That's what makes me so angry about the libs..they are blaming all the wrong people. They need to start looking in their own kitchen..How can the liberals praise a man like Arafat and condemn a good man like Ashcroft?
Today, three recent Creators syndicate columns by MRC
President L. Brent Bozell: "Ashcroft, Worse than Arafat?", "Reed
Irvine, R.I.P." and "Anchors Away."
The text of three Bozell columns from the last few weeks, from
oldest to newest:
> Bozell's November 17 column, "Ashcroft, Worse than Arafat?"
It might seem odd to compare and contrast two news stories from
last week -- the resignation announcement of Attorney General John
Ashcroft and the Paris death of Palestinian terrorist Yasser
Arafat. But an examination of the two demonstrates the degree to
which the "news" media's compass of objectivity is so terribly
misaligned. To read the coverage, you'd think Ashcroft was the
tyrant, and Arafat the liberator.
On November 10, the New York Times front page put the two stories
side by side in the top left-hand corner. Reporter Elisabeth
Bumiller told readers the "polarizing" Ashcroft was resigning
after a "tumultuous tenure" in which he was praised for his
aggressive fight against terrorists but "assailed by critics who
said he sacrificed civil liberties" in the wake of September 11.
Bumiller noted Ashcroft was praised by President Bush, then added
his critics were "caustic," citing the radical-left Georgetown
professor David Cole, who strangely called Ashcroft "a disaster
from a civil liberties perspective but also from a national
security perspective."
But right next door on the front page, reporter Elaine Sciolino
found far less controversy in the camp of Arafat. The dying
terrorist has accumulated a long and blood-spattered resume of
violence that fills a cemetery, a filthy legacy of innocent
Olympic athletes and airplane passengers and Israeli
schoolchildren massacred. But the Times didn't even use the word
"terrorist." Instead, Sciolino referred to Arafat as a cult hero,
"the guerrilla fighter and Nobel Prize winner who has symbolized
the Palestinian struggle for statehood for four decades." Of his
potential successors, Sciolino warned they had "little of the
street credibility and aura that surrounded Mr. Arafat." A big
chunk of that aura is created in Western capitals by left-wing
correspondents.
Is it any wonder the liberal press doesn't understand why a
majority of Americans didn't want a president with the media's
moral vision elected? Liberals just don't really get the concept
of a "war on terrorism." They like declaring war on nebulous,
romantic concepts like poverty and rainforest logging, but can't
see the mortal threat in front of their faces on TV, people
screaming their desire to bring death to Americans. Liberals are
not just soft on the terrorists. They're not really sure which
side is evil. That's dangerous.
The American majority wanted a government which will protect them
from the Arab fanatics who whooped and cheered as 3,000 of our own
people had their civil liberties forever removed on 9-11. That
included many partying pro-Arafat Palestinians, who threatened any
Western reporter with death for putting out footage of their
street celebrations of the Twin Towers collapsing and the Pentagon
ablaze.
For his part, Ashcroft graciously resigned with a letter
celebrating the American people, his fellow terror-fighters in
government agencies, and God: "the Author of our freedom has stood
beside us." (You just know that drove secular liberal reporters
crazy!) Ashcroft's record stands for itself. No attack on American
soil since 9-11. The dismantling of terrorist cells from New York
to California. Almost 200 terror convictions. Federal gun
prosecutions are up 76 percent. Violent crime has dropped to a
30-year low, down 27 percent over the last three years. Think of
the estimated 250,000 people saved from having their civil
liberties violated. For all this and more, you cannot count on the
liberal media to give Ashcroft one iota of credit. The media's
can't even be counted on to mention these numbers in passing.
Instead, the ACLU line on Ashcroft, the menace to liberty, has
dominated. In a New York Times graphic on "Ashcroft's tenure,"
there was no balance. "To his critics, he was a symbol of the
antiterror campaign's excesses." The six one-paragraph items
summarizing his tenure were a tendentious listing of liberal
talking points, beginning with his championing of the Patriot Act,
which the Times did not mention passed Congress almost
unanimously.
The same bias crept into a "news analysis" by the Times reporter
put on Ashcroft's tail. In a piece headlined "Powerful and
Polarizing: Antiterror Campaign Made Ashcroft a Lightning Rod for
Bitter Criticism," Eric Lichtblau briefly noted the Bush praise,
then underlined that "To his many critics, however, Mr. Ashcroft
was a symbol of excesses of the antiterror campaign, a man engaged
in overzealous prosecutions and insensitive to civil liberties."
Just as they made Arafat's "aura," so have the bitter liberal
media magnified and manufactured a lot of Ashcroft's "lightning."
We find proven American terrorist collaborators like John Walker
Lindh on a battlefield in Afghanistan, we try him and imprison
him. In the land of Arafat, people are shot at the slightest
suspicion, true or untrue, of collaboration with the enemy. Why
are the American news media so harshly judgmental of the first
system, and such apologists for the second? |
