Media Rule: Run it if it hurts Bush, bury it if it hurts Kerry

[igloo]

The media plays 'trick or treat'

Linda Chavez (archive)

October 27, 2004 | Print | Send

The media are too busy repackaging old Iraq news in an October offensive against President George W. Bush's reelection to investigate truly startling evidence unearthed this week that the Communist Party may have been directing John Kerry's anti-war activities in the early 1970s. The evidence, contained in captured communist records on file at the Vietnam Center at Texas Tech University, shows a well-coordinated effort by the Communist Party to recruit American servicemen and officers to become part of the American anti-war movement. The objective was to organize high-profile activities to undermine support for the Vietnam War, including holding hearings on alleged war crimes, lobbying Congress to oppose the war, exploiting the families of American POWs and urging servicemen to return their service medals.

Not only did John Kerry and his group Vietnam Veterans Against the War follow this game plan, but Kerry went to Paris to meet with the communist official designated as the point of contact for guiding these activities. In June 1970, Kerry met with Madame Binh, foreign minister of the Provisional Revolutionary Government (Viet Cong) of South Vietnam and a delegate to the Paris Peace Talks. The documents discovered this weekend -- one titled "Circular on Antiwar Movements in the U.S." was disseminated in Vietnam in the spring of 1971, and the other titled "Directive" was captured by the U.S. in April 1971 -- are available for viewing at www.wintersoldier.com. They reveal a detailed plan to use antiwar activists in the U.S. as propagandists for the communist cause in Vietnam.

So why isn't the mainstream media all over this story? If John Kerry -- wittingly or not -- was carrying out directives from Hanoi, or perhaps even Moscow, the American people have the right to know before they decide whether to elect him president on Tuesday. But the networks and major dailies were too busy covering a hysterical report that 380 tons of explosives went missing from an Iraqi depot in the early days of the U.S. invasion to inquire into John Kerry's dubious activities in the anti-war movement.

On Monday, the New York Times "broke" the story of the purported looting of weapons from an Iraqi arms depot. "Huge Cache of Explosives Vanished from Site in Iraq" screamed the front-page Times headline, which was picked up by all the major networks and newspapers, not to mention the Kerry campaign. CBS's "60 Minutes" was also set to air a story on Sunday -- two days before the election -- aimed at convincing viewers that the administration had carelessly let the al Qaqaa depot be looted of its powerful explosives, the kind that might even be used to detonate a nuclear device. "Our plan was to run the story on Oct. 31, but it became clear that it wouldn't hold," CBS executive producer Jeff Fager said in a statement.

In fact, the "missing explosives" story was more media campaign ploy than real news. There is substantial evidence that most of the explosives were either destroyed by U.S. bombing prior to the invasion or were already gone by the time U.S. troops arrived at al Qaqaa on April 10, 2003, according to NBC, which had a reporter embedded with the Army's 101st Airborne Division at the time. Furthermore, the U.S. has already destroyed or is in the process of destroying more than 400,000 tons of similar material in Iraq, a fact conveniently ignored by much of the media.

The media rule seems to be if a story might hurt George W. Bush, play it up big; if it might help Bush, bury it; and if might hurt John Kerry, ignore it altogether. In an election as close as this one, the media's role could be decisive. We used to expect the candidates to unleash their own October surprise in an effort to sway the voters at the last minute. Now it's the media that plays that game. Come Halloween, it's media tricks for Bush and treats for Kerry.

[obby]

What a treat this morning: William Kristol hammered the pro-Democrat New York Times and pro-Democrat CBS for "colluding" and "conspiring" with Sen. John Kerry to topple President Bush.

Even Kerry's own handlers now admit they have no proof to back up the issue the Democrats concocted with their media allies.

Kristol notes in his new column for Weekly Standard: "Pressed on Tuesday afternoon about the accuracy of the allegations on Fox's Big Story with John Gibson, Richard Holbrooke, a senior adviser to the Kerry campaign, said: 'You don't know the truth and I don't know the truth.' He later underscored this point: 'I don't know the truth.'

"That minor issue hasn't kept the Kerry campaign from creating a television ad based on what may well be untruthful claims. ... Shouldn't he at least make sure that such a charge is true?"

But in the Democrat playbook there's no entry for truth. The party's longtime strategy is to repeat a lie until people believe it. Thanks to their media collaborators, and President Bush's wimpy refusal to denounce the Times and "60 Minutes" and Kerry and John Edwards, the stunt could succeed.

At least a few voices are speaking out. "Kerry gins up his attack machine based on a flawed New York Times story," the Republican National Committee noted Tuesday.

Richard Lessner, executive director of American Conservative Union, blasted the story "a cheap, baseless and partisan hit-job on President Bush" and pointed out that "neither the Times nor CBS has much interest in reporting the facts."

[igloo]

60 MINS PLANNED BUSH MISSING EXPLOSIVES STORY FOR ELECTION EVE

News of missing explosives in Iraq -- first reported in April 2003 -- was being resurrected for a 60 MINUTES election eve broadcast designed to knock the Bush administration into a crises mode.

Jeff Fager, executive producer of the Sunday edition of 60 MINUTES, said in a statement that "our plan was to run the story on October 31, but it became clear that it wouldn't hold..."

Elizabeth Jensen at the LOS ANGELES TIMES details on Tuesday how CBS NEWS and 60 MINUTES lost the story [which repackaged previously reported information on a large cache of explosives missing in Iraq, first published and broadcast in 2003].

The story instead debuted in the NYT. The paper slugged the story about missing explosives from April 2003 as "exclusive."

An NBCNEWS crew embedded with troops moved in to secure the Al-Qaqaa weapons facility on April 10, 2003, one day after the liberation of Iraq.

According to NBCNEWS, the explosives were already missing when the American troops arrived.

It is not clear who exactly shopped an election eve repackaging of the missing explosives story.

The LA TIMES claims: The source on the story first went to 60 MINUTES but also expressed interest in working with the NY TIMES... "The tip was received last Wednesday."

CBSNEWS' plan to unleash the story just 24 hours before election day had one senior Bush official outraged.

"Darn, I wanted to see the forged documents to show how this was somehow covered up," the Bush source, who asked not to be named, mocked, recalling last months CBS airing of fraudulent Bush national guard letters.

[igloo]

The Mother Of All Flip-Flops

Today John Kerry says that Iraq is a distraction from the war on terror. What did he think about Iraq in 2001?

by William Kristol

10/26/2004 11:25:00 AM

EVER SINCE John Kerry decided his best tack in this campaign was to turn against the Iraq war, despite his past support for it, his core argument has been that it was a diversion from the war on terror. Iraq, he has been insisting, had nothing to do with that war, which is about al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden, pure and simple. The administration erred, he now claims, by turning its attention to Iraq.

But it turns out that Kerry felt entirely differently at the time. In an interview with John McLaughlin on November 16, 2001--just two months after September 11 and before victory in Afghanistan was assured--Kerry was asked, "What do we have to worry about [in Afghanistan]?" Kerry answered:

I have no doubt, I've never had any doubt--and I've said this publicly--about our ability to be successful in Afghanistan. We are and we will be. The larger issue, John, is what happens afterwards. How do we now turn attention ultimately to Saddam Hussein? How do we deal with the larger Muslim world? What is our foreign policy going to be to drain the swamp of terrorism on a global basis? [Emphasis added]

So on November 16, 2001, with the war in Afghanistan but a few weeks old and Osama bin Laden not yet captured, John Kerry was raising the bar for the Bush administration, wondering when it would go after Saddam Hussein.

Will the New York Times, the Washington Post, or any other mainstream media take note of this remarkable statement?

[igloo]

ABC News: Documents show considerable overstatement missing

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Discrepancy Found in Explosives Amounts. Documents Show Iraqis May Be Overstating Amount of Missing Material

Oct. 27, 2004 — Iraqi officials may be overstating the amount of explosives reported to have disappeared from a weapons depot, documents obtained by ABC News show.

The Iraqi interim government has told the United States and international weapons inspectors that 377 tons of conventional explosives are missing from the Al-Qaqaa installation, which was supposed to be under U.S. military control.

But International Atomic Energy Agency documents obtained by ABC News and first reported on "World News Tonight with Peter Jennings" indicate the amount of missing explosives may be substantially less than the Iraqis reported.

The information on which the Iraqi Science Ministry based an Oct. 10 memo in which it reported that 377 tons of RDX explosives were missing — presumably stolen due to a lack of security — was based on "declaration" from July 15, 2002. At that time, the Iraqis said there were 141 tons of RDX explosives at the facility.

But the confidential IAEA documents obtained by ABC News show that on Jan. 14, 2003, the agency's inspectors recorded that just over 3 tons of RDX was stored at the facility — a considerable discrepancy from what the Iraqis reported.

The IAEA documents could mean that 138 tons of explosives were removed from the facility long before the start of the United States launched "Operation Iraqi Freedom" in March 2003.

The missing explosives have become an issue in the presidential campaign. Sen. John Kerry has pointed to the disappearance as evidence of the Bush administration's poor handling of the war. The Bush camp has responded that more than a thousand times that amount of explosives or munitions have been recovered or destroyed in Iraq.

Another Concern

The IAEA documents from January 2003 found no discrepancy in the amount of the more dangerous HMX explosives thought to be stored at Al-Qaqaa, but they do raise another disturbing possibility.

The documents show IAEA inspectors looked at nine bunkers containing more than 194 tons of HMX at the facility. Although these bunkers were still under IAEA seal, the inspectors said the seals may be potentially ineffective because they had ventilation slats on the sides. These slats could be easily removed to remove the materials inside the bunkers without breaking the seals, the inspectors noted.

ABC News' Martha Raddatz filed this report for "World News Tonight." Luis Martinez contributed to this report.