Showing posts with label O'Reilly. Show all posts
Showing posts with label O'Reilly. Show all posts

Monday, May 19, 2008

Bushies taking their cues from Fox?


It's a Bill O'Reilly world at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., where the White House is upset over how NBC -- the waterboard right's fourth point along the "Axis of Evil" -- edited an interview with President Bush.

In a letter to the head of NBC News as rich with irony as it was lacking in self-awareness, a Bush aide complained the network edited Bush's answers to correspondent Richard Engel's questions with the intent to deceive. Says the administration that "edited" intelligence with the intent to suck the American people into an unjust and foolhardy war with Saddam Hussein's Iraq.

The story's in The Hill:
The White House on Monday sent a scathing letter to NBC News, accusing the news network of “deceptively” editing an interview with President Bush on the issue of appeasement and Iran.

At issue were remarks Bush made in front of Israel's parliament earlier this week.

Specifically, White House counselor Ed Gillespie laments that the network edited the interview in a way that “is clearly intended to give viewers the impression that [Bush] agreed with [correspondent Richard Engel's] characterization of his remarks when he explicitly challenged it.

“This deceitful editing to further a media-manufactured storyline is utterly misleading and irresponsible and I hereby request in the interest of fairness and accuracy that the network air the President’s responses to both initial questions in full on the two programs that used the excerpts,” said Gillespie in the letter to NBC News President Steve Capus.

BRIAN WILLIAMS NOTED the letter on tonight's NBC Nightly News, adding that the entire unedited interview was available on the program's website. And above. The edited version is here -- and, no, the president didn't need someone in an NBC editing booth to make him look like a delusional moron.

Finally, it's interesting that Bush likened his opponents to advocates of the "beehive theory" -- that you leave the beehive alone in hopes that the bees stay inside.

Q The war on terrorism has been the centerpiece of your presidency. Many people say that it has not made the world safer, that it has created more radicals, that there are more people in this part of the world who want to attack the United States.

THE PRESIDENT: That theory says by confronting the people that killed us, therefore there's going to be more -- therefore we shouldn't confront them?

Q Or confronting -- creating more people who want to kill us, one could also say.

THE PRESIDENT: Well, you can say that, but the truth of the matter is there's fewer al Qaeda leaders, the people are on the run; they're having more trouble recruiting in the Middle East; Saudi Arabia, our partner, has gone after al Qaeda; people now see al Qaeda for what it is, which is a group of extremists and radicals who preach nothing but hate. And no, I just -- it's just the beehive theory -- we should have just let the beehive sit there and hope the bees don't come out of the hive?

My attitude is the United States must stay on the offense against al Qaeda -- two ways. One from --

Q Smash the bees --

THE PRESIDENT: -- two ways --

Q -- in the hive and let them spread?

THE PRESIDENT: Excuse me for a minute, Richard. Two ways. One, find them and bring them to justice -- what we're doing. And two, offer freedom as an alternative for their vision. And somehow to suggest the bees would stay in the hive is naïve -- they didn't stay in the hive when they came and killed 3,000 of our citizens.

UHHHHHHH . . . the killer bees, as it were, swarmed in Afghanistan and are now hiding in our supposed ally, Pakistan. A great many of those bees were bred by our other supposed ally, Saudi Arabia. And, no, a sane person does not go around smashing beehives to keep the bees from going on a rampage. You smoke the buggers out.

George Bush thought he was smashing a beehive in Iraq, and he thought that actually would work. Thing is, Iraq turned out not to be a beehive at all, and there was no al Qaida presence in Iraq -- at least before we invaded.

What Iraq turned out to be was a hornet's nest. Or Pandora's Box -- take your pick.