This morning, because I didn't switch the channel from local news to FNC, I ended up watching the CBS Morning News. Every time I watch Harry Smith on that show, I get pissed off. He smirks out his usual Bush-lied-people-died (This morning's variant: GWB politicized 9/11 in his 9/11 speech on Monday).

I'm convinced that the media are the enemy--one enemy, anyway.

It's always like this. The MSM cannot see past their own noses- which I will admit- grow longer daily with the lies they push out as news...BUT they still only see the length of that nose.

AOW --

Sadly, the media is the enemy, even though they don't entirely realize it: They seem to believe that all their B.S. is merely harmless politics, while it's actually doing serious harm to the integrity of our country and to our national security.

Raven --

Yes, they are living in their own private Idaho, aren't they? I have a strong feeling that when things get worse, ie more severe terrorist attacks on U.S. soil and the truth hits home, the public is going to want to know where the media was when they needed the truth to take with them to the polls....

Yawn. Some Republicans Senators try and salvage a report which overwhelmingly discredits the administration.

The documents said "Iraq was producing and stockpiling chemical weapons," according to the addendum, signed by Sens. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., Orrin G. Hatch, R-Utah, and Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga. Iraq's weapon of last resort was mobile launched chemical weapons, which would be fired at enemy forces and Israel, the CIA documents said.

Moreover, there is "not a single document relating to this case which indicates that the source said Iraq had no WMD programs," the addenda said. "On the contrary, all of the information about this case so far indicates that the information from this source was that Iraq did have WMD programs."

But of course we now know (while some knew before the invasion) that no WMDs were there to be found

Saddam Hussein may well have hoped to find a nuke or two in his Christmas stocking but after sanctions and such that was about it for Iraq WMD programs.

Arthur --

The only way to reply to your latest comment would be to rehash the WMD argument again, and doing so for the sake of a liberal bumper sticker zombie such as yourself would be a tedious waste of time.

This post isn't about the WMD argument it's about the bias of the media in their selective reporting.

Sadly too many Americans will not hear of this. We can only tell so many and the MSM is absolutely no help at all.

Shoprat --

LOL! No help whatsoever.

It would seem that their job, as they perceive it, is to do anything they can to disparage the President, even if doing so costs thousands of American lives.

This is how public opinion gets swayed. Is it no wonder that opinion polls are negative on the Iraq War and President Bush when he has to fight the drumbeat of falsehoods perpetuated by MSM? And these journalistic clowns end up citing from each other in future reportings, perpetuating the cycle of lies and distortions of the facts.

Wordsmith --

Exactly.

Good example? When GWB gave a SOTU address a couple of years or so back, he said that those al-Qaeda terrorists we'd killed in combat or captured will no longer be a threat.

The next day in her column, Maureen Dowd misquoted him, writing that he'd said "Al-Qaeda is no longer a threat."

Immediately, the rest of the liberal media picked up on it and quoted Dowd as gospel, reporting the misquote as accurate, significant news to add to the "Bush lied" theme (you'd think that professional journalists, no matter what their political bias, would take the time to listen to a SOTU and quote it accurately, but I suppose someone had to carry the torch for the Pravda of the former USSR).

Needless to say, NYT and Dowd were both bombarded with emails from right thinkers. They never published a retraction, and rather than posting any corrections, in her next column Dowd simply slipped the correct quote into another context.

Seth,
Must admit your essay on swaying public opinion
has the ring of truth. The public actually voted for GWB twice! :)

There's no getting through to the liberals, Seth; might as well not waste your breath! If liberals such as Stone were even the slightest bit interested in facts, we wouldn't be having such a problem with them in the first place. Unfortunately extreme-lefty liberals don't care about facts, they only care about their propoganda and are in complete and total denial regarding reality. Bad part about that is, someday their denial regarding reality will come back not only to bite them in the butt, the resst of us will have to suffer for it too!

Exellent post!

BB --

Most Americans are more to the right than the left, during the Vietnam era, you'll recall the term, "silent majority" -- people who did all their talking at the polls.

One of the left's greatest weaknesses is that they believe that most Americans think as they do -- this comes, for the most part, from their penchant for socializing, by preference, only with other liberals and refusing to consider any POVs {V as in "view, LOL} outside their own as even worth a second thought.

Fortunately, Americans in general are a lot more intelligent than the left gives us credit for, and the concept of electing either Algore or Jacques Kerry to run the country evidently didn't go over as well as the left had hoped.

Bush was reelected in large part, also, because responsible thinkers don't vote for Democrats in time of war, because they want to live.

Also, the kind of extreme and outlandish idiocy that emerges from the mouths of today's Democrat politicians would be better suited to a cartoon environment than to the real world, and again, most Americans aren't obtuse enough to take their rhetoric seriously.

The liberal media fought tooth and nail to help curse our nation with a President Kerry, but the American people were too smart to go with the program.

Gayle --

Truer words were never spoken.

I keep coming back to an expression someone had in a comment at a blog about 3 years ago that was: "Arguing with a liberal is like standing in a bucket and trying to pick yourself up by the handle."

Seth,
As noted above, " are living in their own private Idaho, aren't they? " TRUE While you are lifting the bucket containing you, which way
you want to spin it..MSM sways people, Karl Rove
sways people, Swiftboat vets (gag) sway people ?
I think we can disregard blogs, as I have seen little in the way of hard data, but a lot of hard rhetoric. Daily KOS done anything for you, or maybe MoveOn? Nah, Little Green Meatballs, maybe? It continues to be all about preaching to the choir, and don't get me wrong...I love it, for one thing, pundit-bloggers of both persuasions reveal human traits under all the
grunting and groaning. A few even exhibit humor. Kinda like going to the corner bar without getting sauced. Finally, your standing in a bucket and lifting the handle metaphor strikes me SO much of that favorite conservative
admonition to 'pull yourself up by your bootstraps" BTW, Idaho is so Republican, even
you'd be leery! Gotta go turn the dogs on the neighbors now...:}

BB --

I've been to Coos Bay, Portland and Salem, lived in Ca (& been along the coast, top to bottom) and Nv, been stationed in Seattle, but I've never actually spent as much as an hour anyplace in Idaho. Other than an old shipmate who was from an Idaho logging environment, I don't think I've ever known anybody from Idaho. You guys keep a low profile.

The MSM, as the combined traditional sources of news, has a whole lot more influence over public opinion than Carl Rove, and what do you have against the Swiftboat Veterans, who were little more than average Americans getting their own message across? I believe it's called "Freedom Of Speech". These guys didn't want to see someone they knew to be a liar and a stumblebum in the White House.

Seth,
"These guys didn't want to see someone they knew to be a liar and a stumblebum in the White House." Heh, they got one in spite of themselves.

BB --

That's a matter of opinion, LOL.

While I'm not happy with Bush's immigration stance, his capitulation to France and the UN in the ultimately one-sided Lebanon cease-fire nor his continued arse creeping of the Saudis, I believe he's the right President at the right time, certainly more decisive and infinitely more effective where prosecuting the War On Terror is concerned than Clinton ever was -- hell, Bubba did nothing while the bad guys assaulted American embassies, the Cole, murdered Americans in Saudi, etc, and brought a "peace plan" to Israel that launched an intifada. He pulled our soldiers out of Mogadishu as soon as we sustained a few casualties, making us appear weak to global terror factions who exploited that perceived weakness a few days over 5 years ago.

A Kerry presidency would have spelled disaster in time of war, that guy's got some serious issues.

IMO, GWB was the best choice we could have made, and contrary to Democrat BS, he's a really sharp individual. The only people who call him dumb are Dems, and that's only because they're bitter that he beat Gore -- in the small, Utopian world of the liberal, who believes everybody thinks the same way, Gore had it wrapped up -- and then beat Kerry.

I'm sorry, amigo, but I work in an industry that provides me access to security information and restricted websites I can't share, a bummer as I'd have a lot to blog about, and I'll go with Bush over any Democrat. American lives are at stake in a very real, very big way and the Democrats are more concerned with playing at their bullshit partisan politics than they are with reality.

"He pulled our soldiers out of Mogadishu as soon as we sustained a few casualties, making us appear weak.." [insert Lebanon for Mogadishu]
[insert 1983] The only thing I ever agreed with
Ronnie on! Hey, if you can't share your security
secrets, I can't tell what I did at Dugway Proving Ground. (no, I didn't kill those damn
sheep!)

BB --

So you made your rack of lamb "from scratch", not bad.

They're not "my secrets", LOL -- just sources of information that help me earn my living.