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womzillaI'm listening to the News Hour (audio rebroadcast on WNYC). A long article just finished on Larry Wilkerson's statements about the "cabal" which hijacked foreign policy after September 11th and lied us into the Iraq debacle. The show followed up with the mainstay of The NewsHour: a moderator discussing the news with a centerist and a right-wing liar.
But the segment went off the rails in an important way: moderator Margaret Warner slapped the right-wing liar down twice in the course of the discussion. Wilkerson claimed that the WHIG plan was to go in, topple Hussein, put in Chalabi, and get out within four months. Now watch this:
Warner had previously allowed Scheunemann to insult Wilkerson's sanity ("I mean think soon we're going to need a psychologist versed in dealing with paranoids to understand his theory"), but when hetried to completely misrepresent Wilkerson's actual statements, she actually slapped him down.
And then again, at the end of the segment:
Smack! Christ. The transcript doesn't convey the anger in her voice as she stopped him from answering the pointless question he wanted to answer and kept him on the subject.
A few more panels like this and I might start believing we have a press, again. It's amazing what the press will do when they decide they don't need to prop up the Preznit anymore.
But the segment went off the rails in an important way: moderator Margaret Warner slapped the right-wing liar down twice in the course of the discussion. Wilkerson claimed that the WHIG plan was to go in, topple Hussein, put in Chalabi, and get out within four months. Now watch this:
MARGARET WARNER: Let's take one other thing that Larry Wilkerson talked about and he also laid at the foot of both the secretary of defense and the vice president what he calls the poor planning for the postwar situation. Now, how much of a role did the vice president have in that?
RANDY SCHEUNEMANN: Well, you know, I guess if the plan was to install Ahmed Chalabi immediately after the invasion, the cabal didn't prove to be very effective. I mean--
MARGARET WARNER: But that isn't the question. The question is: Were they responsible for that plan, which Larry Wilkerson said went completely awry, and they had no follow-up -- that's what he's saying, that we're now playing a pickup game.
Warner had previously allowed Scheunemann to insult Wilkerson's sanity ("I mean think soon we're going to need a psychologist versed in dealing with paranoids to understand his theory"), but when hetried to completely misrepresent Wilkerson's actual statements, she actually slapped him down.
And then again, at the end of the segment:
MARGARET WARNER: I have a very last final question, very brief to both of you: Where was the national security adviser, then Condoleezza Rice, who is supposed to be the honest broker in this?
RANDY SCHEUNEMANN: Well, I'll tell you where she is now --
MARGARET WARNER: No. Excuse me, where she was then.
Smack! Christ. The transcript doesn't convey the anger in her voice as she stopped him from answering the pointless question he wanted to answer and kept him on the subject.
A few more panels like this and I might start believing we have a press, again. It's amazing what the press will do when they decide they don't need to prop up the Preznit anymore.
