http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=2842

3/15/06

"The Final Word Is Hooray!"

Remembering the Iraq War's Pollyanna pundits

Weeks after the invasion of Iraq began, Fox News Channel host Brit
Hume delivered a scathing speech critiquing the media's supposedly
pessimistic assessment of the Iraq War.

"The majority of the American media who were in a position to comment
upon the progress of the war in the early going, and even after that,
got it wrong," Hume complained in the April 2003 speech (Richmond
Times Dispatch, 4/25/04).

"They didn't get it just a little wrong. They got it completely
wrong."

Hume was perhaps correct--but almost entirely in the opposite sense.

Days or weeks into the war, commentators and reporters made premature
declarations of victory, offered predictions about lasting political
effects and called on the critics of the war to apologize.

Three years later, the Iraq War grinds on at the cost of at least tens
of thousands of lives and hundreds of billions of dollars.

Around the same time as Hume's speech, syndicated columnist Cal Thomas
declared (4/16/03):

"All of the printed and voiced prophecies should be saved in an
archive. When these false prophets again appear, they can be reminded
of the error of their previous ways and at least be offered an
opportunity to recant and repent. Otherwise, they will return to us in
another situation where their expertise will be acknowledged, or taken
for granted, but their credibility will be lacking."

Gathered here are some of the most notable media comments from the
early days of the Iraq War.


Declaring Victory

"Iraq Is All but Won; Now What?"

(Los Angeles Times headline, 4/10/03)


"Now that the combat phase of the war in Iraq is officially over, what
begins is a debate throughout the entire U.S. government over
America's unrivaled power and how best to use it."

(CBS reporter Joie Chen, 5/4/03)


"Congress returns to Washington this week to a world very different
from the one members left two weeks ago. The war in Iraq is
essentially over and domestic issues are regaining attention."

(NPR's Bob Edwards, 4/28/03)


"Tommy Franks and the coalition forces have demonstrated the old axiom
that boldness on the battlefield produces swift and relatively
bloodless victory. The three-week swing through Iraq has utterly
shattered skeptics' complaints."

(Fox News Channel's Tony Snow, 4/27/03)


"The only people who think this wasn't a victory are Upper Westside
liberals, and a few people here in Washington."

(Charles Krauthammer, Inside Washington, WUSA-TV, 4/19/03)


"We had controversial wars that divided the country. This war united
the country and brought the military back."

(Newsweek's Howard Fineman--MSNBC, 5/7/03)


"We're all neo-cons now."

(MSNBC's Chris Matthews, 4/9/03)


"The war was the hard part. The hard part was putting together a
coalition, getting 300,000 troops over there and all their equipment
and winning. And it gets easier. I mean, setting up a democracy is
hard, but it is not as hard as winning a war."

(Fox News Channel's Fred Barnes, 4/10/03)


"Oh, it was breathtaking. I mean I was almost starting to think that
we had become inured to everything that we'd seen of this war over the
past three weeks; all this sort of saturation. And finally, when we
saw that it was such a just true, genuine expression. It was
reminiscent, I think, of the fall of the Berlin Wall. And just sort of
that pure emotional expression, not choreographed, not stage-managed,
the way so many things these days seem to be. Really breathtaking."

(Washington Post reporter Ceci Connolly, appearing on Fox News Channel
on 4/9/03, discussing the pulling down of a Saddam Hussein statue in
Baghdad, an event later revealed to have been a U.S. military PSYOPS
operation--Los Angeles Times, 7/3/04)


Mission Accomplished?

"The war winds down, politics heats up.... Picture perfect. Part
Spider-Man, part Tom Cruise, part Ronald Reagan. The president seizes
the moment on an aircraft carrier in the Pacific."

(PBS's Gwen Ifill, 5/2/03, on George W. Bush's "Mission Accomplished"
speech)


"We're proud of our president. Americans love having a guy as
president, a guy who has a little swagger, who's physical, who's not a
complicated guy like Clinton or even like Dukakis or Mondale, all
those guys, McGovern. They want a guy who's president. Women like a
guy who's president. Check it out. The women like this war. I think we
like having a hero as our president. It's simple. We're not like the
Brits."

(MSNBC's Chris Matthews, 5/1/03)


"He looked like an alternatively commander in chief, rock star, movie
star, and one of the guys."

(CNN's Lou Dobbs, on Bush's 'Mission Accomplished' speech, 5/1/03)


Neutralizing the Opposition

"Why don't the damn Democrats give the president his day? He won
today. He did well today."

(MSNBC's Chris Matthews, 4/9/03)


"What's he going to talk about a year from now, the fact that the war
went too well and it's over? I mean, don't these things sort of lose
their--Isn't there a fresh date on some of these debate points?"

(MSNBC's Chris Matthews, speaking about Howard Dean--4/9/03)


"If image is everything, how can the Democratic presidential hopefuls
compete with a president fresh from a war victory?"

(CNN's Judy Woodruff, 5/5/03)


"It is amazing how thorough the victory in Iraq really was in the
broadest context..... And the silence, I think, is that it's clear
that nobody can do anything about it. There isn't anybody who can stop
him. The Democrats can't oppose--cannot oppose him politically."

(Washington Post reporter Jeff Birnbaum-- Fox News Channel, 5/2/03)


Nagging the "Naysayers"

"Now that the war in Iraq is all but over, should the people in
Hollywood who opposed the president admit they were wrong?"

(Fox News Channel's Alan Colmes, 4/25/03)


"I doubt that the journalists at the New York Times and NPR or at ABC
or at CNN are going to ever admit just how wrong their negative
pronouncements were over the past four weeks."

(MSNBC's Joe Scarborough, 4/9/03)


"I'm waiting to hear the words 'I was wrong' from some of the world's
most elite journalists, politicians and Hollywood types.... I just
wonder, who's going to be the first elitist to show the character to
say: 'Hey, America, guess what? I was wrong'? Maybe the White House
will get an apology, first, from the New York Times' Maureen Dowd.
Now, Ms. Dowd mocked the morality of this war....

"Do you all remember Scott Ritter, you know, the former chief U.N.
weapons inspector who played chief stooge for Saddam Hussein? Well,
Mr. Ritter actually told a French radio network that -- quote, 'The
United States is going to leave Baghdad with its tail between its
legs, defeated.' Sorry, Scott. I think you've been chasing the wrong
tail, again.

"Maybe disgraced commentators and politicians alike, like Daschle,
Jimmy Carter, Dennis Kucinich, and all those others, will step forward
tonight and show the content of their character by simply admitting
what we know already: that their wartime predictions were arrogant,
they were misguided and they were dead wrong. Maybe, just maybe, these
self-anointed critics will learn from their mistakes. But I doubt it.
After all, we don't call them 'elitists' for nothing."

(MSNBC's Joe Scarborough, 4/10/03)


"Over the next couple of weeks when we find the chemical weapons this
guy was amassing, the fact that this war was attacked by the left and
so the right was so vindicated, I think, really means that the left is
going to have to hang its head for three or four more years."

(Fox News Channel's ***** Morris, 4/9/03)


"This has been a tough war for commentators on the American left. To
hope for defeat meant cheering for Saddam Hussein. To hope for victory
meant cheering for President Bush. The toppling of Mr. Hussein, or at
least a statue of him, has made their arguments even harder to defend.
Liberal writers for ideologically driven magazines like The Nation and
for less overtly political ones like The New Yorker did not predict a
defeat, but the terrible consequences many warned of have not
happened. Now liberal commentators must address the victory at hand
and confront an ascendant conservative juggernaut that asserts United
States might can set the world right."

(New York Times reporter David Carr, 4/16/03)


"Well, the hot story of the week is victory.... The Tommy Franks-Don
Rumsfeld battle plan, war plan, worked brilliantly, a three-week war
with mercifully few American deaths or Iraqi civilian deaths.... There
is a lot of work yet to do, but all the naysayers have been humiliated
so far.... The final word on this is, hooray."

(Fox News Channel's Morton Kondracke, 4/12/03)

"Some journalists, in my judgment, just can't stand success,
especially a few liberal columnists and newspapers and a few Arab
reporters."

(CNN's Lou Dobbs, 4/14/03)

"Sean Penn is at it again. The Hollywood star takes out a full-page ad
out in the New York Times bashing George Bush. Apparently he still
hasn't figured out we won the war."

(MSNBC's Joe Scarborough, 5/30/03)


Cakewalk?

"This will be no war -- there will be a fairly brief and ruthless
military intervention.... The president will give an order. [The
attack] will be rapid, accurate and dazzling.... It will be greeted by
the majority of the Iraqi people as an emancipation. And I say, bring
it on."

(Christopher Hitchens, in a 1/28/03 debate-- cited in the Observer,
3/30/03)


"I will bet you the best dinner in the gaslight district of San Diego
that military action will not last more than a week. Are you willing
to take that wager?"

(Fox News Channel's Bill O'Reilly, 1/29/03)


"It won't take weeks. You know that, professor. Our military machine
will crush Iraq in a matter of days and there's no question that it
will."

(Fox News Channel's Bill O'Reilly, 2/10/03)


"There's no way. There's absolutely no way. They may bomb for a matter
of weeks, try to soften them up as they did in Afghanistan. But once
the United States and Britain unleash, it's maybe hours. They're going
to fold like that."

(Fox News Channel's Bill O'Reilly, 2/10/03)


"He [Saddam Hussein] actually thought that he could stop us and win
the debate worldwide. But he didn't--he didn't bargain on a two- or
three week war. I actually thought it would be less than two weeks."

(NBC reporter Fred Francis, Chris Matthews Show, 4/13/03)


Weapons of Mass Destruction

NPR's Mara Liasson: Where there was a debate about whether or not Iraq
had these weapons of mass destruction and whether we can find it...

Brit Hume: No, there wasn't. Nobody seriously argued that he didn't
have them beforehand. Nobody.

(Fox News Channel, April 6, 2003)


"Speaking to the U.N. Security Council last week, Secretary of State
Colin Powell made so strong a case that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein
is in material breach of U.N. resolutions that only the duped, the
dumb and the desperate could ignore it."

(Cal Thomas, syndicated column, 2/12/03)


"Saddam could decide to take Baghdad with him. One Arab intelligence
officer interviewed by Newsweek spoke of 'the green mushroom' over
Baghdad--the modern-day caliph bidding a grotesque bio-chem farewell
to the land of the living alongside thousands of his subjects as well
as his enemies. Saddam wants to be remembered. He has the means and
the demonic imagination. It is up to U.S. armed forces to stop him
before he can achieve notoriety for all time."

(Newsweek, 3/17/03)


"Chris, more than anything else, real vindication for the
administration. One, credible evidence of weapons of mass destruction.
Two, you know what? There were a lot of terrorists here, really bad
guys. I saw them."

(MSNBC reporter Bob Arnot, 4/9/03)


"Even in the flush of triumph, doubts will be raised. Where are the
supplies of germs and poison gas and plans for nukes to justify
pre-emption? (Freed scientists will lead us to caches no inspectors
could find.) What about remaining danger from Baathist torturers and
war criminals forming pockets of resistance and plotting vengeance?
(Their death wish is our command.)"

(New York Times' William Safire, 4/10/03)

__________________________________________________________

Enlightening, eh?

Harry

http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=2842

3/15/06

"The Final Word Is Hooray!"

Remembering the Iraq War's Pollyanna pundits

Weeks after the invasion of Iraq began, Fox News Channel host Brit
Hume delivered a scathing speech critiquing the media's supposedly
pessimistic assessment of the Iraq War.

"The majority of the American media who were in a position to comment
upon the progress of the war in the early going, and even after that,
got it wrong," Hume complained in the April 2003 speech (Richmond
Times Dispatch, 4/25/04).

"They didn't get it just a little wrong. They got it completely
wrong."

Hume was perhaps correct--but almost entirely in the opposite sense.

Days or weeks into the war, commentators and reporters made premature
declarations of victory, offered predictions about lasting political
effects and called on the critics of the war to apologize.

Three years later, the Iraq War grinds on at the cost of at least tens
of thousands of lives and hundreds of billions of dollars.

Around the same time as Hume's speech, syndicated columnist Cal Thomas
declared (4/16/03):

"All of the printed and voiced prophecies should be saved in an
archive. When these false prophets again appear, they can be reminded
of the error of their previous ways and at least be offered an
opportunity to recant and repent. Otherwise, they will return to us in
another situation where their expertise will be acknowledged, or taken
for granted, but their credibility will be lacking."

Gathered here are some of the most notable media comments from the
early days of the Iraq War.


Declaring Victory

"Iraq Is All but Won; Now What?"

(Los Angeles Times headline, 4/10/03)


"Now that the combat phase of the war in Iraq is officially over, what
begins is a debate throughout the entire U.S. government over
America's unrivaled power and how best to use it."

(CBS reporter Joie Chen, 5/4/03)


"Congress returns to Washington this week to a world very different
from the one members left two weeks ago. The war in Iraq is
essentially over and domestic issues are regaining attention."

(NPR's Bob Edwards, 4/28/03)


"Tommy Franks and the coalition forces have demonstrated the old axiom
that boldness on the battlefield produces swift and relatively
bloodless victory. The three-week swing through Iraq has utterly
shattered skeptics' complaints."

(Fox News Channel's Tony Snow, 4/27/03)


"The only people who think this wasn't a victory are Upper Westside
liberals, and a few people here in Washington."

(Charles Krauthammer, Inside Washington, WUSA-TV, 4/19/03)


"We had controversial wars that divided the country. This war united
the country and brought the military back."

(Newsweek's Howard Fineman--MSNBC, 5/7/03)


"We're all neo-cons now."

(MSNBC's Chris Matthews, 4/9/03)


"The war was the hard part. The hard part was putting together a
coalition, getting 300,000 troops over there and all their equipment
and winning. And it gets easier. I mean, setting up a democracy is
hard, but it is not as hard as winning a war."

(Fox News Channel's Fred Barnes, 4/10/03)


"Oh, it was breathtaking. I mean I was almost starting to think that
we had become inured to everything that we'd seen of this war over the
past three weeks; all this sort of saturation. And finally, when we
saw that it was such a just true, genuine expression. It was
reminiscent, I think, of the fall of the Berlin Wall. And just sort of
that pure emotional expression, not choreographed, not stage-managed,
the way so many things these days seem to be. Really breathtaking."

(Washington Post reporter Ceci Connolly, appearing on Fox News Channel
on 4/9/03, discussing the pulling down of a Saddam Hussein statue in
Baghdad, an event later revealed to have been a U.S. military PSYOPS
operation--Los Angeles Times, 7/3/04)


Mission Accomplished?

"The war winds down, politics heats up.... Picture perfect. Part
Spider-Man, part Tom Cruise, part Ronald Reagan. The president seizes
the moment on an aircraft carrier in the Pacific."

(PBS's Gwen Ifill, 5/2/03, on George W. Bush's "Mission Accomplished"
speech)


"We're proud of our president. Americans love having a guy as
president, a guy who has a little swagger, who's physical, who's not a
complicated guy like Clinton or even like Dukakis or Mondale, all
those guys, McGovern. They want a guy who's president. Women like a
guy who's president. Check it out. The women like this war. I think we
like having a hero as our president. It's simple. We're not like the
Brits."

(MSNBC's Chris Matthews, 5/1/03)


"He looked like an alternatively commander in chief, rock star, movie
star, and one of the guys."

(CNN's Lou Dobbs, on Bush's 'Mission Accomplished' speech, 5/1/03)


Neutralizing the Opposition

"Why don't the damn Democrats give the president his day? He won
today. He did well today."

(MSNBC's Chris Matthews, 4/9/03)


"What's he going to talk about a year from now, the fact that the war
went too well and it's over? I mean, don't these things sort of lose
their--Isn't there a fresh date on some of these debate points?"

(MSNBC's Chris Matthews, speaking about Howard Dean--4/9/03)


"If image is everything, how can the Democratic presidential hopefuls
compete with a president fresh from a war victory?"

(CNN's Judy Woodruff, 5/5/03)


"It is amazing how thorough the victory in Iraq really was in the
broadest context..... And the silence, I think, is that it's clear
that nobody can do anything about it. There isn't anybody who can stop
him. The Democrats can't oppose--cannot oppose him politically."

(Washington Post reporter Jeff Birnbaum-- Fox News Channel, 5/2/03)


Nagging the "Naysayers"

"Now that the war in Iraq is all but over, should the people in
Hollywood who opposed the president admit they were wrong?"

(Fox News Channel's Alan Colmes, 4/25/03)


"I doubt that the journalists at the New York Times and NPR or at ABC
or at CNN are going to ever admit just how wrong their negative
pronouncements were over the past four weeks."

(MSNBC's Joe Scarborough, 4/9/03)


"I'm waiting to hear the words 'I was wrong' from some of the world's
most elite journalists, politicians and Hollywood types.... I just
wonder, who's going to be the first elitist to show the character to
say: 'Hey, America, guess what? I was wrong'? Maybe the White House
will get an apology, first, from the New York Times' Maureen Dowd.
Now, Ms. Dowd mocked the morality of this war....

"Do you all remember Scott Ritter, you know, the former chief U.N.
weapons inspector who played chief stooge for Saddam Hussein? Well,
Mr. Ritter actually told a French radio network that -- quote, 'The
United States is going to leave Baghdad with its tail between its
legs, defeated.' Sorry, Scott. I think you've been chasing the wrong
tail, again.

"Maybe disgraced commentators and politicians alike, like Daschle,
Jimmy Carter, Dennis Kucinich, and all those others, will step forward
tonight and show the content of their character by simply admitting
what we know already: that their wartime predictions were arrogant,
they were misguided and they were dead wrong. Maybe, just maybe, these
self-anointed critics will learn from their mistakes. But I doubt it.
After all, we don't call them 'elitists' for nothing."

(MSNBC's Joe Scarborough, 4/10/03)


"Over the next couple of weeks when we find the chemical weapons this
guy was amassing, the fact that this war was attacked by the left and
so the right was so vindicated, I think, really means that the left is
going to have to hang its head for three or four more years."

(Fox News Channel's ***** Morris, 4/9/03)


"This has been a tough war for commentators on the American left. To
hope for defeat meant cheering for Saddam Hussein. To hope for victory
meant cheering for President Bush. The toppling of Mr. Hussein, or at
least a statue of him, has made their arguments even harder to defend.
Liberal writers for ideologically driven magazines like The Nation and
for less overtly political ones like The New Yorker did not predict a
defeat, but the terrible consequences many warned of have not
happened. Now liberal commentators must address the victory at hand
and confront an ascendant conservative juggernaut that asserts United
States might can set the world right."

(New York Times reporter David Carr, 4/16/03)


"Well, the hot story of the week is victory.... The Tommy Franks-Don
Rumsfeld battle plan, war plan, worked brilliantly, a three-week war
with mercifully few American deaths or Iraqi civilian deaths.... There
is a lot of work yet to do, but all the naysayers have been humiliated
so far.... The final word on this is, hooray."

(Fox News Channel's Morton Kondracke, 4/12/03)

"Some journalists, in my judgment, just can't stand success,
especially a few liberal columnists and newspapers and a few Arab
reporters."

(CNN's Lou Dobbs, 4/14/03)

"Sean Penn is at it again. The Hollywood star takes out a full-page ad
out in the New York Times bashing George Bush. Apparently he still
hasn't figured out we won the war."

(MSNBC's Joe Scarborough, 5/30/03)


Cakewalk?

"This will be no war -- there will be a fairly brief and ruthless
military intervention.... The president will give an order. [The
attack] will be rapid, accurate and dazzling.... It will be greeted by
the majority of the Iraqi people as an emancipation. And I say, bring
it on."

(Christopher Hitchens, in a 1/28/03 debate-- cited in the Observer,
3/30/03)


"I will bet you the best dinner in the gaslight district of San Diego
that military action will not last more than a week. Are you willing
to take that wager?"

(Fox News Channel's Bill O'Reilly, 1/29/03)


"It won't take weeks. You know that, professor. Our military machine
will crush Iraq in a matter of days and there's no question that it
will."

(Fox News Channel's Bill O'Reilly, 2/10/03)


"There's no way. There's absolutely no way. They may bomb for a matter
of weeks, try to soften them up as they did in Afghanistan. But once
the United States and Britain unleash, it's maybe hours. They're going
to fold like that."

(Fox News Channel's Bill O'Reilly, 2/10/03)


"He [Saddam Hussein] actually thought that he could stop us and win
the debate worldwide. But he didn't--he didn't bargain on a two- or
three week war. I actually thought it would be less than two weeks."

(NBC reporter Fred Francis, Chris Matthews Show, 4/13/03)


Weapons of Mass Destruction

NPR's Mara Liasson: Where there was a debate about whether or not Iraq
had these weapons of mass destruction and whether we can find it...

Brit Hume: No, there wasn't. Nobody seriously argued that he didn't
have them beforehand. Nobody.

(Fox News Channel, April 6, 2003)


"Speaking to the U.N. Security Council last week, Secretary of State
Colin Powell made so strong a case that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein
is in material breach of U.N. resolutions that only the duped, the
dumb and the desperate could ignore it."

(Cal Thomas, syndicated column, 2/12/03)


"Saddam could decide to take Baghdad with him. One Arab intelligence
officer interviewed by Newsweek spoke of 'the green mushroom' over
Baghdad--the modern-day caliph bidding a grotesque bio-chem farewell
to the land of the living alongside thousands of his subjects as well
as his enemies. Saddam wants to be remembered. He has the means and
the demonic imagination. It is up to U.S. armed forces to stop him
before he can achieve notoriety for all time."

(Newsweek, 3/17/03)


"Chris, more than anything else, real vindication for the
administration. One, credible evidence of weapons of mass destruction.
Two, you know what? There were a lot of terrorists here, really bad
guys. I saw them."

(MSNBC reporter Bob Arnot, 4/9/03)


"Even in the flush of triumph, doubts will be raised. Where are the
supplies of germs and poison gas and plans for nukes to justify
pre-emption? (Freed scientists will lead us to caches no inspectors
could find.) What about remaining danger from Baathist torturers and
war criminals forming pockets of resistance and plotting vengeance?
(Their death wish is our command.)"

(New York Times' William Safire, 4/10/03)

__________________________________________________________

Enlightening, eh?

Harry

http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=2842

3/15/06

"The Final Word Is Hooray!"

Remembering the Iraq War's Pollyanna pundits

Weeks after the invasion of Iraq began, Fox News Channel host Brit
Hume delivered a scathing speech critiquing the media's supposedly
pessimistic assessment of the Iraq War.

"The majority of the American media who were in a position to comment
upon the progress of the war in the early going, and even after that,
got it wrong," Hume complained in the April 2003 speech (Richmond
Times Dispatch, 4/25/04).

"They didn't get it just a little wrong. They got it completely
wrong."

Hume was perhaps correct--but almost entirely in the opposite sense.

Days or weeks into the war, commentators and reporters made premature
declarations of victory, offered predictions about lasting political
effects and called on the critics of the war to apologize.

Three years later, the Iraq War grinds on at the cost of at least tens
of thousands of lives and hundreds of billions of dollars.

Around the same time as Hume's speech, syndicated columnist Cal Thomas
declared (4/16/03):

"All of the printed and voiced prophecies should be saved in an
archive. When these false prophets again appear, they can be reminded
of the error of their previous ways and at least be offered an
opportunity to recant and repent. Otherwise, they will return to us in
another situation where their expertise will be acknowledged, or taken
for granted, but their credibility will be lacking."

Gathered here are some of the most notable media comments from the
early days of the Iraq War.


Declaring Victory

"Iraq Is All but Won; Now What?"

(Los Angeles Times headline, 4/10/03)


"Now that the combat phase of the war in Iraq is officially over, what
begins is a debate throughout the entire U.S. government over
America's unrivaled power and how best to use it."

(CBS reporter Joie Chen, 5/4/03)


"Congress returns to Washington this week to a world very different
from the one members left two weeks ago. The war in Iraq is
essentially over and domestic issues are regaining attention."

(NPR's Bob Edwards, 4/28/03)


"Tommy Franks and the coalition forces have demonstrated the old axiom
that boldness on the battlefield produces swift and relatively
bloodless victory. The three-week swing through Iraq has utterly
shattered skeptics' complaints."

(Fox News Channel's Tony Snow, 4/27/03)


"The only people who think this wasn't a victory are Upper Westside
liberals, and a few people here in Washington."

(Charles Krauthammer, Inside Washington, WUSA-TV, 4/19/03)


"We had controversial wars that divided the country. This war united
the country and brought the military back."

(Newsweek's Howard Fineman--MSNBC, 5/7/03)


"We're all neo-cons now."

(MSNBC's Chris Matthews, 4/9/03)


"The war was the hard part. The hard part was putting together a
coalition, getting 300,000 troops over there and all their equipment
and winning. And it gets easier. I mean, setting up a democracy is
hard, but it is not as hard as winning a war."

(Fox News Channel's Fred Barnes, 4/10/03)


"Oh, it was breathtaking. I mean I was almost starting to think that
we had become inured to everything that we'd seen of this war over the
past three weeks; all this sort of saturation. And finally, when we
saw that it was such a just true, genuine expression. It was
reminiscent, I think, of the fall of the Berlin Wall. And just sort of
that pure emotional expression, not choreographed, not stage-managed,
the way so many things these days seem to be. Really breathtaking."

(Washington Post reporter Ceci Connolly, appearing on Fox News Channel
on 4/9/03, discussing the pulling down of a Saddam Hussein statue in
Baghdad, an event later revealed to have been a U.S. military PSYOPS
operation--Los Angeles Times, 7/3/04)


Mission Accomplished?

"The war winds down, politics heats up.... Picture perfect. Part
Spider-Man, part Tom Cruise, part Ronald Reagan. The president seizes
the moment on an aircraft carrier in the Pacific."

(PBS's Gwen Ifill, 5/2/03, on George W. Bush's "Mission Accomplished"
speech)


"We're proud of our president. Americans love having a guy as
president, a guy who has a little swagger, who's physical, who's not a
complicated guy like Clinton or even like Dukakis or Mondale, all
those guys, McGovern. They want a guy who's president. Women like a
guy who's president. Check it out. The women like this war. I think we
like having a hero as our president. It's simple. We're not like the
Brits."

(MSNBC's Chris Matthews, 5/1/03)


"He looked like an alternatively commander in chief, rock star, movie
star, and one of the guys."

(CNN's Lou Dobbs, on Bush's 'Mission Accomplished' speech, 5/1/03)


Neutralizing the Opposition

"Why don't the damn Democrats give the president his day? He won
today. He did well today."

(MSNBC's Chris Matthews, 4/9/03)


"What's he going to talk about a year from now, the fact that the war
went too well and it's over? I mean, don't these things sort of lose
their--Isn't there a fresh date on some of these debate points?"

(MSNBC's Chris Matthews, speaking about Howard Dean--4/9/03)


"If image is everything, how can the Democratic presidential hopefuls
compete with a president fresh from a war victory?"

(CNN's Judy Woodruff, 5/5/03)


"It is amazing how thorough the victory in Iraq really was in the
broadest context..... And the silence, I think, is that it's clear
that nobody can do anything about it. There isn't anybody who can stop
him. The Democrats can't oppose--cannot oppose him politically."

(Washington Post reporter Jeff Birnbaum-- Fox News Channel, 5/2/03)


Nagging the "Naysayers"

"Now that the war in Iraq is all but over, should the people in
Hollywood who opposed the president admit they were wrong?"

(Fox News Channel's Alan Colmes, 4/25/03)


"I doubt that the journalists at the New York Times and NPR or at ABC
or at CNN are going to ever admit just how wrong their negative
pronouncements were over the past four weeks."

(MSNBC's Joe Scarborough, 4/9/03)


"I'm waiting to hear the words 'I was wrong' from some of the world's
most elite journalists, politicians and Hollywood types.... I just
wonder, who's going to be the first elitist to show the character to
say: 'Hey, America, guess what? I was wrong'? Maybe the White House
will get an apology, first, from the New York Times' Maureen Dowd.
Now, Ms. Dowd mocked the morality of this war....

"Do you all remember Scott Ritter, you know, the former chief U.N.
weapons inspector who played chief stooge for Saddam Hussein? Well,
Mr. Ritter actually told a French radio network that -- quote, 'The
United States is going to leave Baghdad with its tail between its
legs, defeated.' Sorry, Scott. I think you've been chasing the wrong
tail, again.

"Maybe disgraced commentators and politicians alike, like Daschle,
Jimmy Carter, Dennis Kucinich, and all those others, will step forward
tonight and show the content of their character by simply admitting
what we know already: that their wartime predictions were arrogant,
they were misguided and they were dead wrong. Maybe, just maybe, these
self-anointed critics will learn from their mistakes. But I doubt it.
After all, we don't call them 'elitists' for nothing."

(MSNBC's Joe Scarborough, 4/10/03)


"Over the next couple of weeks when we find the chemical weapons this
guy was amassing, the fact that this war was attacked by the left and
so the right was so vindicated, I think, really means that the left is
going to have to hang its head for three or four more years."

(Fox News Channel's ***** Morris, 4/9/03)


"This has been a tough war for commentators on the American left. To
hope for defeat meant cheering for Saddam Hussein. To hope for victory
meant cheering for President Bush. The toppling of Mr. Hussein, or at
least a statue of him, has made their arguments even harder to defend.
Liberal writers for ideologically driven magazines like The Nation and
for less overtly political ones like The New Yorker did not predict a
defeat, but the terrible consequences many warned of have not
happened. Now liberal commentators must address the victory at hand
and confront an ascendant conservative juggernaut that asserts United
States might can set the world right."

(New York Times reporter David Carr, 4/16/03)


"Well, the hot story of the week is victory.... The Tommy Franks-Don
Rumsfeld battle plan, war plan, worked brilliantly, a three-week war
with mercifully few American deaths or Iraqi civilian deaths.... There
is a lot of work yet to do, but all the naysayers have been humiliated
so far.... The final word on this is, hooray."

(Fox News Channel's Morton Kondracke, 4/12/03)

"Some journalists, in my judgment, just can't stand success,
especially a few liberal columnists and newspapers and a few Arab
reporters."

(CNN's Lou Dobbs, 4/14/03)

"Sean Penn is at it again. The Hollywood star takes out a full-page ad
out in the New York Times bashing George Bush. Apparently he still
hasn't figured out we won the war."

(MSNBC's Joe Scarborough, 5/30/03)


Cakewalk?

"This will be no war -- there will be a fairly brief and ruthless
military intervention.... The president will give an order. [The
attack] will be rapid, accurate and dazzling.... It will be greeted by
the majority of the Iraqi people as an emancipation. And I say, bring
it on."

(Christopher Hitchens, in a 1/28/03 debate-- cited in the Observer,
3/30/03)


"I will bet you the best dinner in the gaslight district of San Diego
that military action will not last more than a week. Are you willing
to take that wager?"

(Fox News Channel's Bill O'Reilly, 1/29/03)


"It won't take weeks. You know that, professor. Our military machine
will crush Iraq in a matter of days and there's no question that it
will."

(Fox News Channel's Bill O'Reilly, 2/10/03)


"There's no way. There's absolutely no way. They may bomb for a matter
of weeks, try to soften them up as they did in Afghanistan. But once
the United States and Britain unleash, it's maybe hours. They're going
to fold like that."

(Fox News Channel's Bill O'Reilly, 2/10/03)


"He [Saddam Hussein] actually thought that he could stop us and win
the debate worldwide. But he didn't--he didn't bargain on a two- or
three week war. I actually thought it would be less than two weeks."

(NBC reporter Fred Francis, Chris Matthews Show, 4/13/03)


Weapons of Mass Destruction

NPR's Mara Liasson: Where there was a debate about whether or not Iraq
had these weapons of mass destruction and whether we can find it...

Brit Hume: No, there wasn't. Nobody seriously argued that he didn't
have them beforehand. Nobody.

(Fox News Channel, April 6, 2003)


"Speaking to the U.N. Security Council last week, Secretary of State
Colin Powell made so strong a case that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein
is in material breach of U.N. resolutions that only the duped, the
dumb and the desperate could ignore it."

(Cal Thomas, syndicated column, 2/12/03)


"Saddam could decide to take Baghdad with him. One Arab intelligence
officer interviewed by Newsweek spoke of 'the green mushroom' over
Baghdad--the modern-day caliph bidding a grotesque bio-chem farewell
to the land of the living alongside thousands of his subjects as well
as his enemies. Saddam wants to be remembered. He has the means and
the demonic imagination. It is up to U.S. armed forces to stop him
before he can achieve notoriety for all time."

(Newsweek, 3/17/03)


"Chris, more than anything else, real vindication for the
administration. One, credible evidence of weapons of mass destruction.
Two, you know what? There were a lot of terrorists here, really bad
guys. I saw them."

(MSNBC reporter Bob Arnot, 4/9/03)


"Even in the flush of triumph, doubts will be raised. Where are the
supplies of germs and poison gas and plans for nukes to justify
pre-emption? (Freed scientists will lead us to caches no inspectors
could find.) What about remaining danger from Baathist torturers and
war criminals forming pockets of resistance and plotting vengeance?
(Their death wish is our command.)"

(New York Times' William Safire, 4/10/03)

__________________________________________________________

Enlightening, eh?

Harry