Don’t Miss This Exchange On Meet The Press
-- Lorie Byrd
PoliPundit.com
On Meet the Press today, General Wayne Downing made one of the most brilliant, yet what should be blatantly obvious, observations I have heard with respect to the current debate over the war in Iraq to date. Tim Russert’s response to Downing only helped make Downiing’s point. I will print the excerpt from the transcript when it is available. I hate to try to paraphrase it,but will give a brief summary.
When asked about the public’s lack of support for the war, Downing made the point that casualties are not being reported in any context of the operation. He said that our troops are not walking the streets of Iraq looking for IEDs to blow them up, they are being killed in the process of conducting operations that have important objectives and that we are succeeding in accomplishing those objectives, but that the media is not reporting that. He pointed out how D-Day might have been judged immediately after it occured if today’s standard was employed then.
Russert challenged everything Downing said at length, with anti-war talking points that did not address Downing’s point, while he barely even followed up on anything Wesley Clark said in the same segment. Be sure to watch Clark’s facial expressions and body language when Downing disagrees with Clark’s claim that the President has not done the diplomacy necessary in Iraq. Clark later follows up saying we need to set up diplomatic “contact groups.” Russert did not have one question following that Clark statement.
After another general brought up the point of the successes in Iraq never appearing “above the fold,” Russert asked him if that might not be because WMD and other things the media was told turned out not to be true. What the heck is he saying? Is he saying that the media feels they were lied to about WMD so now they are not going to report any good news out of Iraq? Is that how Russert feels? If not, why would he raise such a ridiculous notion? Do they really feel they were lied to about WMD? If so, then they were lied to by the Clinton adminstration, John Kerry, and hundreds of other Democrats who believed Iraq had WMD, but they sure have no problem repeating their talking points without question.
If MTP has not yet aired in your area, make an effort to catch it this morning. If not, try to catch one of the replays this evening. I think Russert may be in for a major fisking for his comments in this segment.
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