The Obfuscation Report

Fox News anchor Bill O’Reilly has compared people who oppose participating in Fox News’ presidential debates to Nazis, claiming they “lie, distort, defame, all the time” using “propaganda techniques perfected by Dr. Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi minister of information.” Fellow Fox News anchor Mort Kondracke claimed they are “not about free speech” and guilty of “junior grade Stalinism.”

This hysteria continued last night, when Fox News CEO Roger Ailes and News Corp. chief Rupert Murdoch co-hosted an awards show for opinion writing. During the event, Ailes “had some choice words for Democratic candidates who have decided not to debate on Fox.”

“The candidates that can’t face Fox, can’t face Al Qaeda,” said Mr. Ailes. “And that’s what’s coming.”

That was followed by applause from the crowd which featured several News Corp. executives and journalists from Murdoch-owned papers–Richard Johnson, the Post’s Page Six editor, for one.

Can there be any doubt left why presidential candidates don’t want to endorse Fox News?

The issue, of course, isn’t that presidential candidates — including Hillary Clinton, Chris Dodd, John Edwards, Barack Obama, Bill Richardson — are afraid of appearing on Fox. The issue is whether they want to legitimize this constant source of partisan misinformation by allowing Fox to claim that it is a real news source that can independently manage a presidential debate.

Labels: Fox News is a Joke, Roger Ailes

Fox News today, right-wing radio host Mark Williams attacked House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) for her trip to Syria. He said that she was “in Syria lip-locking with the king of terrorists” because Democrats have failed to recognize that we “have been attacked by a seventh-century death cult known as Islam.”

Labels: Fox News, Fox News is a Joke, Mark Williams

by catherineD

These are questions from an October 2003 Debate in Detroit sponsored by Fox News and the Congressional Black Caucus.

Each candidate was asked four questions --- I've selected the worst of these, to show you something about the kind of questions Fox News asks. (Be sure not to miss Lieberman's.)

All of the questions asked were not skewed, but this actually makes things worse. Instead of smearing all of the candidates equally, among the major candidates: Lieberman was favored, Kerry and Edwards each received two decent questions, Dean received one decent question, and Clark received no decent questions. Yet the talking heads took no notice of this, instead blaming the candidates, as Fox manipulated our primary.

CLARK

I wonder if you could take a moment and explain to us why, at the end of your time as the supreme allied commander of NATO, you were not re-upped and why such folks as Retired General Hugh Shelton have suggested you were effectively fired for what he called character and integrity issues.

EDWARDS

Senator Edwards, the rap on you, you're a one-term senator. You are a trial lawyer and, therefore, you're supposed to be compromised by that somehow. The expectations for you were so high in the beginning that you were on the cover of Newsweek magazine, yet in the latest Newsweek poll out today, you're in the bottom of the pack.
What happened?

KUCINICH

Congressman Kucinich, you have proposed changing the name of the Department of Defense to the Department of Peace, but in a world in which our enemies are willing to kill themselves to kill us, is it not better that we stand and fight? And is it not better that we wage that battle on foreign shores and not here in America?

DEAN

We are attempting to imagine each of you in the White House in the Oval Office, and in that spirit, Governor Dean, I have this question for you.

You have been unstintingly critical of this war, yet, with all due respect, you have commanded nothing more than the Vermont National Guard. You did not serve in the military.

How would you, as president, be able to exert any credibility, any command over a post-war Pentagon?

KERRY

Senator Kerry, I want to direct the next question to you, in part because you voted for the Iraq resolution but have also opposed the $87 billion. To many, that speaks to an inconsistency that your candidacy has been criticized by, for having a difficult to explain position on the Iraq war.

Is it inconsistent for you to support the resolution and not the reconstruction money?

GEPHARDT

Congressman Gephardt, here in metro Detroit, we have one of the largest concentrations of Arab-Americans in this country. By and large, they love America. They're willing to die for this country.

But at the same time, some of them will tell you they do not see the world as we see it. In fact, in the eyes of some, groups like Hamas and Hezbollah are not terrorist groups, they are freedom fighters or defenders.

My question to you, would you be willing to negotiate with groups now labeled as terrorists if such an effort would end the suicide bombings in Israel and also possibly resolve the Middle East crisis?

SHARPTON

Reverend Sharpton, along the lines of budget politics, it's fairly evident that all of you up there would prefer to see the wealthiest Americans shoulder a greater part of the burden.

What sacrifice would you put upon averaging working families to carry their share of the burden in the coming Sharpton economy?

MOSELEY-BRAUN

Ambassador Braun, you've urged the current administration repeatedly to negotiate peace and to deal with other nations, and an opportunity for you, perhaps, to go back and clear the record over something in the past.

It has been reported repeatedly that in 1996, as a senator, against the wishes of the U.S. government, you visited Nigerian dictator Sani Abacha, someone who, at the time, was recognized worldwide as a murderous dictator.

How does that association play to your ability to be a peace- minded commander in chief?

LIEBERMAN

Senator Lieberman, you've certainly not called the positions that your rivals have taken on the war and on the funding unpatriotic, but you have called it inconsistent. You've suggested that it's weak and that it sends a duplicitous message to the world.

You've heard a variety of opinions expressed by your rivals. Why are they wrong?

link

Labels: Al Sharpton, congressional black caucus, debate, Dennis Kucinich, Dick Gephardt, Fox News, Fox News is a Joke, Howard Dean, Joe Lieberman, John Edwards, John Kerry, Wes Clark

US: Some violence in Iraq is Civil War

Pentagon offers bleak assessment

By Globe Wire Services | March 15, 2007

WASHINGTON -- The US military for the first time yesterday said in a new report that some of the violence in Iraq can be described as a civil war.

In its bleakest assessment of the war to date, a quarterly Pentagon report said that last October through December was the most violent three-month period since 2003. Attacks and casualties suffered by coalition and Iraqi forces and civilians were higher than any other similar time span, according to the report.

Most of the data in the Pentagon's 42-page report is before President Bush ordered an additional 21,500 troops and thousands of support personnel to Baghdad to combat the escalating violence there. The report cautions that it should be considered "a baseline from which to measure future progress."

The Pentagon report was issued as Iraqi officials issued an upbeat assessment yesterday of the impact of the crackdown in Baghdad.

Members of the Bush administration have been loath to say that the US military is struggling to quell a civil war, and the report agreed that the term does not capture the complex situation there.

But it added, "Some elements of the situation in Iraq are properly descriptive of a 'civil war,' including the hardening of ethno-sectarian identities and mobilization, the changing character of the violence , and population displacements."

A similar assessment released by the US intelligence community last month came to roughly the same conclusion.

The Pentagon's report is the latest in a series of quarterly updates put out by the Pentagon, measuring the security and stability in Iraq. In detailing the increase in violence, the report said that 80 percent of the attacks from November through January were concentrated in four provinces -- Baghdad, Anbar, Diyala, and Salah ad Din -- with Baghdad seeing a record 45 attacks per day. The other three provinces saw more than 70 attacks per day, during the same time frame.

The report showed that there were an average of more than 1,000 attacks per week, compared with nearly 1,000 per week in the last quarter, and about 800 per week during the May-to-August period. The reports provide bar charts but not exact numbers.

It also noted that while most of the attacks are directed against coalition forces, the majority of the casualties are suffered by Iraqis.

In Baghdad, Iraqi officials yesterday touted the successes of the crackdown, seen as a last-ditch attempt to quell the civil war, by noting that civilian casualties had dropped sharply in the first month of the plan.

Their US counterparts, however, offered a more cautious assessment.

Execution-style killings, the hallmark of sectarian death squads, were down by more than 50 percent, said Major General William B. Caldwell, the top US military spokesman in Iraq. But he said "high-profile" car bombings reached an all-time high in February and had the potential "to start that whole cycle of violence again."

US-led forces have focused their efforts in recent days on locating and destroying the facilities that produce car bombs; many of those facilities are believed to be on Baghdad's fringes, Caldwell told reporters at a briefing.

But he appealed for patience, saying it would be months before the United States has all its forces in place and that there might not be a discernible difference in Iraq until "the fall time frame."

Lieutenant General Abboud Qanbar, the Iraqi commander of the Baghdad security plan, said 265 civilians were killed and 781 injured since the crackdown began Feb. 13, compared with 1,440 killed and 3,192 injured the previous month. Sectarian displacement was also decreasing, and about 2,000 families had returned to their homes, he said.

"The achievements of the last 30 days cannot only be evaluated by numbers and statistics," he said at a briefing inside the heavily fortified Green Zone.

Many Sunni Arab and Shi'ite militants are believed to have fled Baghdad, contributing to the apparent decline in sectarian killing in the capital and a spike in attacks in parts of Diyala, Babil, and other outlying provinces.

Violence continued yesterday with at least eight Iraqis killed in a bomb blast and other attacks.

A suicide car bomber exploded his vehicle at a military checkpoint in the Sunni-dominated Baghdad neighborhood of Yarmouk, killing at least one person and injuring four others, police said.
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On a lighter note, Fox News Continued it Comedy Hour with it's regular programming:

Labels: Civil War, Fox News is a Joke, Iraq