had joined his speech-writing staff" [p. 221]. Ingraham also attributes the following quote to Russian Prime Minister Vladamir Putin: "I berated him about the many injustices my great country has suffered. And he lapped it up. I had him eating out of my hand ... if we could have had this president back in the 1980s, the Warsaw Pact would still be going strong." [p. 242].

Ingraham ridiculously suggests Obama sees Jeremiah Wright as "Jesus." Repeating a favorite attack from Sean Hannity's playbook, Ingraham writes: "Peter and Paul had Jesus to teach them 'in the flesh'; Obama had Jeremiah Wright." [p. 179]. Ingraham later wrote that when Obama delivers a stump speech, "[t]he measured staccato Obama of the exclusive interview vanishes, and out pops Obama the pastor," She concluded: "What you are hearing is the ghost of Jeremiah Wright." [p. 209].

Ingraham attacks Obama's family

Ingraham smears Obama's father as a "polygamist" who "has spread more seed than the Park Service on the South Lawn." After railing against the president for his "polygamist" father [p. 55] and "twisted" family tree [p. 56], Ingraham inserts a diary entry where Obama reflects, "I should write a multivolume book titled "Children from My Father." That man has spread more seed than the Park Service on the South Lawn." [p. 95]

Ingraham invokes crack cocaine with Marian Robinson. When caught by her daughter smuggling cookies into Sasha's room, Michelle Obama's mother, Marian Robinson laments in a fictitious journal entry, "You'd swear she had busted me with a crack pipe." [p. 51]

Ingraham aims a slew of attacks at Michelle Obama. Ingraham depicts the first lady as an angry woman who derides patriotism as "flag-waving, hillbilly music, hand-on-the-heart crap," [p. 8], and rants during her gardening project, "I'll be damned if all this fabulosity is going to waste reading Dr. Seuss to snot-nosed kids all day ... if we can scare up some poor kids to pick at the dirt, we could land the front cover of the New York Times. I'll be kind of a fashionable, toned, and tall Mother Teresa with a rake." [p. 86-7]

Matteo Gomez is an intern at Media Matters for America.

McCarthy attacks Obama for purportedly campaigning for "communist Luo" Odinga

McCarthy accuses Obama of "dangerous, destabilizing, disgraceful" campaigning for "candidate running in opposition to Nairobi's pro-American government." From McCarthy's book The Grand Jihad:

Barack Hussein Obama Jr. spent very little time in the United States Senate after his 2004 election. In a flash, he was eyeing the White House. All told, he spent about 140 days in attendance at congressional sessions -- at times, even seemingly confused about his committee assignments.

But he did make times to spend six days in Kenya. They were six days spent campaigning for the candidate running in opposition to Nairobi's pro-American government -- in outrageous contravention of U.S. policy and, probably, federal law. That opposition candidate was Raila Odinga, the communist Luo who was seeking the presidency, who agreed to impose sharia law in Kenya in order to win the support of Islamists, and who threw the country into murderous mayhem when his bid fell short. It was one of the most dangerous, destabilizing, disgraceful performances in the history of the U.S. Senate -- but you've probably never heard about it, because the Obamedia chose not to report it.

[...]

In the Washington Times, Mark Hyman reported that Odinga had visited Obama in the U.S. in 2004, 2005, and 2006, and that Obama had sent an adviser, Mark Lippert, to Kenya in early 2006 to plan a trip by the senator that summer, timed to coincide with Orange Democratic Party campaign activities. Obama followed through in August. For six days, he was nearly inseparable from Odinga as they barnstormed the countryside. [pages 213-214, 214-215]

PolitiFact: "No evidence" to campaign claim

Campaigning claim taken from Mark Hyman column described as "lies and innuendo." The source for McCarthy's claim that Obama campaigned with Odinga is an October 12, 2008, Washington Times column by Mark Hyman in which he asserted: "Mr. Odinga and Mr. Obama were nearly inseparable throughout Mr. Obama's six-day stay. The two traveled together throughout Kenya and Mr. Obama spoke on behalf of Mr. Odinga at numerous rallies." In an October 17, 2008, letter to the editor, J. Scott Gration, a retired Air Force major general who accompanied Obama on his trip, responded:

Mark Hyman's "Obama's Kenya ghosts," (Commentary, Sunday), was a disgraceful smear on Sen. Barack Obama. Because I accompanied Mr. Obama on his trip to Kenya, I can say unequivocally that Mr. Hyman's piece was filled with lies and innuendo.

• Mr. Obama's 2006 trip to Kenya was authorized by the Republican chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, who congratulated Mr. Obama on a successful trip when he returned.

• Mr. Obama did not "campaign" on behalf of Raila Odinga, has never endorsed him, and was not "nearly inseparable" from Mr. Odinga during his time in Kenya. Mr. Obama met with a wide range of Kenyan and American officials, including a Nobel Prize winner, human-rights defenders, and President Mwai Kibaki. He did not have a single scheduled meeting with Mr. Odinga.

[...]

Mr. Hyman's piece concludes with an astonishing attempt to tie Mr. Odinga, the sitting prime minister of Kenya, and, by absurd association, Mr. Obama to acts of terrorism committed against the United States of America. This false and outrageous charge says a lot more about Mark Hyman than it says about Barack Obama.

PolitiFact: "no evidence to indicate that Obama 'openly supported' Odinga." After Jerome Corsi made a similar assertion in his Obama smear book The Obama Nation that Obama "openly supported" Odinga during his visit, PolitiFact.com examined the claim:

What we can confirm is that Obama has remained neutral in Kenyan politics, and did not support Odinga during his trip. Odinga attended some of Obama's events while Obama was in Kenya, and clearly wanted to associate himself with Obama, but there is no evidence to indicate that Obama "openly supported" Odinga.

[...]

For this statement, we decided to scour the public record for evidence that Obama supported Odinga. We looked to contemporary accounts of the 2006 trip and found a transcript from an interview Obama gave to a Kenyan newspaper that directly contradicts Corsi's allegation.

Question: "As you prepared to travel to Kenya you were obviously conscious of two things. One was about being drawn into local politics. The other was the high expectations of what you could do for Kenya now that you are a senator. How did you handle both?"

Obama: "One of the things we try to do is meet with all parties. I met President Kibaki, I met Uhuru Kenyatta, I was with Raila Odinga. We met the government, met the opposition and met other groups such as human rights activists. What I try to do is give a consistent message on what I think U.S.-Kenya relations should be, but not to suggest somehow that I think one party is better than the other. That's for the Kenyan people to decide."

[...]

Corsi states that Obama "openly supported" Raila Odinga. We found public statements from Obama during the trip saying the exact opposite. We found no other evidence to support Corsi's statement, so we rate his statement False.

McCarthy baselessly accuses Obama of violating federal law

McCarthy: Obama's purported campaigning and criticism of Kenyan corruption violated Logan Act. McCarthy wrote that during his visit, "Obama pointedly criticized the [Mwai] Kibaki government for denying Kenyans' basic rights" and "accused the Kibaki government of rampant corruption," citing in particular "an interminable speech at the University of Nairobi that he provocatively entitled 'An Honest Government, A Hopeful Future' " [page 215]. McCarthy later added:

For Senator Obama -- he of the Tony Rezko real estate deal -- to scold such an ally as incorrigibly corrupt and to interfere in its internal politics was more than reckless. It was borderline criminal (and that's being generous). The Logan Act, which has been the law of the United States for two centuries, bars American who are "without authority of the United States" from conducting relations "with any foreign government ... in relation to any disputes or controversies with the United States, or to defeat the measures of the United States." Under our Constitution, the power to conduct foreign policy belongs to the president, not to individual members of Congress. Obama plainly did not have the "authority of the United States" to undermine our government's relations with an ally in a region where we badly need friends. [Page 216]

In 200 years, no prosecutions under Logan Act, which is intended to "prohibit unauthorized persons from intervening in disputes between the United States and foreign governments." The Logan Act, 18 U.S.C. § 953, states:

Any citizen of the United States, wherever he may be, who, without authority of the United States, directly or indirectly commences or carries on any correspondence or intercourse with any foreign government or any officer or agent thereof, in relation to any disputes or controversies with the United States, or to defeat the measures of the United States, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both.

This section shall not abridge the right of a citizen to apply, himself or his agent, to any foreign government or the agents thereof for redress of any injury which he may have sustained from such government or any of its agents or subjects.

A 2006 Congressional Research Service report on the history of the Logan Act states that it was enacted after a private citizen attempted to settle disputes between the U.S. and France without U.S. authorization. The CRS added, "There appear to have been no prosecutions under the Act in its more than 200 year history." CRS also noted that, regarding a 1975 instance of two senators visiting Cuba, a State Department statement found: "The clear intent of this provision ... is to prohibit unauthorized persons from intervening in disputes between the United States and foreign governments. Nothing in [the Logan Act], however, would appear to restrict members of the Congress from engaging in discussions with foreign officials in pursuance of their legislative duties under the Constitution."

McCarthy's accusations repeated by WorldNetDaily

In a July 15 article on McCarthy's book, WorldNetDaily repeated his assertion that "Obama campaigned for a pro-communist candidate running against Nairobi's pro-American government -- 'in outrageous contravention of U.S. policy and, probably, federal law.' " WND has claimed in other articles that Obama campaigned for Odinga, most recently in a July 19 article by Jerome Corsi.

INDEX:

Chafets: Limbaugh a "satirist," not a liar

Chafets: Limbaugh "is polite to his callers"

Alleging that media hold a pro-Obama bias, Chafets falsely claims that Wright videos were "shown first on FOX News"

Alleging that media hold a pro-Obama bias, Chafets falsely claims that Fox broke Obama and Ayers story

Chafets absurdly claims that Newsweek "refrained from even publishing" Lewinsky story because the "mainstream media was with the Clintons"

Chafets distorts 2008 primary results to hype Limbaugh's "Operation Chaos"

Chafets repeats Obama teleprompter falsehood

Chafets distorts Gore's congressional testimony to suggest environmental hypocrisy

Chafets' claim that Branch Davidian members were "kill[ed]" "by federal agents" contradicted by former GOP senator's report

Chafets grossly distorts Limbaugh's "phony soldiers" comments

Chafets implausibly claims that Obama sent "a sign to his African American base" at WHCA dinner

Chafets gushes over Limbaugh

Chafets: Limbaugh a "satirist," not a liar

Chafets goes to great lengths to discount accusations that Limbaugh is a liar, writing on Page 139 that Limbaugh doesn't "lie," but rather "engages in hyperbole, sarcasm, and ridicule":

When I told Limbaugh that [Columbia Journalism School] Professor [Todd] Gitlin, a prominent faculty member of America's preeminent school of journalism, had called him a liar, Limbaugh seemed amused. "Anybody who talks for fifteen hours a week extemporaneously for twenty years makes mistakes, but I correct mine as soon as I can, for a very practical reason," he told me. "If people don't trust me, they won't listen, and I won't have any sponsors. I make my living selling advertising. I have no idea who Todd Gitlin is, but he obviously doesn't know anything about the media."

He also doesn't listen to Limbaugh. Rush, like any satirist, engages in hyperbole, sarcasm, and ridicule, none of which is meant to be taken literally. Only the most oblivious or humorless critic would confuse it with lying. On reflection, and after consulting the Media Matters archive, Gitlin himself contacted me and asked to amend "liar" to "bullshit artist." In the commentary business, "bullshit" is what you call the opinions of those with whom you disagree.

Despite Chafets' claims to the contrary, Limbaugh has a well established record of constantly inventing or repeating clear falsehoods. The following is a non-exhaustive list:

• In February 2009, Limbaugh eagerly repeated Betsy McCaughey's false claim, made in a Bloomberg "commentary," that the House-passed economic recovery bill would create a new bureaucracy to "monitor treatments to make sure your doctor is doing what the federal government deems appropriate and cost effective." In fact, the legislation established no such authority, and McCaughey herself was forced to backtrack on the allegation. The next day, Limbaugh boasted that he was the one who discovered McCaughey's falsehood and took credit for spreading it "all over [the] mainstream media."

• Following a February 10, 2009, presidential town hall event in Florida, Limbaugh attacked "a crying woman named Henrietta" who, Limbaugh said, "ask[ed] Obama for a car, for a new kitchen, and a bathroom." In fact, the woman, who was homeless, was saying that she and her family needed housing: "I have an urgent need -- unemployment and homelessness, a very small vehicle for my family and I to live in. We need urgent, and the housing authority have two years waiting on this, and we need something more than a vehicle and parks to go to. We need our own kitchen and our own bathroom. Please help."

• Limbaugh claimed in early 2009 that President Obama's proposal to let the Bush tax cuts on Americans making more than $250,000 expire in 2011 constituted "a massive -- in the midst of a recession -- tax increase on small business" that would affect "[m]ost small businesses." This claim had already been repeatedly debunked -- the Tax Policy Center found that roughly 2 percent of small businesses fall in the top two income brackets that would be affected by the expiration of those tax cuts.

• In March 2009, Limbaugh said several times that "not one Republican voted for the TARP bailout." In reality, 125 congressional Republicans voted for the bill that created the Troubled Asset Relief Program.

• In July 2009, Limbaugh claimed that "Obama has yet to have to prove he's a citizen. All he'd have to do is show a birth certificate." Obama posted his birth certificate on his campaign's Fight the Smears website; the Hawaii Department of Health has confirmed that the birth certificate posted online by the Obama campaign is "a valid Hawaii state birth certificate"; FactCheck.org reported that it had "seen, touched, examined and photographed the original birth certificate" and determined that it is authentic; and Obama's birth was announced in contemporaneous editions of two Hawaii newspapers.

• In October 2009, Limbaugh falsely claimed that Page 94 of the House health care bill "prohibits the sale of private individual health insurance policies beginning in 2013." In fact, Page 94 of the bill specifically allowed private individual health insurance policies to be sold through a Health Insurance Exchange.

• In March, Limbaugh rated Limbaugh's claims "Pants on Fire" false, and noted that the administration has not recommended a ban on recreational fishing.

• In April, Limbaugh ran with Dick Morris' fabricated claim that Janet Reno blackmailed President Clinton into reappointing her as attorney general by threatening to "tell the truth about Waco." Morris' version of events, however, contradicted his previous writings on Clinton and Waco, and Morris himself later admitted that his conspiracy theory was merely "conjecture." That did not deter Limbaugh, however, who repeated the story even after Morris retracted it.

• On his May 4 program, Limbaugh claimed of the alleged Times Square bomber: "Guess what? Faisal Shahzad is a registered Democrat. I wonder if this SUV had an Obama sticker on it. Faisal Shahzad is a registered Democrat." Media Matters for America contacted the offices of the registrar in Shahzad's hometowns and confirmed that he is in fact not a registered voter in those towns.

Chafets: Limbaugh "is polite to his callers"

Chafets claims that Limbaugh learned a "lesson" from his early days in radio and "to this day, Limbaugh is polite to his callers." Yet Limbaugh has berated and been dismissive of callers who have disagreed with him, such as recently telling a woman to take the "tampons" out of her ears.

From Page 37:

Insult comedy was coming into its own on the radio, and Jeff Christie [Rush Limbaugh] decided to try it. He describes the result in his book, See, I Told You So:

I found out something about myself . . . something that was quite disturbing. I found out I was really, really good at insulting people. For example, the topic one day was. "When you die, how do you want to go?"

"I want to go the cheapest and most natural way I can," one nice lady caller from Independence, Missouri, said.

My response was: "Easy. Have your husband throw you in a trash bag and then in the Missouri River with the rest of the garbage."

When I went home after a day of this, I didn't like myself.

The lesson stayed with him. To this day, Limbaugh is polite to his callers who are, in any case, prescreened. He is still insulting, but his targets tend to be institutions, causes, and public figures who can defend themselves.

The following are some of Limbaugh's "polite" interactions with callers to his program:

• After caller asks Limbaugh about earthquake comments, he defends them, calls her a "blockhead" who has "tampons" in her ears
• After caller presses Limbaugh on how AZ law can be enforced without racial profiling, Limbaugh mocks him as a "kook"
• After caller notes Fox News' tea party ads, Limbaugh berates him for "regurgitating the drivel I have read on left-wing blogs"

Alleging that media hold a pro-Obama bias, Chafets falsely claims that Wright videos were "shown first on FOX News"

Chafets accuses the media of being pro-Obama, using as evidence that "[v]ideo clips of Reverend Wright's heated anti-American sermons about 'the USA of KKK' and American chickens coming home to roost on 9/11" were "shown first on FOX News and then, grudgingly, on other networks." In fact, as Fox News itself noted, ABC broke the story during the 2008 campaign.

Chafets writes on Page 61 that the Obama administration launched a campaign against Fox News after they broke "scoops" (such as the Wright story) about the administration: 

In the fall of 2009, not long after Limbaugh's speech, the White House launched a campaign against FOX News. Obama himself said that FOX was more like talk radio than a conventional television network. This was, obviously, a political judgment; FOX, at that time, was the only TV network actually engaged in adversarial journalism in the first part of the Obama administration. It had broken scoops about Obama's mentor, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, and played excepts from his incendiary anti-American sermons; revealed the political and professional connection between Obama and former Weatherman terrorist leader Bill Ayers; raised questions about Van Jones, a presidential adviser who had signed a petition accusing President Bush of collusion in the 9/11 terrorist attacks; and broadcast hidden-camera clips showing employees of ACORN -- the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, a left-wing group with which Obama had close ties -- advising a pimp on how to import underage prostitutes into the United States. These stories were profoundly embarrassing to the Obama administration -- the president had been forced to sever his ties with Wright, accept Jones's resignation, and watch as Congress cut off ACORN's federal funding. Naturally, the president wanted to discredit the network.

Chafets continues on Page 160:

Video clips of Reverend Wright's heated anti-American sermons about "the USA of KKK" and American chickens coming home to roost on 9/11 -- shown first on FOX News and then, grudgingly, on other networks -- made it clear who Obama's minister thought was the source of injustice.

ABC broke Wright sermon story on March 13. ABC broke the Jeremiah Wright sermon story during the March 13, 2008, edition of Good Morning America.

NY Times: Controversy came to light after ABC aired videos. New York Times reporter Jodi Kantor wrote on March 13, 2008: "On Thursday the attention shifted to the camp of Senator Barack Obama, after a report was shown on 'Good Morning America' on ABC, with clips of sermons by the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr., senior pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago."

Fox News itself credited ABC for story. During the March 13, 2008, edition of Special Report, then-host Brit Hume said: "The retiring Pastor of Barack Obama's church, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, Jr., said in a sermon five years ago that black people should ask god to curse America instead of bless it. ABC news reports the following from a 2003 sermon."

Alleging that media hold a pro-Obama bias, Chafets falsely claims that Fox broke Obama and Ayers story

Chafets accuses the media of being pro-Obama, using as evidence that Fox News "revealed the political and professional connection between Obama and former Weatherman terrorist leader Bill Ayers." While Fox News certainly engaged in unparalleled misinformation about Obama's supposed ties to Ayers, Fox did not break the story.

From Page 61:

In the fall of 2009, not long after Limbaugh's speech, the White House launched a campaign against FOX News. Obama himself said that FOX was more like talk radio than a conventional television network. This was, obviously, a political judgment; FOX, at that time, was the only TV network actually engaged in adversarial journalism in the first part of the Obama administration. It had broken scoops about Obama's mentor, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, and played excepts from his incendiary anti-American sermons; revealed the political and professional connection between Obama and former Weatherman terrorist leader Bill Ayers; raised questions about Van Jones, a presidential adviser who had signed a petition accusing President Bush of collusion in the 9/11 terrorist attacks; and broadcast hidden-camera clips showing employees of ACORN -- the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, a left-wing group with which Obama had close ties -- advising a pimp on how to import underage prostitutes into the United States. These stories were profoundly embarrassing to the Obama administration -- the president had been forced to sever his ties with Wright, accept Jones's resignation, and watch as Congress cut off ACORN's federal funding. Naturally, the president wanted to discredit the network.

MSNBC, Bloomberg, others brought up Ayers before Fox News. According to a Nexis search, Peter Hitchens wrote about Ayers and Obama for the London Daily Mail on February 2, 2008. Bloomberg (February 15), The New York Sun (February 19), Politico (February 22), and CNN.com (February 24) followed Hitchens. Then-MSNBC host Tucker Carlson also brought up Ayers on the February 22, 2008, edition of his program. Ayers was first brought up on a Fox News program available in Nexis on February 27 by Sean Hannity and Dennis Miller.

Wash. Post: First mainstream article from Daily Mail. The Washington Post's Fact Checker blog wrote of the chain of Ayers articles:

The first article in the mainstream press linking Obama to Ayers appeared in the London Daily Mail on February 2. It was written by Peter Hitchens, the right-wing brother of the left-wing firebrand turned Iraq war supporter, Christopher Hitchens. Hitchens cited the Ayers connection to bolster his argument that Obama is "far more radical than he would like us to know."

The Hitchens piece was followed by a Bloomberg article last week pointing to the Ayers connection as support for Hillary Clinton's contention that Obama might not be able to withstand the "Republican attack machine." Larry Johnson, a former counterterrorism official at the CIA and the State Department, predicted that the Republicans would seize on the Ayers case, and other Chicago relationships, to "bludgeon Obama's presidential aspirations into the dust."

The London Sunday Times joined the chorus this weekend by reporting that Republicans were "out to crush Barack by painting him as a leftwinger with dubious support".

Chafets absurdly claims that Newsweek "refrained from even publishing" Lewinsky story because the "mainstream media was with the Clintons"

On Page 90, Chafets offers Limbaugh's take on the Monica Lewinsky scandal, writing:

It wasn't Hillary's finest moment. She looked foolish for denying what everyone else already knew. And the accusation about a right-wing conspiracy seemed paranoid. The mainstream media was with the Clintons; Newsweek had refrained from even publishing the Lewinsky story, which it had before Drudge, evidently out of a misguided belief that it could keep the story from going public.

Newsweek states it held the story because "there was insufficient hard evidence." From an "online exclusive" column published on Newsweek's website on January 21, 1998:

Because the magazine did not have enough time for sufficient independent reporting on Lewinsky, her credibility, and her alleged role in the drama -- and in hopes of learning more about the truth by not interfering with Starr's probe at a critical juncture -- Newsweek decided to hold off publishing the story last week. Above all, because Lewinsky's name had not surfaced, Newsweek's editors felt there was insufficient hard evidence to drag her into the media maelstrom.

Chafets distorts 2008 primary results to hype Limbaugh's "Operation Chaos"

Chafets writes at length about "Operation Chaos," Limbaugh's 2008 scheme to convince Republican voters to vote for then-candidate Hillary Clinton in the Democratic presidential primaries in order to prolong the nominating process and "won the contest narrowly, edging Obama by about 3.5 percentage points. That closeness was reflected in the polling immediately prior to the election, which, according to Pollster.com's average, put Clinton ahead by two percentage points.

While Chafets touts Rove's claim "that 120,000 or so Republicans had crossed over in the open primary and won it for Clinton," CNN's exit poll showed that more self-identified Republicans voted for Obama than voted for Clinton -- nine percent of voters in the Democratic primary identified themselves as Republicans, and they favored Obama 53-46.

Mississippi. Chafets writes of the Mississippi primary:

Limbaugh wrung a week's worth of hilarity out of this situation. On March 11, Mississippi held its primary. Obama won, but Clinton got far more votes than predicted. Once more the media reacted with alarm.

Chafets' claim is not supported by the facts. Obama Pollster.com leading up to the primary showed Obama in the mid-50s and Clinton in the high-30s, meaning that it was Obama who had outperformed expectations.

Chafets repeats Obama teleprompter falsehood

Chafets congratulates Limbaugh for noticing that "Obama was not much of an extemporaneous speaker" and cites as evidence the false story that "Obama accidentally read the speech of his guest, the Irish prime minister, instead of his own."

Chafets writes on Page 163:

Limbaugh was quick to notice that, despite his reputation for eloquence, Obama was not much of an extemporaneous speaker. In fact, the new president rarely spoke without a teleprompter. After Obama accidentally read the speech of his guest, the Irish prime minister, instead of his own, Limbaugh developed the conceit that the teleprompter, not Obama, was in charge.

Daily Telegraph editor: Obama was actually making a "good-natured and well received joke." As Daily Telegraph U.S. editor Toby Harnden explained, it was actually the Irish prime minister who accidentally began reading Obama's speech off the teleprompter before realizing his mistake, saying "Why don't these things work for me?" After the prime minister finished his remarks, Obama stepped to the microphone and jokingly said "First, I'd like to say thank you to President Obama."

Harnden wrote:

That was pretty clear: there was a teleprompter mix up and the fall guy was Cowen. Obama stepped in after Cowen's five-minute speech to make a good-natured and well-received joke at the Irish premier's expense.

Ironically, therefore, Obama was ad-libbing rather than mindlessly reading the wrong speech from a teleprompter.

I've exchanged emails with [National Journal reporter William] Englund and he confirmed this was the case and kindly supplied me with an audio file of the event that removes all doubt.

Chafets distorts Gore's congressional testimony to suggest environmental hypocrisy

On Page 67, Chafets writes of Al Gore:

In 2008 Limbaugh rebroadcast part of his debate with Gore. The ex-vice president had since won an Oscar and a Nobel Prize for his environmental endeavors. He had also become an environmental businessman and investor, parlaying his high profile and Washington connections into a multimillion-dollar empire of "green" enterprises.⁴

Chafets' footnote states:

In 2009, while testifying before Congress, Gore was asked if he would personally benefit from policies he was advocating for. Gore said he was proud to be in business and invest his money according to his beliefs. "If you believe the reason I have been working on this issue for thirty years is greed, you don't know me." Like all self-testimonials, this was not dispositive.

In suggesting that Gore is profiting from his "multimillion-dollar empire of 'green' enterprises," Chafets omits Gore's statement that he donates "every penny" back to his nonprofit. During the stated that "every penny that I have made, I have put right into a nonprofit, the Alliance for Climate Protection, to spread awareness of why we have to take on this challenge."

Chafets' claim that Branch Davidian members were "kill[ed]" "by federal agents" contradicted by former GOP senator's report

Discussing the Clinton administration, Chafets writes that Waco, Texas, was the site of the "killing, by federal agents, of fifty-one [sic] members of the Branch Davidian cult in Waco, Texas. The massacre was unintentional, but women and children had burned to death, and the country was in an uproar." However, in his final November 2000 report, former Republican Sen. John Danforth concluded "with certainty" that the "government of the United States and its agents are not responsible for the April 19, 1993, tragedy at Waco" (emphasis added) and "did not cause the fire." Danforth wrote that certain members of the cult were instead responsible. From the report:

The government of the United States and its agents are not responsible for the April 19, 1993, tragedy at Waco. The government:

§         (a) did not cause the fire;

§         (b) did not direct gunfire at the Branch Davidian complex; and

§         (c) did not improperly employ the armed forces of the United States.

Responsibility for the tragedy of Waco rests with certain of the Branch Davidians and their leader, Vernon Howell, also known as David Koresh, who:

§         (a) shot and killed four ATF agents on February 28, 1993, and wounded 20 others;

§         (b) refused to exit the complex peacefully during the 51-day standoff that followed the ATF raid despite extensive efforts and concessions by negotiators for the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI);

§         (c) directed gunfire at FBI agents who were inserting tear gas into the complex on April 19, 1993;

§         (d) spread fuel throughout the main structure of the complex and ignited it in at least three places causing the fire which resulted in the deaths of those Branch Davidians not killed by their own gunfire; and

§         (e) killed some of their own people by gunfire, including at least five children.

While the Special Counsel has concluded that the United States government is not responsible for the tragedy at Waco on April 19, 1993, the Special Counsel states with equal certainty that an FBI agent fired three pyrotechnic tear gas rounds at 8:08 a.m. on April 19, 1993, at the concrete construction pit approximately 75 feet from the living quarters of the Davidian complex. The pyrotechnic tear gas rounds did not start the fire that consumed the complex four hours later.

From Page 85:

Lacking legal recourse, Clinton decided to delegitimize Limbaugh as a racist, and to do the job personally. On May 1, 1993, the president was the featured speaker at the White House Correspondents' Association Dinner at the Washington Hilton. The dinner was held in the shadow of the killing, by federal agents, of fifty-one members of the Branch Davidian cult in Waco, Texas. The massacre was unintentional, but women and children had burned to death, and the country was in an uproar. Congressman John Conyers of Detroit, who is black, attacked Attorney General Janet Reno's mishandling of the entire affair. On the air, Limbaugh came to her defense.

Chafets grossly distorts Limbaugh's "phony soldiers" comments

Chafets grossly distorts Limbaugh's infamous "phony soldiers" comments, falsely suggesting that Limbaugh was referring to individuals that had actually lied about their military service.

Chafets writes on Pages 107-108:

On September 25, 2007, Limbaugh used his daily "morning update" to talk about Jesse MacBeth, who had been appearing at anti-war rallies as a former U.S. Army Ranger and combat veteran, and as an eyewitness to American military atrocities in Iraq. He reported that MacBeth was a fraud who had been convicted of falsifying a Department of Veterans Affairs claim. "Yes, Jesse MacBeth was in the army," Rush said. "Briefly. Forty-four days. Before he was washed out of boot camp. MacBeth is not an Army Ranger; he is not a corporal; he never won the Purple Heart; he was never in combat to witness the horrors he claimed to have seen. But don't look for retractions, folks-not from the anti-war left, the antimilitary Drive-By Media, or the Arabic Web sites that spread his lies about our troops. Fiction serves their purposes; the truth, to borrow a phrase, is inconvenient to them."

The following day, Limbaugh got an on-air call from a man named Mike in Olympia, Washington, who had a complaint about the mainstream media. "They never talk to real soldiers," Mike said. "They pull these soldiers that come up out of the blue and spout to the media."

"The phony soldiers," said Rush.

"Phony soldiers," said Mike. "If you talk to any real soldier, they're proud to serve, they want to be over in Iraq, they understand their sacrifice, and they're willing to sacrifice for the country."

"They joined to be in Iraq," Limbaugh said. Then he retold the story of Jesse MacBeth.

Within a short time, Media Matters, a "progressive" watchdog group founded by Democrats (including Hillary Clinton) to monitor and discredit Limbaugh and other conservative commentators, reported that Rush had referred to military personnel who objected to the war as "phony soldiers." [emphasis added]

Chafets' defense of Limbaugh's comments is completely wrong. Chafets writes: " 'They joined to be in Iraq,' Limbaugh said. Then he retold the story of Jesse MacBeth." This is false. More than a minute-and-a-half elapsed between Limbaugh saying, "They joined to be in Iraq," and Limbaugh's first reference that day to MacBeth. During that time, Limbaugh and the caller discussed weapons of mass destruction, the surge, and Democrats' efforts to extricate the United States from Iraq. In other words, Chafets' account makes it sound like Limbaugh's "phony soldiers" comment occurred at the beginning of a discussion of MacBeth, when in fact the MacBeth discussion occurred much later.

Additionally, Chafets' selective editing of Limbaugh's remarks is nearly identical to Limbaugh's own efforts to doctor transcript and audio to cover up what he had really said. As Media Matters exposed at the time, Limbaugh responded to the controversy by purporting to air the "entire" segment in which he had referred to "phony soldiers." In fact, the clip he then aired omitted a full 1 minute and 35 seconds of the 1 minute and 50 second discussion that occurred between Limbaugh's original "phony soldiers" comment and his reference to MacBeth.

In a footnote, Chafets compounds his false claims, writing:

Media Matters tried to correct its initial mistake by saying that Limbaugh had referred to phony soldiers (plural). Limbaugh responded by posting an ABC News Report titled "Phony Heroes"; the story of Pvt. Scott Thomas Beauchamp, whose grisly first-person accounts of the war in Iraq were challenged, causing the New Republic to admit that it couldn't stand by the articles it had published; and the fact that one of the spokesmen for Vietnam Veterans Against the War had later admitted lying about his service record.

It is simply not true that Limbaugh was referring to multiple actual military impostors when he made his original comments. Indeed, Limbaugh admitted as much in his initial response to the controversy when he repeatedly claimed -- also falsely -- that he was talking about only "one" soldier. A transcript posted on Limbaugh's website shows him emphasizing that he "was talking about one soldier with that phony soldier comment, Jesse MacBeth" [italics, bold, and underline in original].

After being confronted with the fact that he had originally referred to "phony soldiers" (plural), Limbaugh changed his story to claim he was actually talking about more than one military impostor -- a direct contradiction of his original false explanation.

And while Limbaugh did at one point in his response include Beauchamp in his evolving list of "phony soldiers," he also included decorated Vietnam veteran John Murtha. Limbaugh's description of Murtha as a "phony soldier" further disproves Chafets' suggestion that Limbaugh was simply referring to individuals who lied about their military service.

Chafets implausibly claims that Obama sent "a sign to his African American base" at WHCA dinner

In a section addressing the 2009 White House Correspondents Association (WHCA) dinner, at which comedienne Wanda Sykes was the featured entertainer, Chafets claims that Obama, in sitting at the dais while Sykes was performing, was sending "a sign to his African American base ... that the president was not dropping hot sauce for mayonnaise." From Page 165:

This time the comedian-in-residence was Wanda Sykes. It was an interesting choice. Sykes is a black, openly-lesbian comedienne who works in the misanthropic style of the great Jackie "Moms" Mabley. Obama's presence on the dais with her was a sign to his African American base -- much louder and bolder than "we straight" -- that the president was not dropping hot sauce for mayonnaise.

Yet Obama was on the dais because that's where the president sits at the WHCA dinner, not because he was sending "a sign." Additionally, it was the WHCA -- not the White House -- that asked Sykes to perform. A February 12, 2009, Associated Press article reported that AP reporter and WHCA president Jennifer Loven "chose Sykes because of her fresh style and engaging stage presence."

Chafets gushes over Limbaugh

Chafets showers praise on Limbaugh throughout the book. The following are a few examples:

"Limbaughesque." From Page 87:

The spectacular Republican gains of 1994 had an obvious influence on the Clinton agenda. The Democrats no longer controlled Congress, and both the president and the Congress had to consider the election of 1996 in light of what had happened. Clinton's liberal agenda slid toward the center. Even before the 1994 election, he signed the Limbaughesque Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, which built prisons, expanded the death penalty to dozens of federal offenses, and provided funding for one hundred thousand local cops.

Muhammad Rush. From Page 8:

[Muhammad] Ali was also controversial and dead serious about his political beliefs. He became a Black Muslim when it was dangerously unpopular to do so, and he paid for it. He was willing to face prison time rather than serve in a war he didn't support. And yet, despite it all, white reporters couldn't quite take him seriously. When he said alarmingly incorrect things, like calling Joe Louis an Uncle Tom, dubbing his fight with George Foreman in Zaire "the rumble in the jungle," or mocking Joe Frazier as a gorilla, they thought it might be just part of the act. He couldn't really mean those things, could he?

Limbaugh is the Ali of the air, the all-knowing, all-seeing Maha Rishi who defeats his enemies in intellectual combat with half his brain tied behind his back, "just to make it fair." He also happens to be the most important and influential conservative in the country, the one indispensable Republican voice. This can be confusing, which is the way Limbaugh wants it.

Logic vs. good lines. From Pages 114-115:

Limbaugh's idea of a sufficiently relaxed president is Dwight Eisenhower. "Ike was great. When he found out he couldn't shoot Congress like he had Germans, he went to Augusta and played golf." Of course, Eisenhower had been exactly the kind of moderate, compromising Republican that Rush despised, but I didn't mention that. Sometimes you don't want to let logic stand in the way of a good line.

Professional man of substance. From Page 121:

I actually hadn't been wondering why he had so many cars. Rich people tend not to stint on transportation. What I did wonder is why all of them were black. He told me that he likes black cars, which made a kind of sense. Limbaugh is old-fashioned, even elegant, in his personal furnishing. Flashy cars are for hip-hop artists and arrivistes; professional men of substance ride in dignified black automobiles.

Biting and sophisticated political satirist. From Page 204:

Limbaugh is a biting and sophisticated political satirist whose own taste in humor runs to mother-in-law jokes told by Borsht Belt tummlers like Myron Cohen to Professor Corey.  

Klein promotes ludicrous theory that Ayers "may have ghostwritten" Obama book

Klein: "Did Ayers ghostwrite Obama's ... memoir?" In a section titled "Did Ayers ghostwrite Obama's 'best-written' memoir?" [pages 14-16], Klein writes that "Weather Underground terrorist" Bill Ayers "may have ghostwritten most of" Obama's 1995 autobiography Dreams From My Father. Klein bases his claim on purported evidence provided by WND columnist Jack Cashill and biographer Christopher Andersen.

Oxford don conducted computer study, found claim to be "very implausible." The Sunday Times of London reported on November 2, 2008, that Peter Millican, a philosophy don at Hertford College, Oxford, who "devised a computer software program that can detect when works are by the same author by comparing favourite words and phrases," was contacted by Republican activists who offered him $10,000 to "assess alleged similarities" between Dreams From My Father and Ayers' book Fugitive Days:

Millican took a preliminary look and found the charges "very implausible". A deal was agreed for more detailed research but when Millican said the results had to be made public, even if no link to Ayers was proved, interest waned.

Millican said: "I thought it was extremely unlikely that we would get a positive result. It is the sort of thing where people make claims after seeing a few crude similarities and go overboard on them."

Millican: Claim is "far too easy to make," analyses by Cashill and others "seem badly flawed." Millican wrote in a separate November 2, 2008, Sunday Times commentary:

My Signature system acquired some publicity this year through its involvement in a heated debate about Coleridge's alleged authorship of a translation of Goethe's Faust. So some Republicans were keen to make use of my expertise to help them in their quest to unmask Ayers as the hidden puppet master behind the Obama of 1995.

The person who came up with this strange theory is Jack Cashill, an American author who claimed to find striking similarities between Dreams from My Father and Ayers's 2001 memoir Fugitive Days.

The trouble with these sorts of claims is that they are far too easy to make: take any two substantial memoirs from the same era and you are likely to be able to pick out a fair number of passages that have some similarities. Unless the similarities are really close (and they weren't), just listing them makes no case at all, even if it might be enough to persuade some readers.

Cashill and friends -- who were convinced but aware that more evidence would be needed to convince others -- enlisted teams of analysts to try to give the theory a solid statistical basis. All of these analyses supposedly delivered positive results, but they seem badly flawed.

[...]

Bob -- the man who brought me into all this -- seemed sincerely interested in getting to the truth about Cashill's dramatic allegation. He supplied me with the relevant texts and a number of appropriate "controls".

Some preliminary tests, using various data measures and a range of powerful statistical facilities that were recently added to Signature, indicated nothing that would give Obama any cause for concern. So I felt that any analysis I did would be far more likely to put an end to the story than to substantiate it, by providing objective data against what looked like partisan allegations.

Andersen: "I definitely do not say [Ayers] wrote Barack Obama's book." While Andersen writes in his book Barack and Michelle: Portrait of an American Marriage (William Morrow, 2009) that Ayers' "contribution" to Obama's book was "significant," he walked back the claim in a September 27, 2009, appearance on CNN's Reliable Sources. Andersen responded to host Howard Kurtz's questioning on Ayers' involvement in Obama's book by saying that while "there was a group of writers in Hyde Park, Chicago at the time who had input on each others' writings" and that Ayers "help[ed] a little bit, gave his opinions" to Obama, "I definitely do not say [Ayers] wrote Barack Obama's book."

Klein promotes discredited claim Odinga is Obama's cousin

Klein uncritically forwards Odinga's reported claim that "Obama's father was his maternal uncle." Klein writes that Raila Odinga, who was running for president of Kenya when Obama visited the country in 2006 (Odinga is currently prime minister), "has been described as Obama's cousin, but it was thought the family relationship was distant. Then, in a January 2008 interview with the BBC, Odinga stated that Obama's father was his maternal uncle." Klein went on to write that Odinga is a "social democrat" who "was accused of collaborating in a failed, bloody 1982 coup" and was "charged with treason" [Page 44].

Claim walked back by Odinga's spokesman, denied by the Obama campaign. An April 18, 2008, PolitiFact.com article reported that Odinga's spokesperson subsequently "said cousins in the African sense is very different from cousins in the American sense, so they might be distant relatives"; that the Obama campaign says Odinga and Obama are not related; and that experts called Odinga's claim "opportunistic" and "stretched to the point of ridiculousness":

In a discussion about the political situation in Kenya amid fallout from a disputed election -- where Odinga's party rejected official results and vowed to install Odinga as the "people's president" -- the following exchange occurs:

Odinga: "Barack Obama's father is my maternal uncle."

BBC: "You're related to him?"

Odinga: "Yes, I am."

No, you're not, says the Obama campaign.

We spoke to three Kenya experts who dismiss this part of the claim as well, suggesting Odinga made the connection to give himself more legitimacy during the political crisis [following a disputed 2007 election].

"It's stretched to the point of ridiculousness," said Joel D. Barkan, political science professor emeritus at the University of Iowa and senior associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C. "To my knowledge, they are not first cousins in the normal sense. To my knowledge, there's absolutely no relationship at all."

Alex Awiti, a Kenyan postdoctoral fellow at Columbia University, says you have to consider the context of when Odinga was speaking, that being in the middle of a political crisis.

"Raila Odinga was groping all over the place, trying to find some political legitimacy to get on a high pedestal to claim leadership and using Obama was basically going to add some political points," said Awiti, who lived in Kenya until three years ago. "This is very opportunistic and it should be totally disregarded."

[Salim] Lone, Odinga's spokesman, said cousins in the African sense is very different from cousins in the American sense, so they might be distant relatives.

Obama's uncle: Odinga "is not a blood relative." A January 8, 2008, Reuters article reported that, in response to Odinga's claim, "Obama's uncle said that the two were not directly related. 'Odinga's mother came from this area, so it is normal for us to talk about cousins. But he is not a blood relative,' he said."

Klein pushes birther arguments on Obama's "eligibility"

Klein: "Obama may not be eligible to serve as president." While Klein concedes that there is "no convincing evidence that Obama was born in Kenya, nor that his birthplace was any place other than Hawaii, his declared state of birth," he claims that because Obama's father was not a U.S. citizen, there should have been "congressional debate about whether Obama is eligible under the United States Constitution to serve as president." Klein goes on to examine the meaning of the term "natural born citizen" as a qualification to be president, referencing the 1758 book The Law of Nations and Supreme Court decisions such as Minor v. Happersett, concluding under that and "scores of other Supreme Court rulings, Obama may not be eligible to serve as president." Klein asserts that "a layman's reading of readily available legal resources ... clearly indicates a series of legitimate questions about Barack Obama's eligibility for the presidency, given that Obama's father was not an American citizen" [pages 66-70].

Similar arguments advanced by birther lawyers. As Media Matters has noted, The Law of Nations and the Minor decision have been referenced by attorneys who have filed lawsuits questioning Obama's eligibility to be president.

Klein ignores contrary opinion by legal experts. Klein did not note in his book any legal rulings or views of legal experts contradicting the view that Obama "may not be eligible to serve as president." For instance, conservative-leaning attorney Eugene Volokh stated in 2008 that "I have no reason to doubt that President-Elect Obama was born in Hawaii, and is therefore a natural-born citizen." Volokh has also noted that while most courts have dismissed claims against Obama's eligibility on procedural grounds, one court that looked at it substantively rejected the claim that Obama is not eligible to become president because his father was not a U.S. citizen. Volokh added, "The court's reasoning strikes me as quite persuasive."

Klein repeats dubious link between Ayers, Obama at CAC

Klein: "It is highly unlikely that Ayers would not have been involved in the selection of Obama." Klein cited a statement by the Obama campaign that Ayers was not involved in recruiting Obama to the board of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC) -- which, as Klein notes, was funded by a matching challenge grant from the philanthropic foundation of Walter Annenberg, "ambassador to the United Kingdom under Richard Nixon" -- then repeated a claim by National Review Online's Stanley Kurtz, who Klein said "diligently reviewed the CAC Archives," that "[n]o one would have been appointed the CAC chairman without his [Ayers'] approval." Klein added, "It is highly unlikely that Ayers would not have been involved in the selection of Obama" [pages 12-13].

NY Times: Ayers "played no role" in Obama appointment, "according to several people involved." The New York Times reported on October 4, 2008:

In March 1995, Mr. Obama became chairman of the six-member board that oversaw the distribution of grants in Chicago. Some bloggers have recently speculated that Mr. Ayers had engineered that post for him.

In fact, according to several people involved, Mr. Ayers played no role in Mr. Obama's appointment. Instead, it was suggested by Deborah Leff, then president of the Joyce Foundation, a Chicago-based group whose board Mr. Obama, a young lawyer, had joined the previous year. At a lunch with two other foundation heads, Patricia A. Graham of the Spencer Foundation and Adele Simmons of the MacArthur Foundation, Ms. Leff suggested that Mr. Obama would make a good board chairman, she said in an interview. Mr. Ayers was not present and had not suggested Mr. Obama, she said.

Ms. Graham said she invited Mr. Obama to dinner at an Italian restaurant in Chicago and was impressed.

"At the end of the dinner I said, 'I really want you to be chairman.' He said, 'I'll do it if you'll be vice chairman,' " Ms. Graham recalled, and she agreed.

Klein baselessly suggests CAC grantee's project is "far-leftist." Klein wrote that the CAC "granted money to far-leftist causes other than ACORN," then cites as an example that "more than $600,000 was granted to an organization founded by Ayers and run by Mike Klonsky, a former top communist activist" and former "leader of the Marxist-Leninist Communist Party, which was effectively recognized by China as the all-but-official U.S. Maoist party" [page 13]. Later in the book, Klein describes Klonsky's group, the Small Schools Workshop, as an "outreach program founded in 1991 by Ayers with the stated goal of providing support for teachers who want to create smaller learning environments" [page 219]. At no point does Klein explain how such a "cause" is "far-leftist."

Klein ignores Khalidi's ties to Republicans in attempting to smear Obama

Fund chaired by McCain awarded $448,873 to Khalidi-founded group. As an example of Obama's alleged "ties to Palestinian radicalism," Klein cited Rashid Khalidi, "a harsh critic of Israel who ... makes statements supportive of Palestinian terror" [page 47]. Among the "ties" Klein listed were that the Woods Fund, while Obama served on its board, awarded a $40,000 grant to a group headed by Khalidi's wife. While Klein described Obama's links to Khalidi, he did not note that Khalidi has links to Republicans as well. As ABC's Jake Tapper reported in October 2008, the International Republican Institute -- chaired by Sen. John McCain, Obama's 2008 Republican presidential opponent -- awarded $448,873 in 1998 to the Center for Palestine Research and Studies, "an independent academic research and policy analysis institution" co-founded by Khalidi, who was on the center's board of trustees at the time the grant was awarded. The IRI continued to give money to the group after Khalidi left it, according to Tapper.

Rabbi: Khalidi "consistently in favor of dialogue and common ground." An October 31, 2008, New York Times profile of Khalidi quoted Rabbi J. Rolando Matalon of Congregation B'nai Jeshurun, who "said he has known Mr. Khalidi for years," stating of Khalidi: "In no way has he ever indicated that he favors the destruction or disappearance of Israel. ... He has always been consistently in favor of dialogue and common ground."

Several investigations cleared ACORN of Klein's charge of their "alleged corruption"

Klein: Internal probe of "ACORN's alleged corruption" like "putting foxes in charge of the hen house." After declaring Obama "The ACORN president," Klein wrote that an independent investigation of "ACORN's alleged corruption" commissioned by ACORN's Advisory Board was "a move some liken to putting foxes in charge of the hen house," adding, "Unsurprisingly, on December 7, 2009, the internal Board announced it had found no wrong doing [sic]" [page 138]. Klein referred to an inquiry into "circumstances surrounding" the release of selectively edited videotapes by conservative activists James O'Keefe and Hannah Giles and an evaluation of "management and governance reforms" ACORN implemented since June 2008.

Independent NY, CA, CRS investigations also found no criminal wrongdoing. Several independent investigations have concurred with the ACORN-commissioned investigation's conclusion that the videos did not reveal any criminal conduct by ACORN's employees. The Brooklyn, New York, District Attorney's office investigated allegations arising from the O'Keefe-Giles videos and found no criminal wrongdoing by ACORN. The New York Daily News quoted a "law enforcement source" as saying, "They edited the tape to meet their agenda." Similarly, the California Attorney General's office found that ACORN workers engaged in "highly inappropriate behavior" but committed no violation of criminal laws; Attorney General Jerry Brown said, "The evidence illustrates that things are not always as partisan zealots portray them through highly selective editing of reality. Sometimes a fuller truth is found on the cutting room floor." Further, the Congressional Research Service reported in December 2009 that a "search of reports of federal agency inspectors general did not identify instances in which ACORN violated the terms of federal funding in the last five years."

Klein repeats discredited attack on WH political director Gaspard

Klein: Bloggers, Newsmax "rediscovered Gaspard's longtime ties to ... ACORN." Writing about White House political affairs director Patrick Gaspard, Klein stated that "some right-wing bloggers and Newsmax.com rediscovered Gaspard's longtime ties to both SEIU and ACORN" [page 140]. Klein cites as his source a Newsmax article quoting Matthew Vadum of the Capital Research Center claiming that Gaspard "was the New York political director for top ACORN official Bertha Lewis before 2003," a claim Vadum also made in an American Spectator article.

Politico's Smith: Vadum's claim "just isn't true." Ben Smith of Politico wrote in a September 29, 2009, blog post:

I hate to put a damper on the day's firestorm on the right over a White House staffer, but an American Spectator report making the rounds this morning that White House political director Patrick Gaspard used to work for ACORN in New York just isn't true.

The Spectator (accurately) quotes ACORN founder Wade Rathke claiming that Gaspard was political director at the group's New York chapter at some point before 2003.

I covered New York politics at the time, and that was news to me; the also White House denies it. But just to be sure, I checked checked [sic] just now with Gaspard's former boss, whom he ultimately replaced as the political director of the giant New York SEIU local, 1199, Jennifer Cunningham. Cunningham confirmed to me that he'd worked for her starting in 1999; that he'd worked for a City Council member before that; and before that, for the Dinkins Administration.

The fact that Rathke got this wrong does provide more evidence of how totally decentralized and disorganized -- contrary to the claims of both fans and detractors -- the group is, but that's all it says.

The Spectator piece is a model of the sort of guilt-by-association Google work in which partisans of both sides specialize.

Klein pushes falsehoods to claim Holdren holds "bizarre and alarming views"

Klein suggests textbook examination of "involuntary birth-control measures" reflects authors' personal opinion. In a section on White House science and technology adviser John Holdren, Klein asserts that Holdren has "bizarre and alarming views on other ways to save the planet," which demonstrate his "unsuitability for high office" [page 175]. Klein then repeats statements by fellow WND reporter Jerome Corsi that, according to a 1975 textbook Holdren co-authored, "compulsory, government-mandated 'green abortions' would be a constitutionally acceptable way to control population growth and prevent ecological disasters" and that "involuntary birth-control measures, including forced sterilization, may be necessary and morally acceptable under extreme conditions, such as widespread famine brought about by 'climate change.' "

PolitiFact.com: "[T]he authors make clear that they did not support coercive means of population control." Responding to a similar claim by Fox News' Glenn Beck, PolitiFact.com concluded that "the text of the book" summarized by Klein and Corsi "clearly does not support" the idea that Holdren and his co-authors personally hold the views examined in the textbook. PolitiFact added: "We think a thorough reading shows that these were ideas presented as approaches that had been discussed. They were not posed as suggestions or proposals. In fact, the authors make clear that they did not support coercive means of population control. Certainly, nowhere in the book do the authors advocate for forced abortions." PolitiFact gave the claim "pants on fire" status. Indeed, Holdren and his co-authors advocated for noncoercive means of population control.

Klein takes Brooks statement out of context

Klein falsely suggests statement on Al Qaeda reflects her personal post-9-11 view of terrorist group. In a section on Defense Department official Rosa Brooks, Klein wrote, "In 2007, she called al-Qaeda 'little more than an obscure group of extremist thugs, well financed and intermittently lethal but relatively limited in their global and regional political pull. On 9/11, they got lucky ... Thanks to U.S. policies, Al Qaeda has become the vast global threat the administration imagined it to be in 2001' " [page 183]. In fact, the full context of the Los Angeles Times op-ed to which Klein is referring shows that Brooks was discussing what "most experts" thought of Al Qaeda in 2001 prior to 9-11, not, as Klein suggests, her personal view of the group in 2007.

Klein promotes links between Obama, "socialist party" denied by both Obama and the party

Klein portrays Obama's allegedly seeking endorsement from "socialist party" as "participation with" party. In the chapter "Obama Participated in Socialist Party," Klein writes of Obama's "participation with a U.S. socialist party," the New Party, which Klein claims had an agenda "of moving the Democratic Party far leftward to ultimately form a third major U.S. political party with a socialist agenda" [page 80]. The only evidence Klein provided is that Obama "sought and received the party's endorsement when he successfully ran for the Illinois State Senate in 1996" and that some pieces of contemporaneous party literature called Obama a member [page 84].

Party founder denies Obama was member; campaign denies Obama sought party's endorsement. Klein quotes party founder Carl Davidson apparently contradicting Klein's suggestion Obama was an official party member, stating that Obama never signed a party contract Klein described as "stipulating [candidates] would have a 'visible and active membership' with the party." Klein also quotes Davidson as saying, "Obama was never a man of the left, either in his view or in being a member of an actual socialist organization" [page 85]. Further, Klein's assertion that Obama "sought and received the party's endorsement" is contradicted by Obama's Fight the Smears website, which states that "The New Party did support Barack once in 1996, but he was the only candidate on the ballot in his race and never solicited the endorsement." Klein does not acknowledge this statement in his book.

Klein disavows "guilt by association" -- but engages in it anyway

Book's introduction: "We do not believe in 'guilt by association.' " The introduction to The Manchurian President states: "We do not believe in 'guilt by association' nor in 'the politics of personal destruction.' In other words, a political figured should not be judged by his casual political relationships, nor by personal vulnerabilities -- and certainly not by race. We have instead labored to uncover the actual political history, beliefs, mentors, associates, appointments, and motivations of the 44th president of the United States. Many of these he and others have tried hard to conceal behind the façade of soothing rhetoric and personal charisma" [page xii].

Klein attacks church where Obama attended Sunday school as a child. In the first chapter of the book, titled "Obama Tied to Bill Ayers ... At Age 11!" Klein claims that Obama received his "earliest exposure to Ayers' ideology" through the First Unitarian Church of Honolulu, where Obama attended Sunday school. Klein offers no direct evidence that Obama was "expos[ed] to Ayers' ideology"; instead, he portrays the church as a "hotbed of antiwar activism" for granting sanctuary to "U.S. military deserters recruited by" Students for a Democratic Society, a group in which Ayers served as a leader. But Klein also reported that SDS had splintered apart well before 1971 -- when Obama was age 11 and supposedly receiving "Ayers' ideology" [pages 4-5].

Klein baselessly ties Jarrett to views of her father-in-law. Klein writes of Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett: "Jarrett's background, her family, and her initial introduction to Obama all tie her to the now familiar radical milieu of this administration" [page 156]. Klein then describes Jarrett's father-in-law, Vernon Jarrett, whom Klein describes has having been linked to a "Communist Party-dominated organization," "the communist-influenced, black-run Chicago Defender newspaper" and to former Chicago Mayor Harold Washington, who "was involved in communist-dominated circles in Chicago." Klein provides no evidence that Valerie Jarrett shares "communist" views -- or any other views -- with her father-in-law.

Klein says FCC chief's "leanings are unclear" due to press secretary's former employer. Klein writes of Federal Communications Commission chairman Julius Genachowski:

Genachowksi's [sic] leanings are unclear. For example, since early July 2009, Genachowski's press secretary has been Jen Howard, former press director at the liberal/left media think tank Free Press. This would be the same Free Press co-founded by Robert W. McChesney, about whom more follows, and on whose board sat avowed Marxist, and former Obama administration "Green Jobs Czar," Van Jones. It is the same Free Press that, jointly with the Center for American Progress, co-published The Structural Imbalance of Political Talk Radio, of which Mark Lloyd was a co-author.

Klein finds purported namesakes significant enough to include. In describing Defense Department official Rosa Brooks, Klein writes that Brooks is "[r]eportedly named after communist heroine Rosa Luxemburg," citing no evidence [page 183]. Klein also notes that the son of Raila Odinga "is named after Cuban leader Fidel Castro" [page 44].

Thiessen's false claim in book: "[I]ndisputable" that there were no successful Al Qaeda attacks against U.S. interests

Thiessen: "Indisputable" that Al Qaeda "has not succeeded in launching one single attack on the homeland or American interests abroad" since the CIA interrogations began. From Thiessen's book, Courting Disaster: How the CIA Kept America Safe and How Barack Obama Is Inviting the Next Attack:

Here is statistical data that is indisputable: In the decade before the CIA began interrogating captured terrorists, al Qaeda launched repeated attacks against America: the first World Trade Center bombing, the bombing of our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, the attack on the USS Cole, and ultimately the attacks of September 11, 2001. In the eight years since the CIA began interrogating captured terrorists, al Qaeda has not succeeded in launching one single attack on the homeland or American interests abroad. [p. 102]

In fact, there have been Al Qaeda attacks on U.S. interests abroad since CIA interrogations began. As Media Matters for America Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, a 2008 attack on a U.S. embassy in Sanaa, Yemen, a 2003 attack on a housing compound in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and a 2003 attack on a hotel in Jakarta, Indonesia.

Caught in falsehood about terrorist attacks, Thiessen changes his claim

Thiessen now: "My point" was that after interrogations began, "al-Qaeda did not succeed in carrying out any attacks of a similar scale against American interests at home or abroad." In an April 14 National Review Online blog post responding to New Yorker journalist Jane Mayer's criticism of his book, Thiessen backtracked from his claim that it is "indisputable" that since the CIA interrogation program began, "al Qaeda has not succeeded in launching one single attack on the homeland or American interests abroad." Rather, Thiessen says that his "point" was limited to a claim that Al Qaeda has not succeeded in launching attacks of "a similar scale" to previous attacks. From Thiessen's blog post:

[Mayer] does, however, dispute my claim that once the CIA took over terrorist interrogations, al-Qaeda failed to carry out another attack on the American homeland or U.S. interests abroad. While acknowledging that we did not suffer another attack on American soil, Mayer points to a string of attacks abroad - including hotel bombings that primarily targeted foreign nationals, the assassination of a USAID official, minor attacks outside the U.S. consulate in Karachi, and al-Qaeda engagements with U.S. forces in Afghanistan and Iraq. Her list borders on the absurd. She includes attacks that (a) were not carried out by al-Qaeda and (b) did not target Americans (for example, she cites a 2004 attack on the Hilton Hotel in Taba, Egypt, that was carried out by Palestinian extremists targeting Israeli tourists). And citing engagements with enemy forces in combat zones ("In Iraq, the al-Qaeda faction led by Abu Mussab al Zarqawi killed hundreds of U.S. soldiers") is patently ridiculous. Obviously when U.S. armed forces invade a country and engage al-Qaeda fighters in combat, there will be counterattacks and casualties. This is a straw man.

My point was that before the CIA began interrogating high-value terrorists, al-Qaeda was on the offensive, carrying out increasingly audacious and deadly attacks - from bombings of our embassies in East Africa, to the attack on the U.S.S. Cole, and ultimately the attacks of 9/11. After the CIA began interrogating high-value terrorists, al-Qaeda did not succeed in carrying out any attacks of a similar scale against American interests at home or abroad. Assassinations and battles in combat zones have led to tragic deaths, but they are not  the equivalent of blowing up two U.S. embassies or flying airplanes into the Pentagon and the World Trade Center.

Mattera mistakes U.S. temperatures for global temperatures

Mattera: "Not only is 1934 the hottest year on record, but five of the ten warmest years have transpired before World War II." From the chapter on global warming in Obama Zombies:

Which is it, Obama Zombies? Warming or cooling? I've got to know! You see, folks, meteorologist Obama can't predict the weather tomorrow, but he can predict a global climate catastrophe? Even Al Gore's most ardent believers have come to realize this fact, which is why now they prefer the term climate change to global warming. It's more vague that way.

Not only is 1934 the hottest year on record, but five of the ten warmest years have transpired before World War II -- well before we started pumping globs of CO2 into the atmosphere. So what was causing global warming in 1934? [Page 106]

Mattera's data is for U.S. temperatures -- globally, the 10 hottest years on record have all occurred in past two decades. According to Mattera's source, the blog Daily Tech, 1934 was the hottest year on record for U.S. temperature data. Because regional temperatures vary greatly, scientists use global temperatures to analyze global climate change.

In fact, NOAA's analysis of global temperatures found 2001-2008 "among the ten warmest" in 130 years. NOAA's State of the Climate Global Analysis for 2009 stated: "The years 2001 through 2008 each rank among the ten warmest years of the 130-year (1880-2009) record and 2009 was no exception." Contrary to Mattera's claim, none of the years "before World War II" are in the top 10 warmest years, which include only years from the past decade and two years from the 1990s. NOAA also provides the following chart:

Mattery falsely suggests that recent warming is "largely a function" of the sun 

Mattera: "[W]arming and cooling are largely a function of ... the sun!" In the chapter of Obama Zombies titled "Global-Warming Ghouls," Mattera writes:

But many of those who study atmospheric conditions believe the exact opposite: that the mild, barely noticeable warming the temperature has seen over the last hundred years is the result of normal planetary motions and natural climate changes. They understand that warming and cooling are largely a function of -- drum roll, please -- the sun! Yes, the sun, that massive firey ball in the sky that enables life on our planet. A bombshell, I know. [Page 93]

Sun cannot explain the recent increase in global temperatures. Aware that the sun has driven past changes in climate, scientists studying the global warming of the past half-century have scrutinized data to distinguish natural variations in climate from those caused by external forces like human activity. According to the most recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, "Most of the observed increase in globally-averaged temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic GHG (greenhouse gas) concentrations." The authors of the IPCC report noted that the phrase "very likely" translates to greater than 90 percent probability. The IPCC further reported that "it is very unlikely [less than a 10-percent chance] that the contribution from solar forcing to the warming of the last 50 years was larger than that from greenhouse gas forcing." NewScientist reported in May 2007 that "there is no correlation between solar activity and the strong warming during the past 40 years. Claims that this is the case have not stood up to scrutiny." Climate blog Skeptical Science has also noted that "a number of independent measurements of solar activity indicate the sun has shown a slight cooling trend since 1960, over the same period that global temperatures have been warming."

Mattera falsely claims temperatures are "down to where they were in 1930"

Mattera: Cooling period "has brought temperatures down to where they were in 1930." In Obama Zombies, Mattera writes:

But if you're losing sleep over such a mild warming in the last century, don't. We've now entered a cooling period, one that has brought temperatures down to where they were in 1930. [Page 93]

In fact, global average temperatures are now higher than in 1930. Yearly global temperature data from both NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) and from the National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) indicate that the global average temperature in 1930 was lower than the global average temperature for any year in the decade 2000-2009, and was indeed lower than any year after 1976. NOAA also provides the following chart of global temperature anomalies, which it notes are calculated as departures from the 20^th century average:

Mattera cites dubious Inhofe report to challenge consensus on global warming

Mattera cites Sen. Inhofe's list of "more than 650 top scientists ... who have challenged the global-alarming hysteria." In Obama Zombies, Mattera writes:

The final tool used to lobotomize aspiring Obama Zombies involves the "scientific" shell game promulgated by the left against America's youth.

If a lie is repeated often enough, it's thought to be true. And nowhere is this more true than in the false notion that a "consensus" of scientists is that man is responsible for warming the planet. It's not true. But Obama Zombies don't want a real debate. They want an Al Gore slide show that leaves folks feeling all warm and fuzzy about saving polar bears.

U.S. senator Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma has himself assembled a growing list of more than 650 top scientists from around the globe who have challenged the global-alarming hysteria proffered by the liberal machine. Consensus? What consensus? Slowly, even the reliably liberal media are noticing. [Page 104]

Questions have been raised about legitimacy of list. The original version of the list, posted on Sen. Inhofe's Environment and Public Works Press blog, included the names of over 400 "prominent scientists" who supposedly disputed man-made global warming. According to Climate Progress editor Joseph Romm, many of the scientists included were not actually experts in climate science, and a number of those who were experts did not, in fact, deny anthropogenic climate change -- including George Waldenberger, who asked that his name be removed from the list. Inhofe's updated report (now up to a count of 700), still includes Waldenberger's name, and has come under criticism from The New Republic, Climate Progress, MSNBC's David Shuster, and others. The Center for Inquiry reviewed Inhofe's list and concluded that "while there are indeed some well respected scientists on the list, the vast majority are neither climate scientists, nor have they published in fields that bear directly on climate science."

Mattera falsely claims CO2 is not a pollutant that is causing the earth's temperature to rise

Mattera claims CO2 is not a pollutant. In Obama Zombies, Mattera writes:

So let's get to the basics. Is carbon dioxide a pollutant that is causing the earth's temperature to rise?

I'm gonna go with no.

Here's why: Try this experiment. Breathe in the air that you exhale. Now, let me know if you feel faint, feel nauseous, or as if you're about to die. After all, we human beings exhale carbon dioxide, for crying out loud! Perhaps Barack Obama forgot, but carbon dioxide is essential for life. Plants and crops depend on it. Some farmers even deliberately generate increased levels of CO2 to bulk up food production. More "pollution," anyone? [Page 105]

In fact, excessive CO2 discharges are considered pollutants. Scientists do not assert that carbon dioxide is inherently harmful. Rather, they point to the potential danger posed to the ecosystems and human welfare by excessive amounts of C0₂, as the Natural Resources Defense Council noted:

[A] pollutant is a substance that causes harm when present in excessive amounts. CO2 has been in the atmosphere since life on earth began, and in the right amounts CO2 is important for making the earth hospitable for continued life. But when too much CO2 is put into the atmosphere, it becomes harmful. We have long recognized this fact for other pollutants. For example, phosphorus is a valuable fertilizer, but in excess, it can kill lakes and streams by clogging them with a blanket of algae.

Supreme Court ruled in 2007 that Clean Air Act required EPA to examine greenhouse gases and that GHGs "fit well within" the Clean Air Act's "definition of 'air pollutant.' " In 2007, the Supreme Court ruled in Massachusetts v. EPA that "the Environmental Protection Agency violated the Clean Air Act by improperly declining to regulate new-vehicle emissions standards to control the pollutants that scientists say contribute to global warming," as The Washington Post reported. The court stated that "EPA identifies nothing suggesting that Congress meant to curtail EPA's power to treat greenhouse gases as air pollutants." After reviewing "decades of sound, peer-review, extensively evaluated scientific data," the EPA concluded that "six greenhouse gases [including carbon dioxide] taken in combination endanger both the public health and the public welfare of current and future generations."

Mattera falsely claims that because CO2 is less than 1 percent of atmosphere, rising levels are "nothing to worry about"

Mattera: "[R]ising carbon dioxide levels are nothing to worry about, since it comprises less than 1 percent of the atmosphere." In Obama Zombies, Mattera writes:

In any event, there's no need to become apoplectic over CO2. Geologist Dudley J. Hughes published a paper for the Heartland Institute pointing out that rising carbon dioxide levels are nothing to worry about, since it comprises less than 1 percent of the atmosphere. Nitrogen and oxygen, by contrast, cover about 99 percent. Hughes gives us a workable analogy to understand how absurd it is to say that CO2 has any meaningful effect in our vast atmosphere. "For simplicity, let us picture a football stadium with about 10,000 people in the stands. Assume each person represents a small volume of one type of gas....Carbon dioxide is represented as only about 4 parts in 10,000, the smallest volume of any major atmospheric gas. [Pages 105-106]

Carbon dioxide is the most important anthropogenic greenhouse gas. Although carbon dioxide is a small overall percentage of the atmosphere, as the most abundant greenhouse gas (GHG) after water vapor, carbon dioxide plays a significant role in the greenhouse effect, and changes in CO2 concentration can significantly alter the climate. As NOAA states, the "global concentration of CO₂ in our atmosphere today far exceeds the natural range over the last 650,000 years." Furthermore, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, while CO2 is a natural gas, the current high levels in the atmosphere are the result of "human activities, such as the burning of oil, coal and gas, and deforestation." These conclusions are supported by the 2007 United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's 2007 "Synthesis Report," which further states: "Carbon dioxide (CO2) is the most important anthropogenic GHG. Its annual emissions have grown between 1970 and 2004 by about 80%, from 21 to 38 gigatonnes (Gt), and represented 77% of total anthropogenic GHG emissions in 2004."

Mattera falsely suggests former NY Times reporter denies global warming is occurring 

Mattera suggests former Times reporter Revkin was "noticing" a lack of "consensus" among scientists. In the chapter of Obama Zombies titled "Global-Warming Ghouls," Mattera writes:

The final tool used to lobotomize aspiring Obama Zombies involves the "scientific" shell game promulgated by the left against America's youth.

If a lie is repeated often enough, it's thought to be true. And nowhere is this more true than in the false notion that a "consensus" of scientists is that man is responsible for warming the planet. It's not true. But Obama Zombies don't want a real debate. They want an Al Gore slide show that leaves folks feeling all warm and fuzzy about saving polar bears.

U.S. senator Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma has himself assembled a growing list of more than 650 top scientists from around the globe who have challenged the global-alarming hysteria proffered by the liberal machine. Consensus? What consensus? Slowly, even the reliably liberal media are noticing. Politico conceded that a growing accumulation of atmospheric data could signal that the "science behind global warming may still be too shaky to warrant cap-and-trade legislation," and the New York Times's environmental reporter Andrew Revkin acknowledged that "climate science is not a numbers game (there are heaps of signed statements by folks with advanced degrees on all sides of the issue.)"  [Page 104]

In fact, Revkin's position is that there is a "strong consensus" on human-caused global warming. In a February 24 New York Times article -- cited by Mattera on the very next page of Obama Zombies -- Revkin wrote: "As president-elect, Mr. Obama, making a video appearance at a California climate conference, began by saying that the science pointing to human-caused warming was beyond dispute -- a statement backed by a strong consensus among scientists."

Mattera falsely states that "we may be experiencing global cooling now"

Mattera : "We may be experiencing global cooling now." In the chapter of Obama Zombies titled "Global-Warming Ghouls," Mattera writes:

Basically, our world doesn't have a thermostat that liberals can toy with. Our climate is always changing, from the Medieval Warming Period to the Little Ice Age, which followed that. There is no such thing as a global mean temperature. Besides, the infinitesimal "warming" that certain parts of the world are experiencing -- over the past hundred-plus years -- is nothing to write home to Mom about and is a far cry from saying kids in Jamaica are going to burst into flames one of these days.

But the Jamaican kid can relax. In fact, let's buy him a sweater, because we may be experiencing global cooling now. In 2008, outlets that track global temperatures worldwide released data showing that the earth faced cooling cycles large enough to negate the warming documented over the past hundred years. Baghdad, for instance, experienced snowfall for the very first time.[Page 106]

Every year from 2001-2009 is in top 10 warmest years on record. Contrary to Mattera's claim that recent data show "that the earth faced cooling cycles large enough to negate the warming documented over the past hundred years," the National Climatic Data Center states that every year from 2001-2009 was in the top 10 warmest years on decade. The following graph from NASA shows the context of 2008 (the year Mattera cited) which was the least warm year in the warmest decade on record, and was certainly not cool "enough to negate the warming documented over the past hundred years":

AP: "Statisticians Reject Global Cooling" and have identified a "distinct decades-long upward trend." In an experiment, the Associated Press "gave temperature data to four independent statisticians and asked them to look for trends, without telling them what the numbers represented." Their conclusion was that the "experts found no true temperature declines over time." From the AP's October 26, 2009, article:

Global warming skeptics base their claims on an unusually hot year in 1998. Since then, they say, temperatures have dropped -- thus, a cooling trend. But it's not that simple.

Since 1998, temperatures have dipped, soared, fallen again and are now rising once more. Records kept by the British meteorological office and satellite data used by climate skeptics still show 1998 as the hottest year. However, data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and NASA show 2005 has topped 1998. Published peer-reviewed scientific research generally cites temperatures measured by ground sensors, which are from NOAA, NASA and the British, more than the satellite data.

The recent Internet chatter about cooling led NOAA's climate data center to re-examine its temperature data. It found no cooling trend.

"The last 10 years are the warmest 10-year period of the modern record," said NOAA climate monitoring chief Deke Arndt. "Even if you analyze the trend during that 10 years, the trend is actually positive, which means warming."

The AP sent expert statisticians NOAA's year-to-year ground temperature changes over 130 years and the 30 years of satellite-measured temperatures preferred by skeptics and gathered by scientists at the University of Alabama in Huntsville.

Statisticians who analyzed the data found a distinct decades-long upward trend in the numbers, but could not find a significant drop in the past 10 years in either data set. The ups and downs during the last decade repeat random variability in data as far back as 1880.

Saying there's a downward trend since 1998 is not scientifically legitimate, said David Peterson, a retired Duke University statistics professor and one of those analyzing the numbers.

2000-2009 was "by far" the warmest decade on record. Scientific organizations agree that 2000-2009 was the warmest decade on record. The U.K. Met Office stated on December 7 that "[t]he first decade of this century has been, by far, the warmest decade on the instrumental record" and that "despite 1998 being the warmest individual year -- the last ten years have clearly been the warmest period in the 160-year record of global surface temperature, maintained jointly by the Met Office Hadley Centre and the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia." NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, the National Climatic Data Center of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the World Meteorological Organisation have all released similar findings.

Terrorism

Hannity attacks Democrats for "treating the war" against terrorists "as a criminal prosecution." In Conservative Victory, Hannity writes:

On nearly every issue since the war on terror bean, Democrats have stood for the wrong principles and policies and have proved incompetent in carrying out their own policies as well.

[...]

They reverted to the Clinton-era position of treating the war as a criminal prosecution, replete with constitutional protections for enemy combatants, and replaced what should have been military tribunals held outside the mainland with trials in U.S. civilian courts. [Pages 220-221]

Reagan: "We must act against the criminal menace of terrorism with the full weight of the law." In a July 1985 speech, Reagan stated:

Now, much needs to be done by all of us in the community of civilized nations. We must act against the criminal menace of terrorism with the full weight of the law, both domestic and international. We will act to indict, apprehend, and prosecute those who commit the kind of atrocities the world has witnessed in recent weeks. We can act together as free peoples who wish not to see our citizens kidnapped or shot or blown out of the skies -- just as we acted together to rid the seas of piracy at the turn of the last century. And incidentally, those of you who are legal scholars will note the law's description of pirates: "hostis humanis'' -- the enemies of all mankind. There can be no place on Earth left where it is safe for these monsters to rest or train or practice their cruel and deadly skills. We must act together, or unilaterally if necessary, to ensure that terrorists have no sanctuary anywhere.

Official policy of Reagan administration: "Terrorists are criminals." In a 1987 study by Yale University law professor Paul Gewirtz and Yale Law School graduate Chad Golder showed that among Supreme Court justices at that time, Reagan's four appointees - then-Chief Justice William Rehnquist, then-Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, and Justices Andrew Kennedy and Antonin Scalia - were among the five most frequent practitioners of at least one brand of judicial activism -- the tendency to strike down statutes passed by Congress.

A 2007 study by Cass R. Sunstein (subsequently named by President Obama to head the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs) and University of Chicago law professor Thomas Miles used a different measurement of judicial activism -- the tendency of judges to strike down decisions by federal regulatory agencies. Sunstein and Miles found that by this definition, Reagan's four appointees were among the five justices most likely to engage in "judicial activism."

To back up his argument, Thiessen claims FBI agent, federal judges, members of Congress and others are wrong or lying

Thiessen claim: FBI agent and interrogator Ali Soufan "knows nothing about" the CIA program and makes "untrue" statements. Thiessen repeatedly claims that Ali Soufan, who participated in the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah and other detainees and who has strongly criticized the CIA interrogation program as counterproductive, is wrong or lying.

• Thiessen writes: "Contrary to the claims later made by some critics (such as FBI agent Ali Soufan), the CIA did not send a bunch of inexperienced people to question high-value detainees." [p. 46]
• Thiessen writes: 

In a New York Times op-ed in April 2009, Soufan wrote:

Along with another F.B.I. agent, and with several C.I.A. officers present, I questioned [Zubaydah] from March to June 2002, before the harsh techniques were introduced later in August. Under traditional methods, he provided us with important actionable intelligence. We discovered, for example, that Khalid Sheikh Mohamed was the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks. Abu Zubaydah also told us about Jose Padilla, the so-called dirty bomber. (emphasis added)

This, Justice Department documents indicate, is simply untrue. In October 2009, the Department released a revised version of its March 2009 Inspector General's Report on the FBI's involvement in detainee interrogations. In that report, the other FBI agent involved in Zubaydah's interrogation (referred to by the alias "Agent Gibson") said it was the CIA -- not Soufan -- that got the information on Padilla. [p. 86]

• Thiessen writes:

Ali Soufan, the FBI agent and CIA critic, says: "When they are in pain, people will say anything to get the pain to stop. Most of the time, they will lie, make up anything to make you stop hurting them....That means the information you're getting is useless."

What this statement reveals is that Soufan knows nothing about how the CIA actually employed enhanced interrogation techniques. [p. 103]

•  Thiessen writes:

As Ali Soufan writes, "The plot to attack the Library Tower....was thwarted in 2002, and Mr. Mohammed was not arrested until 2003."

It is true that Masran and another operative in the plot were captured before KSM, and that this set back plans for the West Coast attack. Yet when KSM was taken into custody thirteen months after Masran, virtually all of the other key operatives in the Hambali network that was to carry out the West Coast plot were still at large. Masran did not tell us about the plot, or give these operatives up. It was only after the CIA's enhanced interrogation of KSM that the agency was able to track down these operatives and take them off the streets. To buy the argument that the threat to the Library Tower was over before KSM's capture, you would have to accept the premise that if Majid Khan...and Zubair...and Hambali...and Lillie...and Gun Gun...and the fourteen members of the Ghuraba cell were all left at large and unmolested, they would not have eventually carried out the West Coast plot.

This flies in the face of logic. [pp. 105-106]

• Thiessen writes: "I asked Peckham about criticism of the program from those, like FBI interrogator Ali Soufan, who say that coercive interrogations were ineffective and unnecessary. Peckham replied: 'Well, I don't think he really knows about the program, is the first thing I'd say. The second thing I'd say is I really just was not convinced that normal criminal justice FBI techniques were going to be effective in the cases we were dealing with.' " [pp. 114-15]

Thiessen claim: Sen. John McCain makes a "false analogy" when he compares treatment of detainees to North Vietnamese POWs. Thiessen writes: "Another false analogy compares the CIA's treatment of al Qaeda terrorists to the treatment our POWs received at the hands of the North Vietnamese. Unfortunately, one of those making this specious argument is Senator John McCain." [p. 158] Thiessen then quotes several former POWs held by North Vietnam and writes on page 162: "These men know more about torture than all of the CIA's critics combined -- and they say unequivocally that what the CIA did was not torture."

Thiessen claim: Federal civilian judge and former JAG Evan Wallach falsely compares CIA techniques to ones used by Japanese in World War II. Thiessen writes:

Perhaps the most dishonest comparison with the techniques of Imperial Japan comes from Evan Wallach, a judge on the United States Court of International Trade, who served in the United States Army Judge Advocate General's Corps during the Persian Gulf War. In a Washington Post op-ed, Wallach wrote: "The United States knows quite a bit about waterboarding. The U.S. government...has not only condemned the use of water torture but has severely punished those who applied it. After World War II, we convicted several Japanese soldiers for waterboarding American and Allied prisoners of war." He goes on to provide carefully selected snippets of testimony that make the waterboarding by the Japanese appear analogous to what the CIA did to al Qaeda terrorists. It is not. [p. 142]

Thiessen claim: The former head of the U.K.'s legal system Lord Chancellor Falconer, Amnesty International, and Human Rights Watch issue "calumnies, plain and simple." Thiessen writes:

Thanks to these critics, the name "Guantanamo" has become virtually synonymous with torture and abuse. Amnesty International has declared Guantanamo "the gulag of our time." Human Rights Watch has called it "the Bermuda Triangle of human rights." And Britain's Lord Chancellor, Lord Falconer (the man who heads the UK's legal system, including the notorious Wormwood Scrubs prison), has condemned the existence of Guantanamo as a "shocking affront to democracy."

These are calumnies, plain and simple. Guantanamo Bay is not a "gulag"; it is a model detention center -- a place where terrorists are treated with the humanity that they would deny their victims in an instant if given the chance. [pp. 278-79]

Thiessen claim: Atlantic blogger Andrew Sullivan's "understanding of the Catholic teaching is wrong." Thiessen writes

In an open letter to President Bush, published in the Atlantic Monthly, Andrew Sullivan (a self-described "wayward Catholic") declares, "Our faith tells us that what you authorized is an absolute evil. By absolute evil, I mean something that is never morally justified" (emphasis in original). Sullivan goes on, "Torture has no defense whatsoever in Christian morality. There are no circumstances in which it can be justified, let alone integrated as a formal program within a democratic government. The Catholic catechism states, 'Torture which uses physical or moral violence to extract confessions...is contrary to respect for the person and for human dignity.' "

Sullivan's understanding of the Catholic teaching is wrong. [p. 187]

Thiessen claim: Vanity Fair's Christopher Hitchens tried to prove waterboarding is torture, but actually proved that it isn't. Thiessen quotes Hitchens' reaction to voluntarily undergoing waterboarding. Thiessen then writes:

[Hitchens] then adds: "I apply the Abraham Lincoln test for moral casuistry: 'If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong.' Well, then, if waterboarding does not constitute torture, then there is no such thing as torture." (Remember that term: "moral casuistry.")

In undergoing this experiment, Hitchens intended to prove that waterboarding is torture. Instead, he proved it is not. There is a legal definition of torture, which we will explore in a moment. But there is also a common sense definition: If you are willing to try it to see what it feels like, it is not torture.

If Hitchens's tormentors had offered to attach electrodes to his body, and then turn on the switch, would he have tried it to see what it feels like? I seriously doubt it. [p. 128]

Thiessen claim: CNN reporter Christiane Amanpour is "dishonest and shameful." After describing Christiane Amanpour's reaction to torture conducted by the Khmer Rouge and comparison of tactics to ones used by U.S. interrogators, Thiessen writes:

For Amanpour to compare this to the interrogations employed by the CIA is either willful ignorance or something far worse. Surely she knows that the CIA never submerged any al Qaeda prisoner into a "life-size box full of water, handcuffed to the side so he cannot escape or raise his head to breathe." Surely she knows that the CIA did not remove the fingernails of prisoners or kill children before their parents' eyes, or mutilate their genitals, or carry them on bamboo rods, as was done at S-21. Surely she knows that more than 14,000 people were not killed at CIA interrogation sites, as they had been at S-21. For her to compare the CIA's lawful interrogation of al Qaeda terrorists to the Cambodian genocide that killed 2 million people is dishonest and shameful. [pp. 140-41]

Thiessen claim: Sen. Whitehouse, Eric Holder, The Washington Post, and Agence France Press make "false comparisons" and "vile accusation[s]." After attacking Amanpour, Thiessen writes:

Sadly, Amanpour is not alone in making this vile accusation. Democratic Senator Sheldon Whitehouse has declared on the Senate floor that our intelligence community "descended into interrogation techniques...of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge." At his confirmation hearings, Obama Attorney General Eric Holder declared: "If you look at the history of the use of that technique used by the Khmer Rouge...I agree with you, Mr. Chairman, waterboarding is torture." The Washington Post has reported that "The practice as used by the CIA bears similarities to the methods of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia." Agence France Press has written that "Waterboarding [was] a staple of brutal interrogations...[of] Cambodia's Khmer Rouge regime." And it goes on and on.

These false comparisons shoot across the world on the Internet and 24 hour cable news, and are taken as fact by millions. [p. 141]

Thiessen claim: Sen. Kennedy's accusation about waterboarding is "wrong." Thiessen writes:

For example, in 2006 Senator Ted Kennedy cited the case of Yukio Asano, a Japanese officer convicted of war crimes, as proof that we prosecuted Japanese war criminals for the same practices as the CIA. Kennedy declared, "Asano was sentenced to 15 years of hard labor. We punished people with 15 years of hard labor when waterboarding was used against Americans in World War II."

Kennedy's comparison, which has been widely echoed by the critics, is wrong. First, Asano was convicted of abusing American POWs who were lawful combatants and should have enjoyed the full protections of the Geneva Conventions. Second, the form of the water torture Asano used was not comparable to CIA waterboarding. And third, Asano was convicted of far more than simply water torture. [p. 149]

Thiessen claim: Sen. Dodd issued "scurrilous" attack on waterboarding. Thiessen writes:

[I]n 2008, Senator Christopher Dodd declared in a speech on the Senate floor, "Waterboarding [is] a technique invented by the Spanish Inquisition, perfected by the Khmer Rouge, and in between, banned -- originally banned for excessive cruelty -- by the Gestapo!"

Consider that for a moment: Senator Dodd actually believes that the techniques applied by his own country were considered excessively cruel by the Gestapo. I asked his office whether he stood by this statement. They refused repeated requests for an answer.

[...]

We have yet to hear any apology from Andrew Sullivan or Christopher Dodd. To the contrary, on his official Senate website, Dodd has a video of himself delivering the scurrilous speech, as though he is proud of it. [pp. 157-58]

Thiessen claim: Durbin draws "vile comparison" regarding waterboarding. Thiessen writes:

Dodd is not alone in drawing this vile comparison. In 2005, Senator Dick Durbin, the second ranking Democrat in the Senate, stood on the Senate floor and compared the techniques used by our military at Guantanamo Bay to those "done by Nazis, Soviets in their gulags or some mad regime -- Pol Pot or others -- that had no concern for human beings." A few days later, after controversy erupted over this remark, Durbin slunk back to the floor and delivered a partial apology: "I am sorry if anything I said caused any offense or pain to those who have such bitter memories of the Holocaust, the greatest moral tragedy of our time. Nothing, nothing should ever be said to demean or diminish that moral tragedy." [p. 157]

Thiessen claim: Pelosi "looked the press in the and lied." Thiessen responded to Pelosi's statement regarding waterboarding that "[n]o letter or anything else is going to stop them from doing what they're going to do":

Pelosi knew when she made this excuse that she had the power to change CIA policy when it comes to covert operations, because she herself had done it. In an interview for this book in 2009, a former high-ranking intelligence official told me that, in the same period that Pelosi admits she learned about waterboarding, she personally intervened with the White House to stop a different covert action program -- and succeeded. "Speaker Pelosi herself has stopped covert action programs that she has been briefed on, by going to the White House [to object]," this official told me. "In that very same time frame, Pelosi had gone back to the White House in a separate covert action program, expressed strong opposition to it. And the remarkable part to me, the White House backed off on the program, changed one aspect of the program -- it's still classified so I can't get into it, but it had nothing to do with terrorism. One aspect of it, she was particularly opposed to. And literally, the finding was pulled back and revised."

He pointed me to a brief, little-noticed item in the September 27, 2004 edition of Time magazine. This item noted that Pelosi had objected to "a secret 'finding' written several months ago proposing a covert CIA operation to aid candidates favored by Washington" in the Iraqi elections that year. Iran was funneling millions of dollars to back pro-Iranian parties, and according to Time,

A source says the idea was to help such candidates -- whose opponents might be receiving covert backing from other countries, like Iran....House minority leader Nancy Pelosi "came unglued" when she learned about what a source described as a plan for "the CIA to put an operation in place to affect the outcome of the elections." Pelosi had strong words with National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice in a phone call about the issue....A senior U.S. official hinted that, under pressure from the Hill, the Administration scaled back its original plans.

In other words, in the very same period that Speaker Pelosi admits that she learned about waterboarding -- and did nothing -- she personally intervened with the White House to stop a different covert action program -- and succeeded. This gives lie to Pelosi's claim that she thought she was powerless to stop CIA waterboarding. At the time, she told a packed Capitol Hill press conference that "no letter or anything else is going to stop them from doing what they're going to do," she knew full well that she had personally stopped them from "doing what they're going to do" in a separate covert operation. She looked the press in the eye and lied. [pp. 221-223]

Thiessen claim: Jane Mayer's reporting that the State Department had drafted a Bush to give a speech closing the CIA detention program is "wrong." Thiessen writes in Courting Disaster:

Mayer writes:

It turns out the speech went through many drafts. An earlier version had included a clarion-like call to close down the CIA's secret prison program for good. This had survived edits and rewrites until Vice President Cheney held a short, private meeting with President Bush. Afterward, the President made no more promises to end America's experiment with secret detention.

As the author of that speech I can tell you: The address went through sixteen drafts, all of them marked "Top Secret/SCI" -- the highest level of classification in the federal government. Not one of those sixteen drafts included "a clarion-like call to close down the CIA's secret prison program for good." Such a call had not "survived edits and rewrites" -- it was never in there in the first place.

I asked Mayer where she got this account. She told me that she was referring to a "rival draft" of the speech, prepared by the State Department (the purported Bellinger/Waxman draft). I told her there was no rival draft. She replied in an email:

It would be misleading to suggest that there was no rival version of the speech on the CIA's detention program, which President Bush delivered in September 2006 -- there was absolutely another version -- it was drafted by top State Department officials and it had the Secretary of State's support. It was circulated in the White House. Those familiar with it say it was killed in Vice President Cheney's Office.

Mayer added,

There was a strong dispute over what that speech should say, and...top administration foreign policy officials, including the Secretary of State, backed a fully-finished draft that called for the secret detention system to be closed. The language submitted by the State Department did not appear in the final speech. If you never saw the draft from State, then someone killed it before sharing it with you. I have, as I indicated earlier, read it myself.

I asked Steve Hadley -- who would have seen any draft "circulated in the White House" -- if he knew of a rival draft of the speech. He did not. Neither did J.D. Crouch, who ran the entire interagency process in preparation for the speech. Neither did CIA Director Mike Hayden. Neither did former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice (who Mayer claims "backed a fully-finished draft of the speech").

And most interesting of all, neither did John Bellinger, the purported author of the rival draft.

To be sure, Bellinger had a very different vision for the speech than the one the president delivered, and I can attest that he submitted many edits designed to change the emphasis of the speech (mostly moving language about our commitment to the rule of law to the front before the vigorous defense of the program). But Bellinger told me definitively that he did not write a speech draft from scratch.

I asked to speak to Mayer's source or see a copy of the "rival" speech, but Mayer apparently did not feel at liberty to share either. The bottom line: there was never a rival draft -- supported by the Secretary of State, circulated within the White House, killed by Vice President Cheney -- that contained a "clarion call" to shut down the CIA interrogation program once and for all. Mayer got the story, delivered in her book with such assured confidence, wrong. [pp.64-66]

In Wash. Post piece, Thiessen defends attack on DOJ lawyers by claiming everyone else is wrong

In Courting Disaster, Thiessen attacks DOJ lawyers who represented detainees, and ones that worked at law firms in which other lawyers represented detainees. From Courting Disaster:

Some argue that, with the exception of [Neal] Katyal, none of these lawyers directly represented terrorists, so they should not be held responsible for the actions of other lawyers in their firms. That might be true for a junior partner. But the fact is, [Department of Justice officials Eric] Holder, [Lanny] Breuer, [David] Ogden, [Thomas] Perelli [sic], and [Tony] West were all senior partners at their firms at the time when these firms were deciding whether or not to accept terrorist clients. They had the power to say no and stop this work on behalf of America's terrorist enemies. They chose not to do so.

I spoke to several partners at major law firms that have chosen not to represent terrorists. None wanted to criticize their competitors on the record, but all agreed that the work would not have gone forward without the approval of Holder and his colleagues. One attorney explained that law firms pride themselves on collegiality, and if one or more partners expressed opposition, that is sufficient to kill a pro bono project. He said the reason his firm does not represent terrorists is because partners like him spoke up and made clear they opposed the firm doing such work. If such opposition could stop this work at his firm, this lawyer says, Holder could have done the same at Covington. "Eric Holder's law firm did this with the full blessing and support of Eric Holder," he says. "He's responsible for it." [pp. 257-58]

In Courting Disaster, Thiessen claims DOJ lawyers who took on detainee cases "are aiding and abetting America's enemies." From Courting Disaster:

The attorneys fighting these cases -- some intentionally, others unwittingly -- are practicing what has come to be called "lawfare." They are aiding and abetting America's enemies by filing lawsuits on their behalf, and turning U.S. courtrooms into a new battlefield in the war on terror. These lawsuits tie our government in knots and make it more difficult for our military and intelligence officials to defend our country from terrorist dangers. And they undermine America's moral authority by echoing the enemy's propaganda that America systematically abuses human rights. [p. 274]

After attacks on DOJ lawyers come under withering criticism from left and right, Thiessen claims all his critics are wrong in Wash. Post piece. In a March 11 piece for The Washington Post, Thiessen Ken Starr; Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson; Larry Thompson, the former number two official at the Bush Justice Department; Peter Keisler, who served as acting attorney general under President Bush; senior Bush defense department officials Matthew Waxman, Charles "Cully" Stimson, and Daniel Dell'Orto; Bush associate White House counsel Bradley Berenson; former top advisers to Condoleezza Rice Philip Zelikow and John Bellinger III; Slate.com columnist Dahlia Lithwick; Atlanta Journal-Constitution columnist Jay Bookman; Col. Morris Davis, former chief prosecutor for the military commissions; Orrin Kerr, who served as special counsel to Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) during the confirmation hearings for Justice Sonia Sotomayor; and Fox News host Bill O'Reilly. Former Bush administration Attorney General Michael Mukasey has also criticized the attack. Previously, Bush administration Solicitor General Ted Olson also defended lawyers who represented detainees from attacks.

Thiessen's claim: There were no terrorist attacks on U.S. soil since 9-11

Thiessen falsely claimed that there had been no terrorist attacks on U.S. soil since 9-11. In Courting Disaster: How the CIA Kept America Safe and How Barack Obama Is Inviting the Next Attack, Thiessen falsely claimed that no terrorist attacks occurred on U.S. soil since 9-11 during President Bush's term in office. On page 376, Thiessen writes: "When President Bush left office, America marked 2,688 days without another terrorist attack on its soil. It was an achievement few thought possible in the days after September 11, 2001."

Reality: There have been terrorist attacks on U.S. soil

2001 anthrax attacks. A March 2004 State Department report on "Significant Terrorist Incidents, 1961-2003" quotes then-Attorney General John Ashcroft saying of the letters containing anthrax mailed to various targets: "When people send anthrax through the mail to hurt people and invoke terror, it's a terrorist act." Five people were killed as a result of those letters in the autumn of 2001.

2002 attack against El Al ticket counter at LAX. In July 2002, Hesham Mohamed Hadayet opened fire at an El Al Airlines ticket counter at Los Angeles International Airport killing two people and wounding four others before being shot dead. A 2004 Justice Department report stated that Hadayet's case had been "officially designated as an act of international terrorism."

2002 DC-area sniper. The state of Virginia indicted Washington, D.C.-area sniper John Allen Muhammad -- along with his accomplice, a minor at the time -- on terrorism charges for one of the murders he committed during a three-week shooting spree across Maryland, Virginia, and Washington, D.C. Muhammad was convicted, sentenced to death, and subsequently executed for the crime.

2006 UNC SUV attack. In March 2006, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill graduate Mohammed Reza Taheri-azar drove an SUV into an area of campus, striking nine pedestrians. According to reports, Taheri-azar said he acted because he wanted to "avenge the deaths or murders of Muslims around the world." Taheri-azar also reportedly stated in a letter: "I was aiming to follow in the footsteps of one of my role models, Mohammad Atta, one of the 9/11/01 hijackers, who obtained a doctorate degree."

Thiessen's claim: Since CIA began interrogating terrorists, there have been no successful Al Qaeda attacks on U.S. interests abroad

Thiessen falsely claimed that there have been no Al Qaeda attacks on the United States' interests abroad since 9-11. On page 102, Thiessen writes:

Here is statistical data that is indisputable: In the decade before the CIA began interrogating captured terrorists, al Qaeda launched repeated attacks against America: the first World Trade Center bombing, the bombing of our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, the attack on the USS Cole, and ultimately the attacks of September 11, 2001. In the eight years since the CIA began interrogating captured terrorists, al Qaeda has not succeeded in launching one single attack on the homeland or American interests abroad. [p. 102]

Reality: There were several post-9-11 terrorist attacks on U.S. interests

Al Qaeda blamed for attack on U.S. consulate in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. According to the BBC, in 2004, gunmen "used explosives to break through the fortified entrance" to the U.S. consulate in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, and killed "five non-U.S. staff" of the consulate. CNN reported that "[a] Saudi group linked to al Qaeda claimed responsibility" for the attack and that a "U.S. State Department official told CNN that al Qaeda was suspected in the attack."

Al Qaeda blamed for attack on U.S. embassy in Yemen. From a September 18, 2008, Washington Post article:

Attackers used vehicle bombs, rocket-propelled grenades and automatic weapons to mount a coordinated assault on the U.S. Embassy here Wednesday, leaving 10 guards and -civilians dead outside the main gate but failing to breach the walled compound. No Americans were killed.

Yemeni officials and experts on al-Qaeda said an aggressive new generation of the group's leaders in Yemen was responsible for the assault, the deadliest attack on a U.S. target in this country since the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole.

[...]

"The attack on the U.S. Embassy was retaliation by al-Qaeda for the measures taken by the government to fight the terrorists," said Foreign Minister Abou Bakr al-Qurbi, according to a statement.

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said in Washington that the multiphased attack bore "all the hallmarks" of al-Qaeda.

Al Qaeda blamed for attack on Westerners' housing compounds in Riyadh. The U.S. State Department's "Significant Terrorist Incidents 1961-2003: A Brief Chronology" states:

Truck Bomb Attacks in Saudi Arabia, May 12, 2003: Suicide bombers attacked three residential compounds for foreign workers in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The 34 dead included 9 attackers, 7 other Saudis, 9 U.S. citizens, and one citizen each from the United Kingdom, Ireland, and the Philippines. Another American died on June 1. It was the first major attack on U.S. targets in Saudi Arabia since the end of the war in Iraq. Saudi authorities arrested 11 al-Qaida suspects on May 28.

Al Qaeda affiliate reportedly struck Marriott hotel in Jakarta. The USA Today reported that then-undersecretary of Treasury for terrorism and financial intelligence Stuart Levey said that a May 2003 attack on a Marriott hotel in Jakarta, Indonesia, was "financed by smuggling $30,000 in cash for each attack from al-Qaeda to allied terrorists in Asia." Discussing the bombing in Jakarta and other attacks, Vice President Dick Cheney also tied the attack by Jemaah Islamiyah to Al Qaeda:

In one sense from Bali and Jakarta on one end, to Madrid on the other. They've had attacks across that spectra of geography in the last couple of years. It is a group -- while the al Qaeda is at the center, al Qaeda in Arabic means "the base," and it's a -- there's a loose affiliation. It's not a rigid hierarchy.

You'll find for example, in various locations around the world there will be organizations like -- say in, Indonesia, the Jemaah Islamiyah, JI it's called for short. They've been responsible for the attacks on Bali that killed a couple of hundred Australians here at a tourist area a couple of years ago, blowing up the Marriott Hotel in Jakarta. Most recently they set off a truck bomb outside the Australian Embassy. JI is a branch of an extremist view of Islam that's sort of home-grown. They've got their own local issues they're concerned about, but they now have a relationship with al Qaeda. A senior guy in Indonesia named Hambali went to the training camps in Afghanistan that they ran back in the '90s, subsequently received funding from al Qaeda, went back then to Indonesia, and was behind some of the major attacks there. So you've got this sort of home-grown, but nonetheless affiliated, extremist operation going now in Indonesia. You'll find the same thing if you go to Morocco, where they had the attack in Casablanca; in Turkey, Istanbul, and so forth.

Thiessen's claim: Due to interrogation of Zubaydah, CIA learned KSM's code name, which led to his capture

From Courting Disaster:

Initially, Zubaydah offered up some nominal information that he thought we already knew, in order to give the impression he was cooperating. Some of this nominal information turned out to be extremely important. For example, Zubaydah indentified [sic] Khalid Sheikh Mohammed as the mastermind behind the 9/11 attacks, and revealed that his code name was "Muktar." This revelation allowed CIA officials to comb through previously collected intelligence on both names and connect the dots -- opening up new leads that allowed the agency to pursue and eventually capture KSM. [pp. 82-3]

Reality: 9/11 Commission found that CIA knew KSM's code name before September 11

9/11 Commission: CIA Bin Laden unit discovered KSM's code name in August 2001. Thiessen's claim that the U.S. learned KSM's code name from Zubaydah's interrogation -- what Thiessen calls a "revelation -- echoes a claim made by former President Bush in a 2006 speech. Contrary to these claims, the 9/11 Commission found that the CIA learned of the code name in August 2001, before the September 11 attacks and before Zubaydah was captured. From Chapter 8 of the 9-11 Commission report:

The final piece of the puzzle arrived at the CIA's Bin Ladin unit on August 28 in a cable reporting that KSM's nickname was Mukhtar. No one made the connection to the reports about Mukhtar that had been circulated in the spring. This connection might also have underscored concern about the June reporting that KSM was recruiting terrorists to travel, including to the United States.

Thiessen's claim: Interrogation of KSM led to thwarting of Heathrow airport plot

From Courting Disaster:

KSM's questioning, and that of other captured terrorists, produces more than 6,000 intelligence reports, which are shared across the intelligence community, as well as with our allies across the world.

In one of these reports, KSM describes in detail the revisions he made to his failed 1994-1995 plan known as the "Bojinka plot" -- formulated with his nephew Ramzi Yousef -- to blow up a dozen airplanes carrying some 4,000 passengers over the Pacific Ocean.

Years later, an observant CIA officer notices that the activities of a cell being followed by British authorities appears to match KSM's description of his plans for a Bojinka-style attack. He shares this information with British authorities. At first they are skeptical but soon they acknowledge that this is in fact what the cell is planning. Intelligence from terrorists at Guantanamo Bay provides further insight into the cell's plans for the use of liquid explosives.

In an operation that involves unprecedented intelligence cooperation between our countries, British officials proceed to unravel the plot. On the night of August 9, 2006 -- just over a month before the fifth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks -- they launch a series of raids in a northeast London suburb that leads to the arrest of two dozen al Qaeda terrorist suspects. They find a USB thumb drive in the pocket of one of the me with security details for Heathrow airport, and information on seven trans-Atlantic flights that were scheduled to take off within hours of each other:

[...]

And still fewer realize that the terrorists' true intentions in this plot were uncovered thanks to critical information obtained through the interrogation of the man who conceived it: Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

This is only one of the many attacks stopped with the help of the CIA interrogation program established by the Bush administration in the wake of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. [pp.7-8]

Reality: Former head of Scotland Yard's anti-terror branch reportedly calls Thiessen's account "completely and utterly wrong"

Head of Scotland Yard's anti-terrorism branch in 2006 reportedly said: "Thiessen's "version of events is simply not recognized by those" involved in investigating 2006 Heathrow plot. In a March 29 New Yorker article reported that an uncooperative detainee froze to death at a CIA-run prison in Afghanistan code named the Salt Pit after a CIA case officer ordered the detainee stripped and left on a concrete floor overnight without blankets. On March 29, the Associated Press identified the detainee as Gul Rahman. The AP also reported that on the night Rahman died, the temperature dipped to 36 degrees. From the Washington Post article:

The largest CIA prison in Afghanistan was code-named the Salt Pit. It was also the CIA's substation and was first housed in an old brick factory outside Kabul. In November 2002, an inexperienced CIA case officer allegedly ordered guards to strip naked an uncooperative young detainee, chain him to the concrete floor and leave him there overnight without blankets. He froze to death, according to four U.S. government officials. The CIA officer has not been charged in the death.

The Salt Pit was protected by surveillance cameras and tough Afghan guards, but the road leading to it was not safe to travel and the jail was eventually moved inside Bagram Air Base. It has since been relocated off the base.

AP: Inspector General report found that Salt Pit officer's request for guidance were "largely ignored" by superiors. From the March 29 AP article:

At CIA headquarters, the agency's inspector general learned about the Salt Pit death and the existence of the agency's secret interrogation program. The inspector, John Helgerson, began an investigation into the death as well as a special review of the program.

[...]

When the inspector general's report on the Salt Pit death emerged, it focused on decisions made by two CIA officials: an inexperienced officer who had just taken his first overseas assignment to run the prison and the Kabul station chief, who managed CIA activities in Afghanistan. Their identities remain classified.

The report found that the Salt Pit officer displayed poor judgment in leaving the detainee in the cold. But it also indicated the officer made repeated requests to superiors for guidance that were largely ignored, according to two former U.S. intelligence officials.

Jane Mayer: Thiessen "downplays the C.I.A.'s brutality to the point of falsification" by not reporting on prisoner who froze to death. From Mayer's New Yorker article responding to Thiessen's book:

"Courting Disaster" downplays the C.I.A.'s brutality under the Bush Administration to the point of falsification. Thiessen argues that "the C.I.A. interrogation program did not inflict torture by any reasonable standard," and that there was "only one single case" in which "inhumane" techniques were used. That case, he writes, involved the detainee Abd al-Rahim Nashiri, whom a C.I.A. interrogator threatened with a handgun to the head, and with an electric drill. He claims that no detainee "deaths in custody took place in the C.I.A. interrogation program," failing to mention the case of a detainee who was left to freeze to death at a C.I.A.-run prison in Afghanistan.

Thiessen's claim: Gitmo status tribunals set up "[t]o ensure we continued to hold only those who needed to be detained"

From Courting Disaster:

To ensure we continued to hold only those who needed to be detained, in 2004 the Defense Department established a formal process at Guantanamo to review, again, the status of each detainee held on the island. They created what were called Combatant Status Review Tribunals (CSRTs), which held hearings to review the evidence against each detainee held at Guantanamo. [p.315]

Reality: Status tribunals set up to respond to SCOTUS case that Bush administration lost

Supreme Court: Bush administration stated that CSRT procedures "were designed to comply with the due process requirements identified" in prior Supreme Court case. From the majority opinion in the 2008 case Boumediene v. Bush:

After Hamdi [v. Rumsfeld], the Deputy Secretary of Defense established Combatant Status Review Tribunals (CSRTs) to determine whether individuals detained at Guantanamo were "enemy combatants," as the Department defines that term. See App. to Pet. for Cert. in No. 06-1195, p. 81a. A later memorandum established procedures to implement the CSRTs. See App. to Pet. for Cert. in No. 06-1196, p. 147. The Government maintains these procedures were designed to comply with the due process requirements identified by the plurality in Hamdi. See Brief for Respondents 10.

Army Reserve Lt. Col. who had served on CSRT panel: "CSRT process was not structured to yield reliable determinations" as to whether detainees were being properly held as enemy combatants. In July 2007 written testimony before the House Armed Services Committee, Army Reserve Lt. Col. Stephen Abraham said that he had served for several months in the Army office responsible for conducting CSRTs and had been on one CSRT panel. He stated (via Nexis):

In short, the CSRT process was not structured to yield reliable determinations as to whether the detainees held in Guantanamo were properly detained as enemy combatants. Rather, the Executive put in place a process to legitimize, without substantial corroborated evidence or any meaningful independent review, earlier determinations that were not the product of a thoughtful, deliberative process directed to the ascertainment of truth. The process ensured that panels would rubber-stamp decisions already made rather than applying independent judgment as to whether those decisions were correct. Under the guise of implementing the Supreme Court's decision in Rasul, the CSRT process completely frustrated it. In my opinion, it is time for Congress to restore the judicial mechanism - habeas corpus - that will both honor our commitment to justice and keep America secure.

Thiessen's claim: if waterboarding is torture, then use of waterboarding in training of U.S. troops must be torture

From Courting Disaster:

It is an established fact that waterboarding has been used on tens of thousands of American service members during SERE [Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape] training. According to the Department of Justice, waterboarding was used on 26,829 trainees from 1992 through 2001 in Air Force SERE training alone. To this day, the Navy continues to use waterboarding as a part of its SERE training.

If waterboarding met the standard of torture under U.S. law, this training would be illegal. There is no "training exception" in the law. (It would be illegal, for example, for our military to pull off fingernails of our troops or prod them with electronic shocks just short of electrocution as part of their training.) So if waterboarding Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was torture, then waterboarding American servicemen undergoing military survival training would be torture as well. [p. 163]

Reality: Bush administration, SERE trainers debunk claim that training is comparable to interrogation

Bush administration DOJ official: Training being waterboarded is "obviously in a very different situation from detainees undergoing interrogation." According to a May 2005 Office of Legal Counsel memo by Steven G. Bradbury, the Bush administration's principal deputy assistant attorney general at the time, individuals undergoing waterboarding as part of the U.S. military's SERE training are "obviously in a very different situation from detainees undergoing interrogation; SERE trainees know it is part of a training program, not a real-life interrogation regime, they presumably know it will last only a short time, and they presumably have assurances that they will not be significantly harmed by the training." The memo further states that the waterboard technique was used "quite sparingly" in SERE training -- "at most two times on a trainee for at most 40 seconds each time" -- whereas the CIA used the tactic at least 83 times on Abu Zubaydah in August 2002 and 183 times on Khalid Shaikh Mohammed in March 2003.

Email from SERE psychologist, when compared to training, when interrogating detainees, the "risk with real detainees is increased exponentially." From a 2008 Senate Armed Services Committee report that has testified that waterboarding was used on three detainees, and thus, the CIA Inspector General has found that, for two of the three detainees the CIA has acknowledged waterboarding, the CIA went beyond the limits described by the DOJ.

Thiessen's claim: It's "demonstrably false" that CIA interrogation practices led to Abu Ghraib

Thiessen writes that the claim CIA interrogation practices led to Abu Ghraib is "demonstrably false." On page 71, Thiessen writes of critics of CIA interrogations:

They charge that the CIA program was part of a wider policy of abuse that began at CIA black sites and spread to Guantanamo Bay, Afghanistan, and Iraq -- and led directly to the abuses at Abu Ghraib. And they charge that coercive interrogations are immoral and unnecessary -- and that in thaw war on terror we can remain safe while avoiding the difficult choices that create tensions between our values and our security.

As we will see, all of these charges are demonstrably false.

Thiessen suggests that the government reviews found that interrogation practices did not lead to Abu Ghraib. Thiessen writes: "What happened in those photos [at Abu Ghraib] had nothing to do with CIA interrogations, military interrogations, or interrogations of any sort. None of the pictured abuses at Abu Ghraib, in the words of one official investigation 'bear any resemblance to approved policies at any level in any theater.' " [p.39]

Reality: Bipartisan Senate Armed Services Committee report tied CIA practices to Abu Ghraib

Seven chapters after first discussing government reports on Abu Ghraib, Thiessen acknowledges that a bipartisan report by the Senate Armed Services Committee tied the CIA interrogation program to the abuses at Abu Ghraib. Six chapters after declaring that it is "demonstrably false" that the CIA interrogation program led to Abu Ghraib, Thiessen acknowledges that a governmental review did find a connection between approved CIA and military interrogations and Abu Ghraib. He attacks the bipartisan report by saying that only two of the Republican members on the Armed Services panel -- Sens. John McCain and Lindsey Graham -- supported its conclusions, while another six opposed it. He compares the significance of the support from McCain to Sen. Joe Lieberman's support for the surge. However, at the time of the surge, Lieberman had left the Democratic Party and become an independent. Lieberman later supported McCain in his 2008 presidential race against Obama. From Courting Disaster:

[T]here is one report [critics] invariably cite. It was issued not by an independent commission, or military inspectors, or former secretaries of defense, but by a left-wing politician, Senator Carl Levin, the Democratic Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. The critics inevitably refer to it as "bi-partisan" because it was signed by the Committee's top Republican, and by Republicans Senator Lindsey Grahm, both vocal critics of U.S. interrogation policy. To call this report bi-partisan is akin to saying that Congressional support for the surge in Iraq was bi-partisan because Joe Lieberman backed it. But in fact, after the Levin report was released, six Republican members of the Armed Services Committee issued a joint statement in which they explicitly rejected Levin's allegations that systematic abuse took place. [p.293]

Mayer also notes that detainee in famous Abu Ghraib photo was being questioned by the CIA at the time of his death. From Mayer's article:

Referring to the Abu Ghraib scandal, Thiessen writes that "what happened in those photos had nothing to do with C.I.A. interrogations, military interrogations, or interrogations of any sort." The statement is hard to square with the infamous photograph of Manadel al-Jamadi; his body was placed on ice after he died of asphyxiation during a C.I.A. interrogation at the prison. The homicide became so notorious that the C.I.A.'s inspector general, John Helgerson, forwarded the case to the Justice Department for potential criminal prosecution. Thiessen simply ignores the incident.

Thiessen's claim: It's "demonstrably false" that Guantanamo became a recruiting tool for Al Qaeda 

Thiessen says Obama statement that "Guantanamo became a symbol that helped al Qaeda recruit terrorists to its cause" is demonstrably false From Courting Disaster:

Obama claims that by eliminating enhanced interrogations and closing Guantanamo, he is actually making America safer. In his view, both the CIA program and Guantanamo have driven the Muslim street into the enemy's camp and helped al Qaeda recruit new terrorists. As Obama put it in his speech at the National Archives, enhanced interrogation techniques "served as a recruitment tool for terrorists, and increase the will of our enemies to fight us." Moreover, he said, "There is no question that Guantanamo set back the moral authority that is American's strongest currency in the world ... [I]nstead of serving as a tool to counter terrorism, Guantanamo became a symbol that helped al Qaeda recruit terrorists to its cause."

This is demonstrably false. First, the terrorists were successfully recruiting suicide operatives long before the CIA interrogation program existed or there were any terrorists held at Guantanamo. There was no Guantanamo and no CIA interrogation program when terrorists first tried to bring down the World Trade Center in 1993. There was no Guantanamo and no CIA interrogation program when they blew up our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. There was no Guantanamo and no CIA interrogation program when they attacked the USS Cole. And there was no Guantanamo and no CIA interrogation program on September 11, 2001. The terrorists found other excuses to recruit the operatives for these attacks. Evil always finds an excuse.

In the movie Batman: The Dark Knight, whenever the Joker is about to kill one of his victims, he points to the scars that form his hideous smile and tells the story of how he got his disfiguring wounds. Each time it is a different story. The first time he says they were carved into his face by an abusive father. The next time, he claims he did it to himself after criminals disfigured his wife. But when he says to Batman, "Do you know how I got these scars?" Batman says, "No, but I know how you got these," and pushes him off the side of a building. Batman is not interested in the villain's made-up excuses. We shouldn't be, either.

Paul Rester, the director of the Joint Intelligence Group at Guantanamo, told me the idea that terrorist interrogations had aided terrorist recruitment is absurd. "Interesting logic," Rester says. "I am curious as to what possessed Abu Nidal to shove Leon Klinghoffer off of the Achille Lauro....I reject the theorem out of hand, because I know these [people], I've lived with these people and they know me. The ones who do know me, unfortunately, I wish they didn't....We talk, the way you and I are talking....More often than not, [they cite] America's support for Israel; America's occupation of the Holy Land; America's occupation of Saudi Arabia; you can move the issue anywhere you want to, and they are going to have an excuse. It's irrelevant."

Add to this litany the invasion of Afghanistan, the invasion of Iraq, Danish newspaper cartoons, Guantanamo, and CIA interrogations. With the latter two gone, it will soon be Obama's Predator strikes, or the troop surge in Afghanistan, or the indefinite detention of terrorists in U.S. Supermax prisons. And if all else fails, the old terrorist standby -- the existence of Israel -- will take center stage again (as it has in recent al Qaeda videos). Like the Joker, the terrorists will keep coming up with different stories to justify their cruelty. And if they did not have these excuses, they would come up with new ones. [Pages 369-70]

Reality: Numerous experts have stated that Guantanamo serves as a recruiting tool

Director of National Intelligence Blair: Guantanamo "is a rallying cry for terrorist recruitment and harmful to national security." From Dennis Blair's written January 22, 2009, concluded in a September 2008 study that "the United States has been damaged by Guantánamo beyond any immediate security benefits. Our enemies have achieved a propaganda windfall that enables recruitment to violence, while our friends have found it more difficult to cooperate with us."

McClatchy newspapers investigation: "Guantanamo often produces more terrorists." A June 17, 2008, McClatchy Newspapers article reported, "A McClatchy investigation found that instead of confining terrorists, Guantanamo often produced more of them by rounding up common criminals, conscripts, low-level foot soldiers and men with no allegiance to radical Islam -- thus inspiring a deep hatred of the United States in them -- and then housing them in cells next to radical Islamists." McClatchy further reported:

In interviews, former U.S. Defense Department officials acknowledged the problem, but none of them would speak about it openly because of its implications: U.S. officials mistakenly sent a lot of men who weren't hardened terrorists to Guantanamo, but by the time they were released, some of them had become just that.

Requests for comment from senior Defense Department officials went unanswered. The Pentagon official in charge of detainee affairs, Sandra Hodgkinson, declined interview requests even after she was given a list of questions.

However, dozens of former detainees, many of whom were reluctant to talk for fear of being branded as spies by the militants, described a network -- at times fragmented, and at times startling in its sophistication -- that allowed Islamist radicals to gain power inside Guantanamo:

Militants recruited new detainees by offering to help them memorize the Quran and study Arabic. They conducted the lessons, infused with firebrand theology, between the mesh walls of cells, from the other side of a fence during exercise time or, in lower-security blocks, during group meetings.

Taliban and al Qaida leaders appointed cellblock leaders. When there was a problem with the guards, such as allegations of Quran abuse or rough searches of detainees, these "local" leaders reported up their chains of command whether the men in their block had fought back with hunger strikes or by throwing cups of urine and feces at guards. The senior leaders then decided whether to call for large-scale hunger strikes or other protests.

Al Qaida and Taliban leaders at Guantanamo issued rulings that governed detainees' behavior. Shaking hands with female guards was haram -- forbidden -- men should pray five times a day and talking with American soldiers should be kept to a minimum.

The recruiting and organizing don't end at Guantanamo. After detainees are released, they're visited by militants who try to cement the relationships formed in prison.

Gen. Petraeus: U.S. military is "beat around the head and shoulders" with images from Guantanamo. An Associated Press article reporting on a commencement speech General David Petraeus gave at a Georgia college stated:

Army Gen. David Petraeus said the U.S. military is "beat around the head and shoulders" with images of detainees held in Guantanamo, the facility in Cuba President Barack Obama has vowed to close. He said closing Guantanamo and ensuring detainees are dealt with by an appropriate judicial system would bolster the nation's war effort in Afghanistan and Iraq.

"I do believe very strongly that we should live our values," he said. "Generations of soldiers have fought to defend those values, and we should not shrink from living them, from operationalizing them, on the battlefield."

Secretary Gates: "I'd like to close" Guantanamo, which "has become symbolic ... for many around the world." In 2007, when he was a member of the Bush administration, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates discussed Guantanamo during a press conference and said that he and President Bush would like to close the detention facility:

SEC. GATES: Well, I think that I've actually spoken to this before. I think that Guantanamo has become symbolic, whether we like it or not, for many around the world. The president has said he'd like to close the detainee facility there. I'd like to close the facility there. The problem is that we have a certain number of the detainees there who often by their own confessions are people who if released would come back to attack the United States. There are others that we would like to turn back to their home countries, but their home countries don't want them.

1. Hannity trots out "socialized," nationalized health care falsehoods

2. Hannity pals around with falsehood that Obama and Ayers are "close"

3. Hannity: Dunn, Bloom are "entranced" by Mao

4. "XXX-rated reading list": Hannity continues smear campaign against Jennings

5. Hannity repeats "Lie of the Year" nominee: Holdren supports "compulsory sterilization and even sometimes abortion"

6. Hannity pushes dubious claim that Koh might apply "sharia law in American courts"

7. Hannity distortion: Johnsen believes "that pregnancy can be comparable to involuntary servitude"

8. Hannity falsely claims Democrats are "allocating monies" to ACORN to "ensure their own reelection"

9. Hannity falsely claims Reid pushed provision for "unrepealable" Medicare board

10. Hannity falsely claims Independent Medicare Advisory Board is a "death panel"

11. Hannity falsely suggests Obama is alone in using saved jobs metric

12. Hannity falsely claims health care legislation funds abortion

13. Hannity accuses Obama of slander for true statements about Afghanistan

14. Hannity criticizes Obama for referring to the "Islamic Republic of Iran" -- just as Hannity and Fox have

15. Falsehood: Obama opposed protecting "babies that survived late-term abortions"

16. Hannity distortion: DOJ "dismissed" Black Panther voter intimidation case

17. Hannity baselessly claims Obama is sending "SEIU thugs" to "physically attack" tea partiers

18. Hannity claims tea party messages are "positive" -- then cites tea party leader who used n-word

19. Does Hannity believe Nancy Reagan stands for a "culture of death" because she supports stem cell research?

20. Hannity forwards false claim that Obama has never said "Islamic extremism"

21. More Hannity smears: Marxist, Manchurian candidate, attacks on Michelle Obama

1. Hannity trots out "socialized," nationalized health care falsehoods

Hannity repeatedly claims that Obama pushed "socialized" and "nationalize[d]" health care. For instance:

Only months into his presidency, he had so infuriated average Americans that a series of Tea Party protests emerged across the nation, attended by everyday people who were outraged and horrified by Obama's every decision: his reckless federal spending, his seizure of control of private industry, his cap-and-trade legislation, and his obsessive quest to nationalize one-sixth of the American economy through socialized health care. [Page 4]

[...]

Rather than responding to the real fear that his debt explosion struck in the heart of most Americans, he brazenly turned a deaf ear and pressed forward with his hugely unpopular question to nationalize our health care, proving he was anything but a president of the people. [Page 6]

[...]

As a leftist to his core, Barack Obama has been salivating over socialized medicine for years. It's the perfect policy vehicle for socialists who want to ensure that government's tentacles will spread into all aspects of our society. [Page 94]

Democrats' health care reform isn't socialized health care. The Urban Institute wrote in an April 2008 analysis that "socialized medicine involves government financing and direct provision of health care services" and explained that Democratic health care reform proposals do not "fit this description. While these policies would provide additional public resources to help the uninsured pay for coverage and would increase the pooling of risks in insurance markets, none would overturn the dominant role of private insurance and private providers in America's health care system." The analysis also noted, "Similar rhetoric was used to defeat national health care reform proposals in the 1990s and, with less success, to argue against the creation of Medicare in the 1960s."

Obama has not proposed socialized medicine, single payer, or nationalized health care. As PolitiFact.com noted in a March 5, 2009, post, "Obama's plan leaves in place the private health care system, but seeks to expand it to the uninsured," and "the plan is very different from some European-style health systems where the government owns health clinics and employs doctors." And during a March 26, 2009, online town hall, Obama explicitly rejected the notion of implementing a health care system "the way European countries do or Canada does," explaining that what "we should do is to build on the [employer-based] system that we have."

2. Hannity pals around with falsehood that Obama and Ayers are "close"

From Page 36 of Conservative Victory:

Obama laughably downplays William Ayers -- a close associate with whom he served on the board of the Woods Fund of Chicago and who hosted an event at his home launching Obama's state senate run -- as just a guy in the neighborhood, a harmless Chicago college professor.

NY Times: Obama and Ayers "do not appear to have been close." The New York Times reported on October 4, 2008, that Obama and Ayers "do not appear to have been close. Nor has Mr. Obama ever expressed sympathy for the radical views and actions of Mr. Ayers, whom he has called 'somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago, when I was 8.' "

FactCheck.org: Obama and Ayers were "never very close." In an October 10, 2008, article, FactCheck.org wrote of the 2008 presidential campaign: "What we object to are the McCain-Palin campaign's attempts to sway voters -- in ads and on the stump -- with false and misleading statements about the relationship [between Obama and Ayers], which was never very close.

McClatchy: "There is no evidence that Ayers is a close friend or an adviser to [Obama's] campaign." McClatchy reported on October 9, 2008, that "Obama has condemned the violent 1960s activities of the Weather Underground. There is no evidence that Ayers is a close friend or an adviser to his campaign." [accessed via Nexis]

AP: "[T]here is no evidence that they ever palled around." Reporting on then-vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin's claim that Obama sees America as so imperfect "that he's palling around with terrorists who would target their own country," the Associated Press reported on October 5, 2008, that "there is no evidence they [Obama and Ayers] have palled around," and "it's simply wrong to suggest that they were associated while Ayers was committing terrorist acts."

3. Hannity: Dunn, Bloom are "entranced" by Mao

From Page 50 of Conservative Victory:

[Senior counselor for manufacturing policy Ron] Bloom said that he and his colleagues recognize that "this is largely about power" -- and, shockingly, that "we kind of agree with Mao [Zedong] that political power comes largely from the barrel of a gun." That's right, Obama's manufacturing czar kind-of agrees with Red China's Chairman Mao, the tyrant responsible for murdering tens of millions of his own people during peacetime for not toeing the party line. How comforting is that?

ANITA DUNN

And the same wonderful Chinese dictator has entranced another of Obama's radical darlings -- Obama's short-lived White House communications director Anita Dunn, who regards Mao as among her favorite philosophers. Obama is nothing if not consistent.

But numerous conservatives have similarly approvingly cited Mao and other brutal communists' tactics, rhetoric. Hannity is referencing a video in which Dunn cited two of her "favorite political philosophers," Mao Zedong and Mother Teresa, during a speech to high school graduates. However, Dunn offered no endorsement of Mao's ideology or actions -- rather, she spoke of Mao and Mother Teresa as two of her favorite "political philosophers," and based on short quotes from them, she offered the advice that "you don't have to follow other people's choices and paths" or "let external definition define how good you are internally." Numerous conservatives, including Newt Gingrich (who is approvingly cited in Hannity's book), Ralph Reed, Barry Goldwater's "alter ego" Stephen C. Shadegg and John McCain, have approvingly cited the tactics of Mao, Vladimir Lenin, and the Viet Cong, stated that they had used those tactics in their political work, or have otherwise highlighted their philosophies.

4. "XXX-rated reading list": Hannity continues smear campaign against Jennings

Hannity continues his smear campaign against Department of Education official Kevin Jennings by claiming that an organization he founded pushed an "XXX-rated reading list" for "children." From Page 53 of Conservative Victory:

To give you an idea of the mentality of GLSEN [Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network], which Jennings founded, one report on the Gateway Pundit blog offers a detailed account of the XXX-rated reading list the organization recommends for children -- complete with extensive, sexually explicit quotations from many of the books. The site quotes a report from Breitbart.tv that "book after book after book contained stories and anecdotes that weren't merely X-rated and pornographic, but which featured explicit descriptions of sex acts between preschoolers; stories that seemed to promote and recommend child-adult sexual relationships; stories of public masturbation, anal sex in restrooms, affairs between students and teachers, five-year-olds playing sex games, semen flying through the air."

GLSEN: "We recommend that adults selecting books for youth review content for suitability." In describing its BookLink section, GLSEN states in red type: "All BookLink items are reviewed by GLSEN staff for quality and appropriateness of content. However, some titles for adolescent readers contain mature themes. We recommend that adults selecting books for youth review content for suitability. The editorial and customer reviews listed at Amazon.com often provide information on mature content."

Attacks on Jennings over book list are frequently marked by distortions. As Media Matters has documented, conservative attacks on Jennings over GLSEN's book list arewebsite that many of the top 100 novels of the 20th century have been the subject of objections over issues such as "sexual references," "sexually explicit passages," "rape," "masturbation," "bestiality," "explicit sex scenes," and "trashy sex." These titles include books regularly taught in schools, such as Catcher in the Rye, The Color Purple, Beloved, Lord of the Flies, 1984, Of Mice and Men, Brave New World, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, and Rabbit, Run. In a December 11, 2009, statement, Martin Garnar, chair of the American Library Association's Intellectual Freedom Committee, said: "Though Jennings' and GLSEN's critics claim to be upholding American morals and values by condemning the GLSEN book list, they are actually undermining the values of tolerance, free inquiry, and self-determination that inform and sustain our democratic way of life in the United States."

5. Hannity repeats "Lie of the Year" nominee: Holdren supports "compulsory sterilization and even sometimes abortion"

From Page 56 of Conservative Victory:

Obama's director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), or "science czar," is John Holdren, another leftist with beliefs outside the American mainstream. In his writings, Holdren seems to approve of and recommend compulsory sterilization and even sometimes abortion, in furtherance of a government population control program.

PolitiFact: Holdren does not support compulsory sterilization or forced abortion. After Glenn Beck offered a similar allegation based on an environmental sciences book Holdren co-authored more than 30 years ago, PolitiFact concluded that "the text of the book clearly does not support that. We think a thorough reading shows that these were ideas presented as approaches that had been discussed. They were not posed as suggestions or proposals. In fact, the authors make clear that they did not support coercive means of population control. Certainly, nowhere in the book do the authors advocate for forced abortions." PolitiFact nominated the smear, which Hannity has repeated on his Fox News show, as one of its "Lies of the Year."

6. Hannity pushes dubious claim that Koh might apply "sharia law in American courts"

From Page 60 of Conservative Victory:

Equally troubling is [State Department legal adviser Harold] Koh's attitude toward the application of Muslim sharia law in American courts. In a 2007 speech to the Yale Club of Greenwich, Connecticut, he said that "in an appropriate case, he didn't see any reason why sharia law would not be applied to govern a case in the United States."

Hannity has repeatedly advanced the dubious claim on his Fox News show. The claim originated in March 2007, when National Review Online blogger Carol Innone posted a letter from New York lawyer Steven J. Stein, who claimed to have heard Koh suggest that Sharia law could be applied in the United States during a Yale University alumni event Stein attended.

Koh and event organizer have refuted claim. The claim has been denied by Koh himself during Senate testimony, Koh's spokesman, and Robin Reeves Zorthian, the organizer of the Yale University alumni event at which Koh supposedly made the Sharia law remarks. Zorthian said that claims about Koh are "totally fictitious and inaccurate" and "never did Koh state or suggest that other forms of law should govern ... the American legal system."

Koh has denounced Iran for imposing strict Sharia law. University of California-Davis law professor Anupam Chander wrote in an April 2, 2009, blog post that "[i]n the 71 articles penned by Harold Koh that appear in the Westlaw law review database, there is but one article that mentions Sharia," and in that article, Koh "denounces the government of Iran for 'impos[ing] a strict form of Sharia law that denies basic rights to women and minorities.' " Slate senior editor and legal reporter Dahlia Lithwick similarly wrote that "Koh in all his academic articles and many public statements has never said anything to suggest some dogged fealty to Sharia."

7. Hannity distortion: Johnsen believes "that pregnancy can be comparable to involuntary servitude"

From Page 60 of Conservative Victory:

Obama appointed Dawn Johnsen to head the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel despite her radical views -- including that pregnancy can be comparable to involuntary servitude.

PolitiFact: Johnsen compared "forced pregnancy" to involuntary servitude. From a March 24, 2009, PolitiFact article:

The Republicans are referring to a 1989 brief in Webster vs. Reproductive Health Services, a case that tested whether states could prohibit abortions in public health institutions. Johnsen was then legal director of the National Abortion Rights Action League, one of 77 organizations to sign the brief.

Footnote 23, part of the brief that Johnsen said in a Senate hearing that she wrote, said the following: "While a woman might choose to bear children gladly and voluntarily, statutes that curtail her abortion choice are disturbingly suggestive of involuntary servitude, prohibited by the Thirteenth Amendment, in that forced pregnancy requires a woman to provide continuous physical service to the fetus in order to further the state's asserted interest. Indeed, the actual process of delivery demands work of the most intense and physical kind: labor of 12 or more grueling hours of contractions is not uncommon."

So Johnsen compared "forced pregnancy" -- not motherhood -- to involuntary servitude.

After we asked the Republican Conference about the claim, staffer Ericka Andersen acknowledged it was wrong. "You are correct that the post was written inaccurately," she told us in an e-mail. She corrected the post to say Johnsen "equated forced pregnancy with 'involuntary servitude.'"

Kudos to the conference for acknowledging the error. But we still find the original claim False.

8. Hannity falsely claims Democrats are "allocating monies" to ACORN to "ensure their own reelection"

From Page 65 of Conservative Victory:

Congress, under Obama's Democrats, is not just passively ceding its powers to the executive branch in areas it shouldn't. In concert with Obama, it too is stealing power from the people. Congressmen are deliberately ignoring their own rules (such as Al Franken cutting off Republican senators speaking in opposition to Obama's agenda); they're voting on legislation when not only have they not read it, but it hasn't even been written; they're spending trillions of dollars we don't have and can't possibly acquire; they're allocating monies to corrupt groups like ACORN to ensure their own reelection rather than for any legitimate legislative purpose; and they're doing all this in defiance of the will of the people.

Obama and Democrats have not been "allocating monies" to ACORN. Hannity offers no evidence or footnote to support his claim about ACORN. However, Hannity falsely claimed on his February 19 Fox News show that Obama's budget "is going to give [ACORN] $3 billion." In fact, Obama's budget contains no language specific to ACORN. In previous years, Republicans have repeatedly claimed that Democrats were going to "give" ACORN millions or billions of dollars when, in fact, the various legislations they reference don't contain any language mentioning ACORN. In September 2009, Hannity falsely claimed that ACORN is "on schedule to get eight and a half trillion dollars of stimulus money."

9. Hannity falsely claims Reid pushed provision for "unrepealable" Medicare board

Hannity: Reid "aims to make the bill's proposed Independent Medicare Advisory Board (IMAB) unrepealable." From Page 65 of Conservative Victory:

But among the Democrats' many shameless attempts to seize power away from the people, the granddaddy of them all is contained in the Senate health-care bill. Unbeknownst to many, that bill contains an amendment, inserted by Majority Leader Harry Reid, that aims to make the bill's proposed Independent Medicare Advisory Board (IMAB) unrepealable. The amendment would change certain Senate rules to prohibit future Congresses from repealing the IMAB (which some refer to as a death panel). But current Senate rules require sixty-seven votes for a rule change. The Democrats, who had already changed the rule with their sixty-vote (not sixty-seven-vote) majority, claimed they weren't changing the rule, just changing a "procedure." But their intentions were clear: Obama's Senate was not only trying to make their provision for death panels unrepealable -- violating our first principles of popular sovereignty at their core -- but in the process they were also violating their own rules through semantic deception.

FactCheck.org: IMAB is repealable. In a January 15 article, when asked if the IMAB "can't be repealed" if enacted into law, FactCheck.org replied: "No ... that could be repealed by a vote of three-fifths of the Senate."

10. Hannity falsely claims Independent Medicare Advisory Board is a "death panel"

From Page 65 of Conservative Victory:

But among the Democrats' many shameless attempts to seize power away from the people, the granddaddy of them all is contained in the Senate health-care bill. Unbeknownst to many, that bill contains an amendment, inserted by Majority Leader Harry Reid, that aims to make the bill's proposed Independent Medicare Advisory Board (IMAB) unrepealable. The amendment would change certain Senate rules to prohibit future Congresses from repealing the IMAB (which some refer to as a death panel). But current Senate rules require sixty-seven votes for a rule change. The Democrats, who had already changed the rule with their sixty-vote (not sixty-seven-vote) majority, claimed they weren't changing the rule, just changing a "procedure." But their intentions were clear: Obama's Senate was not only trying to make their provision for death panels unrepealable -- violating our first principles of popular sovereignty at their core -- but in the process they were also violating their own rules through semantic deception.

Independent Medicare Advisory Board is specifically prohibited from rationing health care or modifying benefits. According to the legislation, when the "projected per capita growth rate under Medicare" exceeds "the target growth rate for that year," the board is required to "develop and submit" to Congress a "proposal containing recommendations to reduce the Medicare per capita growth rate to the extent required by this section." But the legislation explicitly states that the board may not include recommendations to "ration health care," "restrict benefits," or "modify eligibility criteria." From Section 3403 of the Senate health care bill:

(ii) The proposal shall not include any recommendation to ration health care, raise revenues or Medicare beneficiary premiums under section 1818, 1818A, or 1839, increase Medicare beneficiary cost sharing (including deductibles, coinsurance, and copayments), or otherwise restrict benefits or modify eligibility criteria.

The Congressional Budget Office found that the advisory board provision "would place a number of limitations on the actions available to the board, including a prohibition against modifying eligibility or benefits."

FactCheck.org: The "Medicare Board is no 'death panel.' " From FactCheck.org's January 15 article:

Footnote: Despite a few lingering claims to the contrary, the Medicare Board is no "death panel." The bill explicitly states that its cost-saving proposals:

Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, Dec 24 2009: ...shall not include any recommendation to ration heatlh care, raise revenues or Medicare beneficiary premiums...increase Medicare beneficiary cost-sharing (including deductibles, coinsurance and co-payments), or otherwise restrict benefits or modify eligibility criteria.

11. Hannity falsely suggests Obama is alone in using saved jobs metric

From Page 82 of Conservative Victory:

When Obama was unveiling his economic plans, he assured us that, because of his intervention, unemployment would not rise above 8 percent, and that it should "save or create at least 3 million jobs by the end of 2010" -- as if "saving" jobs were a measurable statistic. (It's revealing that the mainstream media, as in-the-tank for Obama as they are, still allow him to get away with such a bogus ruse.)

Bush administration also made claims about jobs "saved or created." During the Bush administration, the Department of Agriculture repeatedly stated that its economic initiatives had "saved or created" a specific number of jobs, or would in the future.

CBO also uses saved metric. As Media Matters has states that if a "qualified health plan" offered under the health insurance exchange provides coverage of abortion services for which public funding is banned, "the issuer of the plan shall not use any amount attributable" to the federal subsidies created under the bill "for purposes of paying for such services." Public funding is currently banned by the Hyde amendment for all abortions except in cases of rape, incest, or if the life of the pregnant woman is in danger.

Fox's Cavuto: No provisions for federal funding of abortions. While Fox News has repeatedly forwarded the false abortion claims, host Neil Cavuto admitted on March 27 that "we don't see any provision there where federal monies go directly to fund abortions."

PolitiFact: No federal funding. PolitiFact wrote that the "Senate bill states very clearly that public funding through tax credits and government subsidies for elective abortion services offered in the exchange is prohibited. But more than that, the bill sets up a mechanism to ensure that abortion services offered in the exchange are paid entirely from patient premiums, premiums paid by people who have chosen a private plan that covers abortion."

13. Hannity accuses Obama of slander for true statements about Afghanistan

From Page 109 of Conservative Victory:

Obama appeared obsessed with the slanderous notion that the only thing the American military was doing under George W. Bush was murdering innocent people in Afghanistan. "We've got to get the job done there and that requires us to have enough troops so that we're not just air-raiding villages and killing civilians, which is causing enormous pressure over there."

Hannity is referencing a remark from Obama from August 13, 2007, which he and other conservatives repeatedly distorted during the 2008 presidential campaign.

Then-Bush Defense Secretary Gates apologized for civilian deaths from airstrikes. Defense Secretary Robert Gates apologized for deaths resulting from coalition airstrikes, saying in a September 17, 2008, statement: "I offer all Afghans my sincere condolences and personal regrets for the recent loss of innocent life as a result of coalition airstrikes. While no military has ever done more to prevent civilian casualties, it is clear that we have to work even harder. I have asked for a detailed briefing this afternoon about our close air support as well as our intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance operations."

Media reports confirm that airstrikes have resulted in "killing civilians." Despite Hannity's assertion that it is "slanderous" to discuss civilian casualties in Afghanistan, accounts of resulting civilian casualties from U.S. airstrikes in the country have been widely reported in the media and have reportedly provoked criticism from Afghan President Hamid Karzai and a British commander stationed there. Additionally, the Associated Press reported in a "Fact Check" the day after Obama's remark: "Western forces have been killing [Afghan] civilians at a faster rate than the insurgents."

14. Hannity criticizes Obama for referring to the "Islamic Republic of Iran" -- just as Hannity and Fox have

From Page 121 of Conservative Victory:

Obama has shown his true foreign policy colors in his dealings with Iran. In his "Nowruz" (New Year's) greeting to the leaders of Iran, he referred to the country several times as "the Islamic Republic of Iran," which validated the standing of the theocratic leaders while offering a kick in the gut to the majority of Iranian people, who oppose them.

Hannity: "Islamic Republic of Iran." From an August 30, 2006, segment (retrieved from Nexis) on Hannity & Colmes: [emphasis added]

HANNITY: In the midst of the western world's nuclear standoff with the Islamic Republic of Iran, the U.S. State Department has granted former Iranian president, Mohammad Khatami, a visa to come to this country next week.

Now, Khatami is planning to attend the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations meetings as well as other speaking events in the United States, and at taxpayer expense, his security will be overseen by the State Department's Bureau of Diplomatic Security.

And tonight, there are even reports that former President Carter is interested in meeting with Khatami during his visit. In a contact to the State Department, they told us, quote, "We are an open society, tolerant of diverse viewpoints. And after careful deliberation, we've determined that issuing Mr. Khatami a limited visa, and allowing Mr. Khatami to present his views directly to the American people will demonstrate to Iran that the United States upholds its commitment to freedom and democracy."

Fox reporters refer to the "Islamic Republic of Iran." For instance (emphasis added):

• Reporter Lauren Green on February 12: "In the Islamic Republic of Iran, politics and religion are one. But experts are warning that the Islamic apocalyptic figure called 'The Twelfth Imam' maybe fueling Iran's obsession for nuclear weapons."

• Reporter Amy Kellogg on August 5, 2009 (retrieved from Nexis): "Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was sworn in for a second term as president of the Islamic Republic of Iran before the parliament, but it was not a packed house. Dozens of members chose to stay away. The security presence on the streets was as heavy as it's been since the June election, according to an eyewitness." Kellogg's biography states: "In recent years, Kellogg has had extraordinary access to the Islamic Republic of Iran."

15. Falsehood: Obama opposed protecting "babies that survived late-term abortions"

From Page 152-153 of Conservative Victory:

They are adamantly, militantly pro-abortion, to the point where even the very leader of their party, Barack Obama, as an Illinois senator in 2002, spoke out and voted against the Induced Infant Liability Act, which would have protected babies that survived late-term abortions.

As Obama and other opponents noted, criminal code already prevented killing of children. In attacking Obama, Hannity joined other conservatives in misleadingly referencing Obama's opposition in the Illinois legislature to legislation that amended the Illinois Abortion Law of 1975. Opponents of the bill noted that the legislation was unnecessary, as the Illinois criminal code unequivocally prohibits killing children, and said that the bill posed a threat to abortion rights. When tasked by the Illinois attorney general's office with investigating allegations that fetuses born alive at an Illinois hospital were abandoned without treatment -- the alleged incident that inspired the "Born Alive Act" -- the Illinois Department of Public Health reportedly said that it was unable to substantiate the allegations but said that if the allegations had proved true, the conduct alleged would have been a violation of existing Illinois law. The Obama presidential campaign subsequently cited specific provisions of the Illinois Compiled Statutes in stating that the "born alive principle was already the law in Illinois."

Media figures declare this attack against Obama to be "misleading" and "unfair." The legislation became an issue during the 2008 presidential campaign when Palin attacked Obama by claiming that Obama believes a "child being born alive" should "not receive medical help to save that child's life." Time's Michael Scherer said Palin's attacks were "misleading" while The Washington Post "fact checker" Michael Dobbs wrote that it was "unfair to accuse Obama of supporting the withdrawal of medical treatment from babies."

16. Hannity distortion: DOJ "dismissed" Black Panther voter intimidation case

From Page 184 of Conservative Victory:

They [Democrats] control a corrupt Justice Department whose attorney general has racialized the poll-watching process, and who dismissed a voter intimidation case against his Black Panther friends.

DOJ actually "sought and obtained" "maximum penalty" against one of the individuals. The Bush administration made the decision to file a civil complaint instead of criminal charges against Black Panther members who were accused of "brandish[ing] a deadly weapon" outside of a polling station in Philadelphia, and the Obama administration did not drop the civil case. Rather, the Justice Department "sought and obtained" the "maximum penalty" against one of the two individuals. On December 3, 2009, Department of Justice assistant attorney general Tom Perez testified that "[t]he case was not dismissed" and that the attorneys who reviewed the case "made the determination that, based on the law of the Third Circuit, that the case against the person who wielded the stick, that we should indeed seek the maximum penalty, and that maximum penalty was sought and obtained, and the case against the other defendant should be dismissed, and the case against the national party should also be dismissed."

17. Hannity baselessly claims Obama is sending "SEIU thugs" to "physically attack" tea partiers

From Page 193 of Conservative Victory:

[The Tea Party movement] is truly a grassroots movement, not the artificially contrived, conspiratorial "Astroturf movement" the administration has painted. The only thing artificial anywhere near the Tea Party protests were the counterprotests Obama staged, sending in his SEIU thugs to shout down, bully, intimidate, and physically attack the Tea Party patriots.

Hannity offers no evidence for claim. Hannity offered no evidence that Obama was "sending in" people to "physically attack" members of the tea party movement. Hannity's accusation echoes an August 2009 distortion Andrew Breitbart made in which he claimed that "union thugs were directed by the White House to go to" town hall meetings "and 'punch back twice as hard.' " In fact, White House deputy chief of staff Jim Messina reportedly used the expressions to which Breitbart referred while speaking to Senate Democrats -- not to any union groups -- and there is no indication it was anything other than a metaphorical explanation of how the White House plans to respond to political attacks against Senate Democrats. Glenn Beck has similarly called SEIU "thugs" in smearing the union for purported violence.

18. Hannity claims tea party messages are "positive" -- then cites tea party leader who used n-word

Hannity: Lion's share of tea party ideas is "positive." While discussing the tea party movement, Hannity writes that the "lion's share of the ideas coming out of the Tea Party protests are indeed positive, but they lack any kind of organizational unity." In the next paragraph, Hannity positively cites Dale Robertson for challenging "Republicans in name only":

The lion's share of the ideas coming out of the Tea Party protests are indeed positive, but they lack any kind of organization unity -- which is inevitable in such a decentralized, grassroots movement. We also see, within the movement, a good amount of single-issue advocacy -- the kind of passionate activism that can have the power to ignite a movement, but cannot on its own sustain a new "revolution" unless it's consolidated into a unified vision.

The Tea Party protests will continue, as I believe they should. They have been an indispensable catalyst to energize our troops to fight back. They have done more than that as well, supporting, for example, constitutionally conservative candidates against RINOs -- Republicans in name only -- such as helping to oust Florida's Republican Party chairman. "We are turning our guns on anyone who doesn't support constitutionally conservative candidates," said Dale Robertson, who helped start the Tea Party movement two years ago. [Pages 193-194]

Hannity's tea party leader was reportedly kicked out of tea party event for carrying sign with racial slur. The Washington Independent's David Weigel reported on January 4 that "Dale Robertson, a Tea Party activist who operates TeaParty.org, is getting stung for an old photo -- taken at the Feb. 27, 2009 Tea Party in Houston -- in which he holds a sign reading 'Congress = Slaveowner, Taxpayer = Niggar.' " Weigel also reported that "Josh Parker of the Houston Tea Party Society tells me that Robertson was booted out of the event for this sign." Weigel included the following picture:

19. Does Hannity believe Nancy Reagan stands for a "culture of death" because she supports stem cell research?  

Hannity: Democrats stand for a "culture of death" because they support embryonic stem cell research. From Page 195 of Conservative Victory:

Obama and his party stand for America's economic bankruptcy, virtual surrender in the war on terror, and a culture of death, from abortion to embryonic stem cell research to health-care rationing tantamount to death panels.

Nancy Reagan supports embryonic stem cell research. From a March 2009 statement:

I'm very grateful that President Obama has lifted the restrictions on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research. These new rules will now make it possible for scientists to move forward. I urge researchers to make use of the opportunities that are available to them, and to do all they can to fulfill the promise that stem cell research offers. Countless people, suffering from many different diseases, stand to benefit from the answers stem cell research can provide. We owe it to ourselves and to our children to do everything in our power to find cures for these diseases -- and soon. As I've said before, time is short, and life is precious.

Hannity's fifth chapter is titled, "Why I'm a Reagan Conservative."

Dozens of Republicans voted for embryonic stem cell research under Bush. In January 2007, 37 House Republicans joined Democrats in voting for legislation -- later vetoed by President Bush -- that would have expanded federal funding for embryonic stem cells. In the Senate, 17 Republicans joined the Democrats.

20. Hannity forwards false claim that Obama has never said "Islamic extremism"

From Page 208 of Conservative Victory:

On my radio show, former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani told me and my audience that he was troubled by Obama's refusal to identify the enemy as broader than Al Qaeda, which Rudy says is only one component of the Islamic extremist enemy we face. "He has yet to use the term 'Islamic extremism,' " Rudy pointed out, which brings into serious question his competence and fitness as a leader.

Obama discusses "Islamic extremism" on CNN. From the July 13, 2008, edition of CNN's Fareed Zakaria: GPS:

ZAKARIA: Do you believe, when looking at the world today, that Islamic extremism is the transcendent challenge of the 21st century?

OBAMA: I think the problems of terrorism and groups that are resisting modernity, whether because of their ethnic identities or religious identities, and the fact that they can be driven into extremist ideologies, is one of the severe threats that we face.

I don't think it's the only threat that we face.

ZAKARIA: But how do you view the problem within Islam? As somebody who saw it in Indonesia ... the largest Muslim country in the world?

OBAMA: Well, it was interesting. When I lived in Indonesia -- this would be '67, '68, late '60s, early '70s -- Indonesia was never the same culture as the Arab Middle East. The brand of Islam was always different.

But around the world, there was no -- there was not the sense that Islam was inherently opposed to the West, or inherently opposed to modern life, or inherently opposed to universal traditions, like rule of law.

And now in Indonesia, you see some of those extremist elements. And what's interesting is, you can see some correlation between the economic crash during the Asian financial crisis, where about a third of Indonesia's GDP was wiped out, and the acceleration of these Islamic extremist forces.

It isn't to say that there is a direct correlation, but what is absolutely true is that there has been a shift in Islam that I believe is connected to the failures of governments and the failures of the West to work with many of these countries, in order to make sure that opportunities are there, that there's bottom-up economic growth.

You know, the way we have to approach, I think, this problem of Islamic extremism ... is we have to hunt down those who would resort to violence to move their agenda, their ideology forward. We should be going after al Qaeda and those networks fiercely and effectively.

But what we also want to do is to shrink the pool of potential recruits. And that involves engaging the Islamic world rather than vilifying it, and making sure that we understand that not only are those in Islam who would resort to violence a tiny fraction of the Islamic world, but that also, the Islamic world itself is diverse.

And that lumping together Shia extremists with Sunni extremists, assuming that Persian culture is the same as Arab culture, that those kinds of errors in lumping Islam together result in us not only being less effective in hunting down and isolating terrorists, but also in alienating what need to be our long-term allies on a whole host of issues.

Gibbs discusses "Islamic extremism." From the September 10, 2009, White House press briefing:

Q Well, let me ask it this way. President Bush used to say repeatedly, "America is a nation at war." He did so on 9/11, but other occasions during the year. My impression is that since taking office, President Obama has purposely tried to turn down the heat on the rhetoric.

MR. GIBBS: Well, look, I think we've certainly cut down on the use of the phrase, but, again, our focus is on getting the policy right. I don't -- I think the President spends part of each of his day in meetings about and thinking about the men and women that we have in Iraq and Afghanistan and that are through -- stationed throughout the world to protect our freedom and to address Islamic extremism. And that takes up part of his day and is something that -- the sacrifice which he's thankful for and I think all of us are thankful for each and every day. Regardless of how it's phrased, he's mindful of the effort of so many on our behalf.

21. More Hannity smears: Marxist, Manchurian candidate, attacks on Michelle Obama

In addition to regularly botching facts, Hannity makes outlandish statements about President Obama, Michelle Obama, and liberals:

Obama may be a "red diaper baby." From the section, "A Red Diaper Baby" on Page 33:

If Obama's socialist ideas seem alien to those of us who were raised on American capitalist values, it may come as no surprise that they have deep roots in his upbringing. Unlike nearly any other American politician, Barack Obama spent his formative years in a land where communism was no abstract principle, but a cause that had recently led to a bloody civil war: Indonesia. The media has devoted little effort to inquiring into the impact these formative years had on his political education. But what we know about his background raises troubling, unresolved questions.

Some have speculated that Obama may have been a "red diaper baby," the child of communist-leaning parents. Certainly his mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, was an iconoclast and a radical thinker; one classmate called her a "fellow traveler."

Hannity smears Michelle Obama. From Pages 38-39:

But it's been suggested that one of Obama's voluntary relationships is more revealing of his radicalism, anti-Americanism, and anti-capitalism than all of the others: his choice of marital partner. The columnist known as Spengler, writing for the Asia Times, quoted Alexandre Dumas: "When you want to uncover an unspecified secret, look for the woman." In Obama's case, wrote Spengler, there have been two principal women in his life: his late mother and "his rancorous wife Michelle. Obama's women reveal his secret: he hates America."

"Marxist" Obama "couldn't be more of a Manchurian candidate." From Page 40:

In addition to media cover, Obama has another thing going for him: The truth about him and his inner circle is stranger than fiction. He couldn't be more of a Manchurian candidate if he were auditioning for the role in the movie. This stuff is just too bizarre for most Americans to process: an actual Marxist in the White House who has surrounded himself with like-minded miscreants.

Obama dreams of America as a "full-blown socialist state." From Page 71:

Nor would his economic plan bring about the types of change he promised: "change that will grow the economy, expand our middle-class, and keep the American dream alive for all those men and women who have believed in this journey from the day it began."

What could have been more Orwellian? Obama had no intention of keeping the American dream alive -- unless by "American dream" you mean the dream of American leftist radicals to turn this national into a full-blown socialist state.

Liberalism "may be even worse" than terrorism. From Page 198:

The American people have been jolted into realizing that our precious freedom is not guaranteed. There will always be forces committed to taking it away. Today we face a new array of such forces, both externally and internally. I contend that the internal threat of liberalism may be even worse than the external threat of terrorism -- for the terrorists have no prayer against us unless the liberals pave their way.

Obama will leave our children "in poverty and slavery." From Page 208:

I might add that liberals have little credibility in criticizing the compassion of conservatives when you consider that Obama's policies are guaranteed to bankrupt our nation and leave our children and grandchildren in poverty and slavery.

Mattera smears Obama: "[H]e fancies himself the 'apologizer in chief'"

Mattera: Obama's "moral equivocating" is "downright dangerous." In a chapter of Obama Zombies titled "The Peacenik Phantom," Mattera writes:

It's as if Obama wants to say to North Korea and Iran, "Now, fellas, I know you say you want to destroy Western civilization, but I think you're just misunderstood. I know you really don't mean what you say."

[...]

Obama seems not to care. After all, he fancies himself the "apologizer in chief." Such moral equivocating is insane and morally loathsome. Worse, it's downright dangerous. Buy why should this surprise us? If Obama Zombies would have taken their earbuds out of their ears long enough to actually research and listen to this man, they would have known just how radical he truly is. [p.69]

Mattera falsely claims Obama "argued that Americans needed to have compassion" for 9-11 perpetrators

Mattera: In op-ed, Obama "argued that Americans needed to have compassion for those who had just slaughtered our brethren." In Obama Zombies, Mattera writes:

Eight days after 9/11, Obama wrote an op-ed for Chicago's Hyde Park Herald in which he argued that Americans needed to have compassion for those who had just slaughtered our brethren:

The essence of this tragedy, it seems to me, derives from a fundamental absence of empathy on the part of the attackers: an inability to imagine, or connect with, the humanity and suffering of others. Such a failure of empathy, such numbness to the pain of a child or the desperation of a parent, is not innate; nor, history tells us, is it unique to a particular culture, religion, or ethnicity. It may find expression in a particular brand of violence, and may be channeled by particular demagogues or fanatics. Most often, though, it grows out of a climate of poverty and ignorance, helplessness and despair.

In fact, Obama writes that "we must be resolute in identifying the perpetrators of these heinous acts and dismantling their organizations of destruction." In the editorial, Obama does not argue that Americans "needed to have compassion" for the 9-11 perpetrators, as the passage Mattera provides makes clear. Further, in comments omitted by Mattera, Obama states that "we must be resolute in identifying the perpetrators of these heinous acts and dismantling their organizations of destruction."

From Obama's September 19, 2001 speech in Strasbourg, France.

Where do you think Obama delivered this whopper? "In America, there's a failure to appreciate Europe's leading role in the world. Instead of celebrating your dynamic union and seeking to partner with you to meet common challenges, there have been times where America has shown arrogance and been dismissive, even derisive." In Strasbourg, France, last April. Yes, yes: Obama apologized to the French for haughtiness! The French!

In fact, Mattera -- like Sean Hannity and other conservatives -- distorted Obama's comments. Immediately after making the comments highlighted by Mattera and others, Obama stated: "But in Europe, there is an anti-Americanism that is at once casual but can also be insidious. Instead of recognizing the good that America so often does in the world, there have been times where Europeans choose to blame America for much of what's bad."

From Obama's speech: 

Such an effort is never easy. It's always harder to forge true partnerships and sturdy alliances than to act alone, or to wait for the action of somebody else. It's more difficult to break down walls of division than to simply allow our differences to build and our resentments to fester. So we must be honest with ourselves. In recent years we've allowed our Alliance to drift. I know that there have been honest disagreements over policy, but we also know that there's something more that has crept into our relationship. In America, there's a failure to appreciate Europe's leading role in the world. Instead of celebrating your dynamic union and seeking to partner with you to meet common challenges, there have been times where America has shown arrogance and been dismissive, even derisive.

But in Europe, there is an anti-Americanism that is at once casual but can also be insidious. Instead of recognizing the good that America so often does in the world, there have been times where Europeans choose to blame America for much of what's bad.

On both sides of the Atlantic, these attitudes have become all too common. They are not wise. They do not represent the truth. They threaten to widen the divide across the Atlantic and leave us both more isolated. They fail to acknowledge the fundamental truth that America cannot confront the challenges of this century alone, but that Europe cannot confront them without America.

So I've come to Europe this week to renew our partnership, one in which America listens and learns from our friends and allies, but where our friends and allies bear their share of the burden. Together, we must forge common solutions to our common problems.

1. Rove distorts Senate report to claim Bush didn't "lie us into the war"

2. Rove falsehood: Obama claims "Obamacare would not add to the deficit ... evidence shows just the opposite"

3. Rove revives tired smear that Gore wrongly said "that he had created the Internet"

4. Rove revives Gore-Love Story smear

5. Rove falsehood: Gore said he had "discovered the Love Canal chemical disaster"

6. Rove pals around with falsehood that Ayers was "Obama's great friend"

7. Rove wrong on number of presidents who left office by "assassination or resignation"

1. Rove distorts Senate report to claim Bush didn't "lie us into war"

Rove claims Senate report said Bush statements were backed up by intelligence. From Pages 340-341 of Courage and Consequence:

So, then, did Bush lie us into war? Absolutely not.

[...]

From my perch inside the West Wing -- but outside the frantic activity in the Situation Room -- I could see the care everyone was taking to not overstate the case or exaggerate the danger. The president emphasized this when we reviewed his speeches, and this care was reflected everywhere else in the administration.

[...]

And what about Bush's claims about Saddam Hussein's ties to terrorism? Statements that Iraq provided safe haven for Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and other terrorists with ties to al-Qaeda and about Iraq's support for terrorist groups other than al-Qaeda "were substantiated by intelligence information," according to the Senate Intelligence Committee 2004 report.

Senate report actually found that Bush made some statements that were not substantiated -- or were "contradicted" -- by intelligence.  Rove is presumably referring to a June 5, 2008, Senate Intelligence Committee report examining government officials' pre-war statements about Iraq. (Rove identifies it as a "2004" report in the excerpt above, but he cites the 2008 report in the relevant endnote.) Rove is correct that the committee found that some Bush claims -- specifically, "[s]tatements that Iraq provided safe haven for Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and other terrorists with ties to al-Qaeda and about Iraq's support for terrorist groups other than al-Qaeda" -- were substantiated by the intelligence at the time. But the committee also concluded that Bush's allegations suggesting "that Iraq and al-Qa'ida had a partnership" were "not substantiated by the intelligence"; and that Bush's statements indicating Saddam was prepared to give WMD to terrorists were "contradicted by available intelligence."

2. Rove falsehood: Obama claims "Obamacare would not add to the deficit ... evidence shows just the opposite"

From Page 513 of Courage and Consequence:

Another thing that has badly hurt President Obama is that his claims -- especially on health care -- are simply at odds with reality. He said ObamaCare would not add to the deficit, would bend the cost curve down, and would reduce premiums, while the evidence shows just the opposite.

CBO: Senate bill yields "a net reduction in federal deficits of $132 billion" over 10 years. On December 19, 2009, the Congressional Budget Office reported of the Senate bill incorporating the manager's amendment: "CBO and JCT [Joint Committee on Taxation] estimate that the direct spending and revenue effects of enacting the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act incorporating the manager's amendment would yield a net reduction in federal deficits of $132 billion over the 2010-2019 period."

CBO also estimated on December 20, 2009, that the bill will continue to reduce the deficit beyond the 10-year budget window that ends in 2019 "with a total effect during that decade that is in a broad range between one-quarter percent and one-half percent of GDP."

CBO estimated the House bill will result in $138 billion in deficit reduction through 2019. On November 20, 2009, CBO reported of the House health care reform legislation, "CBO and JCT now estimate that the legislation would yield a net reduction in deficits of $138 billion over the 10-year period." CBO also stated in its November 6, 2009, estimate that "[i]n the subsequent decade, the collective effect of its provisions would probably be slight reductions in federal budget deficits. Those estimates are all subject to substantial uncertainty."

3. Rove revives tired smear that Gore wrongly said "he had created the Internet"

From Pages 161-162 of Courage and Consequence:

Over the past few decades, Gore had said that he had created the Internet, been the model for Love Story, led a crusade against tobacco, discovered the Love Canal chemical disaster, lived on a farm while vice president, never grew tobacco on his farm, didn't know that his visit to a Buddhist temple was a fund-raiser, faced enemy fire in Vietnam, and sent people to jail as a reporter. It was a compelling life story; unfortunately, none of it was true.

In fact, Gore said he "took the initiative in creating the Internet" while in Congress. During the March 9, 1999, interview on CNN's Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer that gave rise to the myth -- Rove sources his false claim to the CNN interview -- Gore said, "During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet." Blitzer set the record straight on the July 6, 2008, edition of CNN's Reliable Sources, stating that Gore "never said, 'I invented the Internet.' "

Gingrich also said Gore "most systematically worked to make sure that we got to an Internet.' " In a September 22, 2000, article, the Los Angeles Times reported: "Newt Gingrich, the former speaker of the House and a Republican who is no friend of the Gore campaign, said earlier this month, 'Gore is the person who, in the Congress, most systematically worked to make sure that we got to an Internet.' "

"Father of the Internet" Cerf wrote that Gore "deserves significant credit" for his efforts. On September 28, 2000, Vinton Cerf, considered to be a "father of the Internet," submitted an essay he and Robert Kahn wrote about Gore's contributions to the creation of the Internet. Cerf and Kahn, who received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Bush for their work designing the TCP/IP internet protocol, wrote that they "would like to acknowledge VP Gore's contributions as a Congressman, Senator and as Vice President. No other elected official, to our knowledge, has made a greater contribution over a longer period of time." They added that "there is no question in our minds that while serving as Senator, Gore's initiatives had a significant and beneficial effect on the still-evolving Internet."

4. Rove revives Gore-Love Story smear

From Pages 161-162 of Courage and Consequence:

Over the past few decades, Gore had said that he had created the Internet, been the model for Love Story, led a crusade against tobacco, discovered the Love Canal chemical disaster, lived on a farm while vice president, never grew tobacco on his farm, didn't know that his visit to a Buddhist temple was a fund-raiser, faced enemy fire in Vietnam, and sent people to jail as a reporter. It was a compelling life story; unfortunately, none of it was true.

In fact, Gore attributed the claim to a newspaper article he had read, and was misquoted. In a November 30, 2002, The American Prospect article about political "pseudo-scandals," Princeton history professor Sean Wilentz wrote that Gore "never made the claim." According to a December 14, 1997, New York Times article, [Love Story author Erich] Segal "knocked down" a report in Time magazine that asserted that Gore, while on the campaign trail, "spent two hours swapping opinions about movies and telling stories about old chums like Erich Segal, who, Gore said, used Al and Tipper as models for the uptight preppy and his free-spirited girlfriend in 'Love Story.' '' From the article:

The Time magazine article about the Vice President included this passage: ''Around midnight, after a three-city tour of Texas last month, the Vice President came wandering back to the press compartment of Air Force Two. Sliding behind a table with the two reporters covering him that day, he picked slices of fruit from their plates and spent two hours swapping opinions about movies and telling stories about old chums like Erich Segal, who, Gore said, used Al and Tipper as models for the uptight preppy and his free-spirited girlfriend in 'Love Story.' ''

[...]

In their phone conversation a few days ago, Mr. Gore reminded Mr. Segal that while Mr. Segal was on his book tour for ''Love Story,'' a reporter for The Nashville Tennessean who knew that Mr. Gore and the author were friends had asked if there was not a little bit of Al Gore in Oliver Barrett. Mr. Segal said yes, there was, but the reporter ''just exaggerated,'' Mr. Segal said. ''He made it to be the local-hero angle.''

Mr. Segal said the Vice President told him that all he had said on the plane was that the article had made the connection -- and got it wrong.

''Al said, 'I didn't say that' about being the model,'' Mr. Segal said.

''Al attributed it to the newspaper, he talked about the newspaper,'' Mr. Segal said at another point in the interview. ''They conveniently omitted that part. Time thought it was more piquant to leave that out. He was talking on the plane off the record, a drink with the boys after a tiring day. I don't think he will be reminiscing much anymore.''

5. Rove falsehood: Gore said he had "discovered the Love Canal chemical disaster"

From Pages 161-162 of Courage and Consequence:

Over the past few decades, Gore had said that he had created the Internet, been the model for Love Story, led a crusade against tobacco, discovered the Love Canal chemical disaster, lived on a farm while vice president, never grew tobacco on his farm, didn't know that his visit to a Buddhist temple was a fund-raiser, faced enemy fire in Vietnam, and sent people to jail as a reporter. It was a compelling life story; unfortunately, none of it was true.

In fact, Gore was misqoted by Wash. Post, NY Times. As Media Matters for America noted, Slate.com editor-at-large Jack Shafer wrote on February 17, 2000, that New York Times reporter Katharine Q. "Kit" Seelye and Washington Post staff writer Ceci Connolly were responsible for creating the false Love Canal story: "[I]t's Seelye's fault -- and the Washington Post's Ceci Connolly's -- that folks think Gore claimed credit for Love Canal in the first place. Which he didn't" [emphasis in original]. Indeed, in December 1 and December 2, 1999, Post articles, Connolly quoted Gore as saying of the Love Canal disaster, "I was the one that started it all." In fact, as a December 7, 1999, correction made clear, Gore actually said " 'That was the one that started it all,' referring to the congressional hearings on the subject that he called." Additionally, the Post's obmbudman wrote in a March 5, 2000, column that what Gore actually said about Love Canal was "a whole lot different from The Post's version ... which fits the role The Post seems to have assigned him in Campaign 2000." Similarly, Seelye quoted Gore as saying "I was the one that started it all" on a December 1, 1999, Times article, which was corrected by the Times on December 10, 1999.

6. Rove pals around with falsehood that Ayers was "Obama's great friend"

From Pages 515-516 of Courage and Consequence:

Though we didn't discuss it in our West Wing encounter, Obama also went on in his book to describe me and other conservatives as "eerily reminiscent of some of the New Left's leaders during the sixties," who "viewed politics as a contest not just between competing policy visions, but between good and evil." Now that's rich, isn't it? The last time I checked, I hadn't bombed any government buildings (like, say, Obama's great friend William Ayers); or asked that God "damn" America (like, say, Obama's former pastor and close friend Jeremiah Wright); or declared that I was proud of my country for the first time in my life only when I was in my forties (like, say, Obama's wife, Michelle).

NY Times: Obama and Ayers "do not appear to have been close." The New York Times reported on October 4, 2008, that Obama and Ayers "do not appear to have been close. Nor has Mr. Obama ever expressed sympathy for the radical views and actions of Mr. Ayers, whom he has called 'somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago, when I was 8.' "

McClatchy: "There is no evidence that Ayers is a close friend or an adviser to [Obama's] campaign." McClatchy reported on October 9, 2008, that "Obama has condemned the violent 1960s activities of the Weather Underground. There is no evidence that Ayers is a close friend or an adviser to his campaign." [accessed via the Nexis databse]

The AP: "[T]here is no evidence that they ever palled around." Reporting on then-Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin's claim that Obama sees America as so imperfect "that he's palling around with terrorists who would target their own country," the Associated Press reported on October 5, 2008 that "there is no evidence that they [Obama and Ayers] ever palled around," and "it's simply wrong to suggest that they were associated while Ayers was committing terrorist acts."

FactCheck.org: Obama and Ayers were "never very close." In an October 10, 2008, article, FactCheck.org wrote of the 2008 presidential campaign: "What we object to are the McCain-Palin campaign's attempts to sway voters -- in ads and on the stump -- with false and misleading statements about the relationship [between Obama and Ayers], which was never very close.

7. Rove wrong on number of presidents who left office by "assassination or resignation"

Rove: Eight presidents "gained the Oval Office as a result of the assassination or resignation of their predecessor." From Page 518 of Courage and Consequence:

But others find themselves forced to face the unknowable. Eight presidents -- from John Tyler to Gerald Ford -- gained the Oval Office as a result of the assassination or resignation of their predecessor.

Five presidents have left office via "assassination or resignation." As detailed by Stanford University history professor David M. Kennedy, four presidents have been assassinated: Abraham Lincoln, James Garfield, William McKinley, and John F. Kennedy. The only president to resign from office was Richard Nixon. Four others -- William Henry Harrison, Zachary Taylor, Warren Harding, and Franklin Roosevelt -- died of natural causes while in office.

Rove claims Senate report said Bush statements were backed up by intelligence

From Pages 340-341 of Courage and Consequence:

So, then, did Bush lie us into war? Absolutely not.

[...]

From my perch inside the West Wing -- but outside the frantic activity in the Situation Room -- I could see the care everyone was taking to not overstate the case or exaggerate the danger. The president emphasized this when we reviewed his speeches, and this care was reflected everywhere else in the administration.

[...]

And what about Bush's claims about Saddam Hussein's ties to terrorism? Statements that Iraq provided safe haven for Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and other terrorists with ties to al-Qaeda and about Iraq's support for terrorist groups other than al-Qaeda "were substantiated by intelligence information," according to the Senate Intelligence Committee 2004 report.

Senate report found that Bush made statements that were not substantiated -- or were "contradicted" -- by intelligence

Senate Intel. Committee: Only some Bush statements on Iraq were substantiated by intelligence -- others were not. Rove is presumably referring to a June 5, 2008, Senate Intelligence Committee report examining government officials' pre-war statements about Iraq. (Rove identifies it as a "2004" report in the excerpt above, but he cites the 2008 report in the relevant endnote.) Rove is correct that the committee found that some Bush claims -- specifically, "[s]tatements that Iraq provided safe haven for Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and other terrorists with ties to al-Qaeda and about Iraq's support for terrorist groups other than al-Qaeda" -- were substantiated by the intelligence at the time. But the committee also concluded that other claims Bush made about Iraq's supposed relationship with Al Qaeda were either "not substantiated" or were "contradicted" by the available intelligence.

Senate Intel. Committee: Bush allegations suggesting "that Iraq and al-Qa'ida had a partnership" were "not substantiated by the intelligence." Directly contradicting Rove's suggestion that the Senate Intelligence Committee found that "Bush's claims about Saddam Hussein's ties to terrorism" were supported by the available intelligence, the committee actually reported that Bush's allegations "that Iraq and al-Qa'ida had a partnership" were "not substantiated by the intelligence." The committee also found that "policymakers' statements" misrepresented the nature of contacts between Iraq and Al Qaeda:

(U) Conclusion 12: Statements and implications by the President and Secretary of State suggesting that Iraq and al-Qa'ida had a partnership, or that Iraq had provided al-Qa'ida with weapons training, were not substantiated by the intelligence.

Intelligence assessments, including multiple CIA reports and the November 2002 NIE [National Intelligence Estimate], dismissed the claim that Iraq and al-Qa'ida were cooperating partners. According to an undisputed INR [State Department Bureau of Intelligence and Research] footnote in the NIE, there was no intelligence information that supported the claim that Iraq would provide weapons of mass destruction to al-Qa'ida. The credibility of the principal intelligence source behind the claim that Iraq had provided al-Qa'ida with biological and chemical weapons training was regularly questioned by DIA [Defense Intelligence Agency], and later by the CIA. The Committee repeats its conclusion from a prior report that "assessments were inconsistent regarding the likelihood that Saddam Hussein provided chemical and biological weapons (CBW) training to al-Qa'ida."

(U) Conclusion 13: Statements in the major speeches analyzed, as well additional statements, regarding Iraq's contacts with al-Qa'ida were substantiated by intelligence information. However, policymakers' statements did not accurately convey the intelligence assessments of the nature of these contacts, and left the impression that the contacts led to substantive Iraqi cooperation or support of al-Qa'ida.

Senate Intel. Committee: Bush statements indicating Saddam was prepared to give WMD to terrorists were "contradicted by available intelligence." The Senate Intelligence Committee wrote:

(U) Conclusion 15: Statements by the President and the Vice President indicating that Saddam Hussein was prepared to give weapons of mass destruction to terrorists groups for attacks against the United States were contradicted by available intelligence information.

The October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate assessed that Saddam Hussein did not have nuclear weapons, and was unwilling to conduct terrorist attacks [sic] the US using conventional, chemical or biological weapons at that time, in part because he feared doing so would give the US a stronger case for war with Iraq. This judgment was echoed by both earlier and later intelligence community assessments. All of these assessments noted that gauging Saddam's intentions was quite difficult, and most suggested that he would be more likely to initiate hostilities if he felt that a US invasion was imminent.

In Courage and Consequence -- which Media Matters for America obtained in advance of its March 9 release date -- Rove writes that shortly after agreeing with Novak that Wilson was "an asshole," Rove confirmed that he had "heard" that Wilson's wife worked at the CIA. Days later, Novak published a syndicated column outing Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, as a CIA operative.

From Page 328 of Karl Rove's Courage and Consequence:

But Novak had turned our conversation to Joe Wilson's op-ed after discussing Townsend. He'd met Wilson in the green room at Meet the Press the previous Sunday morning and said he found Wilson pompous, self-centered, egotistical, and "an asshole." Having watched Wilson on Meet the Press, I agreed with Novak's assessment.