Out of My Mind

That's our purpose here....

From an email list I sub to (see http://www.gophercentral.com/), a ;itt;e ;ist of the pandering putzes that fill Big Media:

"The Final Word Is Hooray!"
Remembering the Iraq War's Pollyanna pundits

3/15/06

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, 4/13/03)


"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 breath-
taking."
(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 Dick 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)