Of course if CNN reporters are going to start talking unprompted about Iranian links to AQI it's hard to imagine John McCain getting the grief he deserves for not knowing what he's talking about. After all, the press doesn't know what it's talking about, either.
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Ignorance is Bliss
19 Mar 2008 06:21 pm
Comments (47)
McCain has "misspoke" this particular misstatement three or four times in the past week.
in short, your notion that if only clinton would concede so that obama could level attacks that will destroy mccain's chances might be a little...oversimplified.
I wonder if McSame is daring the media clowns to call him on this. See how far he can dumb down the debate, which makes it easier to sell "The surge has worked!!!!!"
Well, if the CNN people start talking about how McCain will "stand up" to the Iranians because they tortured him as a captured pilot during the early 1970s, I'll really start to get worried...
McCain did not misspeak when he repeated this complete and utter BS today:
http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2008/03/19/mccain-camp-again-links-al-qaeda-to-iran/#comments
How stupid do they really think people are? Wait, don't answer that.
Oh wow, I didn't realize he'd been repeating it... just think, how many times did Lieberman drop the ball?
Did anyone notice this before Lieberman whispered in his ear, one sunny Iraqi day?
This is precisely why I've thought the glee of the Left Blogosphere over this particular "gotcha" moment has been misplaced. McCain's confusion is not only widely shared, but deeply rooted in Americans' understandings of the less-developed world and their relationship to it--not to mention the heritage of perceived besiegement that goes back to World War II. The sense that there are vast evil forces in the world ganging up on us--a sense that segued easily from fighting the Axis to fighting the International Communist Conspiracy--is now, after a confused interval in which the Enemy seemed diffuse and the Bill Kristols floundered around trying to find a workable bogeyman, settling in as the International Islamist Conspiracy. Shi'ite? Sunni? Reminds me of the Soviets and the Chinese, who, when they started to go at loggerheads in the 1960s, were regarded by many Americans as fighting a sham battle: They're just trying to fool us and obscure the fact that they're still in cahoots. To those who actually buy the Axis of Evil argument, there's no difference between Enemy A and Enemy B; they're all in cahoots. And to people like that, making distinctions is a silly scholarly game at best, a denial of the reality of the International Islamist Conspiracy at worst.
As bad as the comment was, I found myself distracted by Kyra Phillips costume. What's the deal with that? Is this now normal, for reporters to play dress up army man?
On an unrelated note...
100 REASONS NOT TO VOTE FOR HILLARY CLINTON
Todays "reason" I picked up from a Kos Diarist. I'm amazed it hasn't received more attention.
!!!Attention Andrew Sullivan!!!
.
Obama camp's response to McCain's latest lunacy: "We wish the McCain campaign well as they try to figure out the difference between Iran and al Qaeda."
Ha!
http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2008/03/19/mccain-camp-again-links-al-qaeda-to-iran
"After all, the press doesn't know what it's talking about, either."
um, I think they do, and they always have. remember the first word in "corporate media". if these "reporters" and "talking heads" and "commentators" want to keep making enough money to throw a decent party for their fellow Villagers, they know *exactly* what to say and do.
it's kinda like "good Germans" on steroids. (except, of course, if it was steroids, then there might be a congressional investigation.)
As far as I can tell there is some sort of concerted effort at work......article in the Telegraph the other day making all these claims, read like a carbon copy of the pre-Iraq stuff.
I wouldn't imagine that CNN is part of it, but might be getting ensnared by the misinformation.
Well, I just heard on CNN yesterday from one of the hosts talking to John King talking about this very "gaffe" that "John McCain is well known as a 'foreign policy expert'", so obviously McCain has proven in the past that he is an expert, which we know because he said Bush Jr's policy on Iraq was great! Obviously anyone can be a "foreign policy expert" if they fervently agree with their President's foreign policy!
I don't have a TV but I ate dinner tonight at a place that had the news on. And holy shit, that Glenn Beck is a fucking idiot.
Obama's done, the cynic in me has decided. Sad.
Ugh, this is exactly how we fell into war last time:..
...read like a carbon copy of the pre-Iraq stuff
Some noisy but ultimately ineffectual or outright counterproductive action against Iran, using air power only (because there isn't any capacity left in the Army and Marines) remains just about the only way for the GOP to pull this election out and win one for the Gipper, or for God, heterosexuality and low marginal rates of income tax.
"Somehow I still find it hard to believe that somebody like McCain wouldn't know about the cultural tensions in an area where we spend so much time and money."
Personally, I think this myth is far more important than his obvious lies the last few days.
By his own admission, John McCain does not pay attention to this "cultural" stuff. He's not a "detail" guy. His hot dog and burger snarfing buddies in the press know he doesn't know this stuff and say so publicly (though they find it endearing and chalk it up as "shooting from the hip").
He's George Bush without the attention to detail and the even temperament.
And yes, the conflation of AQI and Iran is intentional and is laying the groundwork for the obvious.
"Obama's done, the cynic in me has decided. Sad."
I'm pretty cynical too, but I wouldn't be so quick. It's not 1968, 1980, 1988, 2000 or even 2004. Obama is not your typical politician and he's bringing a lot of new voters in. He may not be able to pull out of it, but be patient.
Even if the Repubs start their blitz in the GE, they have a bad habit of overplaying their hand and have some really vile morons in their base and among their chattering heads that just don't know when to shut up. There will be a significant backlash as the loonier racists start coming out of the woodworks.
Also, it was bound to happen (Obama knew it was going to be an issue when he decided to run) but it's much better that it's happening now. There's a lot more time to address it and for Obama to speak to the people.
Mythyness:
Oct. 14, 2003
(CBS/AP) U.S., European and Arab intelligence agencies believe an elite security force controlled by Iran's hard-line clerics is protecting key al Qaeda figures who are directing operations from inside Iran, a newspaper reports.
And a son of Osama bin Laden is believed to be a leader of that al Qaeda Iranian branch, says The Washington Post.
(...)
However, he is not the actual leader of al Qaeda in Iran. That designation apparently falls to Saif al-Adel or Abdullah Ahmed Abdullah, two lieutenants who appear to pass on messages from Osama bin Laden and his chief deputy, Ayman al Zawahiri, because they must maintain a low profile.
Last year, Saad bin Laden was believed to have provided support for al Qaeda's April 11 bombing of a synagogue in Tunisia that left 19 dead, most of them German tourists. This marked al Qaeda's first successful terrorist operation outside of the Afghanistan region since the Sept. 11 attacks.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/10/14/attack/main577914.shtml
THIS IS EXCELLENT NEWS!! FOR HILLARY!!!
"How stupid do they really think people are? Wait, don't answer that."
Hey, there's a whole bunch of people on this site who will answer that shortly. Guys like Fred, Al, SLC, Powell...There's no shortage.
As for this stupid bitch on CNN, clearly she was pushing a partisan line totally. Even Petraeus was embarrassed and corrected her mildly. This can't have been an accident.
This is how we're going to get a war on Iran - deliberate lying constantly on the TV day in and day out - just like Iraq. It's been going on for several years now, and the polls show that the US public has fallen for it, although the last polls I saw still showed the public is more or less opposed to any immediate war on Iran as opposed to more "diplomacy". Of course, the "diplomacy" being done has nothing to do with "diplomacy" in the rational sense, and is merely the ratcheting up of sanctions on Iran.
If McCain gets in office, a war with Iran is GUARANTEED. That means $200/barrel oil in the middle of a US recession, and when China dumps the US dollar in retaliation for being cut off from Iranian oil and gas, you can kiss the US economy bye-bye.
And that's if Cheney and Bush don't get one started in the next nine months - which is still the odds on favorite outcome. The Republicans know that only a "war bump" can help the Republicans stay in power in Congress and get McCain elected. They may not have tried this tack in 2004 or 2006, but they damn sure are going to try it this year. They can't afford not to.
Plus they need to tie the hands of the next administration - stopping a new war in Iran will be a lot harder than stopping the Iraq war.
Kyra Phillips didn't just make the same "gaffe" as McCain, she took his words and parroted them as truth and not only that, she had the stupidity to do it to a General. Her statement came after McCains "gaffe" had been pointed out and still she chose to repeat it.
RSH: "If McCain gets in office, a war with Iran is GUARANTEED. That means $200/barrel oil in the middle of a US recession, and when China dumps the US dollar in retaliation for being cut off from Iranian oil and gas, you can kiss the US economy bye-bye."
Though this is a bit alarmist, I'm going to spread it like wildfire to the people I know.
Of course one reason why the media is so poor at the important and relevant facts is because they focus too much on the tabloid type of stories that really do not matter to people or make a difference in their lives.
How much time has the media given people like Britney Spears or Paris Hilton or Anna Nicole?
In politics, the coverage is again around the sensational that doesn't matter, the distractions, like Rev. Wright, or Ferraro, or any number of other tangential issues.
We see what the media focuses on, and then we wonder how we could have gotten us into the blunder that is Iraq. Very sad.
As for the person above who was discouraged after watching the Glenn Beck show: do not be discouraged; his influence is marginal. I heard a little bit of Beck earlier this year, and he was pushing Romney hard and trashed McCain. Yet he did very little to prevent McCain from getting the GOP nomination, and certainly did not get his man Romney very far.
The same with Rush Limbaugh; for all his bluster, he could not talk the Republican voters out of nominating McCain. He didn't help the Republicans so much in 2006. It's just that he claims credit when the Republicans win, and the media falls for it.
It took Kyra a minute or so of blathering to finally get to her question Would you support a war on Iran?
Talk about a gaffe. What the hell is this girl doing interviewing a high-profile General?
Embarrasing, to say the least.
Hmm, this article from '06 suggests that there may be some ties between Iranian officials and al-Qaeda:
"As has been witnessed by the outbreak of war between Israel and Hezbollah, Muslim public opinion has largely looked past the Sunni-Shiite divide during times of crisis. In this case, Sunni groups have rallied behind Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah as a champion for Muslims against Israeli aggression.:
http://jamestown.org/terrorism/news/article.php?articleid=2370095
But, the issue is far more complicated than I think anybody in the world really knows. I'm sure there's a lot of backstabbing and double-crossing. Either way, it DEFINITELY does not justify another war.
Kyra Phillips is not a reporter in any reasonable sense of the word. Notice how teevee isn't called 'electronic journalism' very much anymore (it's all just 'media', just as all material is now 'content')? And well it shouldn't. She is a professional cypher, and will be offended and bewildered by criticism of her for this incident, because she and her CNN management geniuses think that being a cypher is her *job*, and that she's good at that. I wonder if they have a Dipshit 101 class in J School? They probably do, but I guess it must go by a different name...
Kyra could paraphrase Elvis: I don't know much about facts and issues. Luckily, in my line of work, you don't have to.
Well, as McCain's odious and deceitful backer Joe Lieberman would say who cares 'so long as it's good for the Jews'.
The big secret is that most of those in the media are intellectual morons. Those on TV are chosen more for their looks than anything else.
Do you think Kyra Phillips got her job because she was some ace student in J-school, or because of her looks?
Now I freely admit that one can be both pretty and smart, but for the networks only being pretty will do.
It's the same way with that Hasselback person on The View; she came to fame being a contestant on Survivor. And so this pretty looking reality show contestant is now on a major network show dispensing her "wisdom" on all sorts of issues.
We need to ask more of our media.
tao9 left out a certain paragraph from that AP story:
He is one of what Saudi Arabian spy agencies believe are some 400 al Qaeda operatives in Iran, brought and protected there by the hard-line Jerusalem Force, which is not controlled by Iran's central government, according to the newspaper.
Since we know that the AP is never wrong or misleading about anything (notice how a fringe group becomes 'Iran's Hardline Clerics'), I say we elect Mister Straight Talk From the Hip McCain and attack the wrong people again. I mean, someone has to pay for how upset we are, right? Bomb bomb bomb...
The fact is that McCain did not misspeak. He's a liar. He has repeatedly tried to conflate AQ with Iranian radicals, and was just a little too baldfaced about it recently.
But, of course, there ARE links between Iran and al Qaeda, and have been for a long time - as the 9/11 Commission confirmed.
Matthew is flat out lying that there isn't.
The Reality Based Community just doesn't seem to care about, well, reality.
Where in the bloody hell do you think Phillips got that misconception from?
This is how it works. They repeat lies often enough that they get the media to start saying them too. And then it becomes "widely known."
socctty writes: "Did anyone notice this before Lieberman whispered in his ear, one sunny Iraqi day?"
They might as well have McCain sit on Liebushman's lap with Killer Joe's arm up his ass operating his idiot lips from now on. McCain is no longer in control of his own thoughts. It's a sad thing to watch.
And of course, on cue, Al pops up to prove what we said above - there's no shortage of stupid.
There are no significant operational links between Iran and Al Qaeda - that's the overall consensus of the intelligence agencies - and common sense.
As I've said repeatedly here, as Al well knows, there may occasionally be connections between ANY group and any other group, for operational convenience, or for a way of infiltrating, or who knows why.
Doesn't mean anything in the overall view.
And since the 9/11 Commission managed to leave out everything Sibel Edmonds told them, I'd have to say their credibility is pretty well shot.
cite Al. There were 'links' between the US and AQ, too: the bin Laden family, the 9/11 hijackers, that Lind guy who trained with the Taliban, etc. Bomb bomb bomb...
The "links" Al mentions were that the commission found that some of the 9/11 hijackers had passed through Iran at some point. That's it. Passed through.
On that basis Al (and idiots like Al) could justify bombing Canada due to its same "links" to Al Qaeda.
Al will continue to gobble up every last drop of Dumbya/Cheney "nectar" as long as they keep spurting it out.
1. McCain's comments on the state of cross border terrorism in Iraq were incorrect.
2. However, I believe the horse does not need to be beaten any longer. Sure, public officials, when on camera and addressing the state of terrorism need to have their facts correct, but I have not seen an intelligent post on this blog on the state of terrorism in the world. The media, while it incurs large amounts of criticism, does 'dumb' down issues like terrorism to politicize them. The public dialogue does not rise above the basic level, which is a problem because the issues then become severely dumbed down in the eyes of the larger public. The exponential increase and conflagration of Jihadist groups around the globe is an issue that demands intelligent discussion.
3. In conclusion, before you attack the man do YOUR homework on the issue.
4. For insight that is not ideologically and politically driven, visit STRATFOR.com. These people know what they are talking about.
Unfuckingbelievable, right? Five years in and there are still a lot of people in this country, in government and the media who continue to have NO IDEA WHAT IS GOING ON. How does this happen?
"The exponential increase and conflagration of Jihadist groups around the globe is an issue that demands intelligent discussion.
3. In conclusion, before you attack the man do YOUR homework on the issue."
I have.
And McCain clearly has not. That is the point here. We can't afford (another) President who doesn't know his ass from a hole in the ground - and doesn't care - about the real causes of and the real means of dealing with terrorism.
Old Dan Tucker writes: "The exponential increase and conflagration of Jihadist groups around the globe is an issue that demands intelligent discussion."
But it won't come from some nitwit who uses a word like "exponential" without knowing what it means.
"For insight that is not ideologically and politically driven, visit STRATFOR.com. These people know what they are talking about."
It's a jerkoff site for Victor Davis Handjob wannabes. Like Victor they were consistently wrong about Iraq - take their 2002 piece about the expected downturn in oil prices "after the Iraq War" as one example. Or were they doing a long-range forecast for 2022?
Thanks to Ol' Dan for wrapping up the essential points from the discussion in a neat package. In terms of terror networks and their various shifting connections to institutions within states (Qud's force certainly no less than Mossad, ISI, FSB, et al) it's always been confusing.
The job of both politicians and media types is to reduce complexity. This at times reaches the level of idiocy, as in this case.
Personally, I think the risk of terrorism has been exaggerated in some respects but ignored in others. It's most problematic when it becomes a major policy tool of a national state. Major progress will only be made when Iran, Saudi Arabia, and to a lesser extent Pakistan, get their policies sorted out with us, and I don't see much evidence that cruise missiles are going to be the method. Talk is cheap.
There were 'links' between the US and AQ, too: the bin Laden family, the 9/11 hijackers, that Lind guy who trained with the Taliban, etc.
For that matter, Shiite "extremists" and al qaeda operatives have probably received more arms from American sources than from Iranian and foreign Sunnis.
Has it actually been proven that "AQI" isn't the empty set?
Go easy on Old Dan, he was just trying to promote that site.
Shorter McCain foreign policy: "Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor?"
Everyone knows that Kyra Phillips was hired for her intelligence and her bona fides as a journalist and not her perky, elfin MILF ass. She's CNN's version of the bleach-blonde FOX News porn star. Thankfully, Serious journalists like Lou Dobbs and Glenn Beck make up for her shortcomings.
"tao9 left out a certain paragraph from that AP story:"
And he left out that the 2003 story was later discredited.
Ditto johnnybutter, provide citations, Al.
"...I have not seen an intelligent post on this blog on the state of terrorism in the world."
Here's one. Going to war in Iraq made terrorism and the threat of terrorism worse. Here's another. Bombing and/or going to war with Iran will make terrorism and the threat of terrorism worse. And another. Listening to the people that made the mistakes and WAGs the first time isn't a good idea. Finally. Repeating the same mistakes and expecting a different outcome is the height of insanity.
Comments closed April 02, 2008.
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Heads in the Sand
Ugh, this is exactly how we fell into war last time: an inattentive media didn't counter the claims by a war-happy politician linking a terrorist group that is inherently aligned against an ideologically-different state government.
I think McCain probably mis-spoke yesterday, although I hold that belief by a single tenuous thread. Somehow I still find it hard to believe that somebody like McCain wouldn't know about the cultural tensions in an area where we spend so much time and money.
Posted by socctty | March 19, 2008 6:32 PM