Category Archives: Anti-Military Bias

Bloomberg News managed to pen a full obituary of the late Congressman Jack Murtha today, calling him a "Supporter of Troops" in the headline, without once mentioning his incendiary--and unfounded--claims that a group of Marines had murdered 24 Iraqis in cold blood (h/t Washington Examiner's Mark Hemingway).

Murtha, himself a former Marine, said in 2005 after two dozen Iraqis were killed in the city of Haditha, "there was no firefight, there was no IED that killed these innocent people. Our troops overreacted because of the pressure on them, and they killed innocent civilians in cold blood."

Eight Marines were charged in the killings. Charges against six of them have been dropped, one has been found not-guilty, and the case against the remaining Marine is pending. Murtha was unrepentant about the slanderous accusations he leveled against these Marines. He even compared the Haditha incident to the My Lai massacre during the Vietnam War (see video below the fold).

Below is video of his appearance on "Hardball" shortly after his initial comments, followed by a clip of him dodging questions from an employee of Young America's Foundation (language warning).



Murtha's service to the country both as a Marine and a lawmaker was of course admirable, and our thoughts and prayers go out to the Murtha family for their loss.

But the fact remains that "Supporter of Troops" is a questionable label for the late congressman.

John Murtha, who represented the 12th district of Pennsylvania for 35 years, died Monday. David Stout's obituary in Tuesday's edition of the New York Times, "Representative John P. Murtha Dies at 77; Ex-Marine Was Iraq War Critic," focused on Murtha's influential anti-war turn and "history of hawkishness," but omitted Murtha's smear of the military -- his preemptory claim that Marines in the town of Haditha, Iraq had killed women and children ''in cold blood'' in a November 2005 incident. Of the eight Marines accused, only one still faces possible charges -- the rest were either acquitted or had the charges dropped.

Stout hit the sordid highlights of Murtha's legislative career, including the Abscam scandal, which he survived by the skin of his teeth, turning down money from an undercover FBI agent posing as a sheikh but said would be willing to talk about it later. Stout called it an "awkward moment." But Stout made Murtha's anti-Iraq war position a running theme of the obituary, while not once bringing up Murtha's smear of the Marines at Haditha.

Representative John P. Murtha of Pennsylvania, a gruff ex-Marine who used his immense power in military spending to funnel hundreds of millions of dollars to his hard-luck district and who became an outspoken critic of the Iraq war, died on Monday. He was 77.

He died at the Virginia Hospital Center in Arlington, where he was being treated for complications of gallbladder surgery, his office said. Mr. Murtha's death came two days after he became the longest-serving congressman in Pennsylvania history, his office said, surpassing the record of Joseph M. McDade, a Scranton Republican who served from 1963 to 1999.

Elected in 1974 and the first Vietnam combat veteran to serve in Congress, Mr. Murtha voted in 2002 to authorize use of military force in Iraq. But he evolved into a leading foe of the war as it was conducted under the administration of President George W. Bush.

"The war in Iraq is not going as advertised," Mr. Murtha said in November 2005 as he demanded an immediate withdrawal of American troops. He called the Iraq campaign "a flawed policy wrapped in illusion."

Mr. Murtha's long involvement in Pentagon issues and his history of hawkishness made the criticism all the more influential.

The Times, along with the rest of the media, made an enormous deal out of Murtha's alleged "turnabout" on Iraq, a story that led the November 18, 2005 Times.

Problem was, it was old news: Murtha had been criticizing the war long before November 2005, as captured by the Times itself in the September 17, 2003 edition, which quoted Murtha calling for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's resignation. Reporter David Firestone summarized: "Representative John P. Murtha of Pennsylvania, a decorated Vietnam veteran, said that he had been misled into voting for the war by incorrect information from top administration officials and that the president had also been misled."

Stout implicitly chided Murtha for funneling federal money into his district through earmarks before returning to Murtha's war criticism, insisting the congressman was patriotic but leaving off a vital incident in which Murtha in May 2006 accused a group of Marines had murdered Iraqi civilians "in cold blood" in the town of Haditha: "Our troops overreacted because of the pressure on them and they killed innocent civilians in cold blood."

When he drew fire from the political right for his shift on Iraq, Mr. Murtha said his criticism of the war in no way lessened his support for the Americans fighting in it.

"I don't take a back seat to anybody for my service to my country," Mr. Murtha said in a recent, profanity-spiced interview with his local newspaper, The Tribune-Democrat. But he said the killing of Iraqi civilians, even if accidental, and the abuse of Iraqi prisoners had undermined American efforts.

The Washington Post updated their own Murtha obituary when my MRC colleague Ken Shepherd called them out on the omission. Here's the Post's addition:

In 2006, he accused Marines of murdering Iraqi civilians "in cold blood" at Haditha, after one Marine died and two were wounded by a roadside bomb. Critics said he unfairly held the Marines responsible before an investigation was finished. Eight Marines were originally charged with murder or failing to properly report or investigate the killings. Charges against six were dropped, and one was acquitted. A court martial for sole remaining defendant has not yet scheduled.

David Rogers glossed over the late Rep. Jack Murtha's (D-Pa.) Haditha Marines smear in an obituary published yesterday and updated this morning at Politico:

Rather than lie low, Murtha further made himself a target with public comments in the spring of 2006 pressuring the Marine command to investigate allegations of civilian casualties at Haditha, Iraq. This infuriated many Marines, and critics argued that the congressman had become more partisan himself out of loyalty to Pelosi.

But Murtha went beyond pressing for a formal military investigation, which is a legitimate call any congressman could and should make after an incident like Haditha. The former Marine practically declared the Marines at Haditha guilty by saying they have killed "in cold blood." 

Yet Murtha's baseless smear is not substantiated by the facts. As the Washington Post noted yesterday in an update to its obituary on Murtha:

Eight Marines were originally charged with murder or failing to properly report or investigate the killings. Charges against six were dropped, and one was acquitted. A court martial for sole remaining defendant has not yet scheduled. 

Updated: Washington Post adds mention about Murtha's Haditha comments, thanks me for me pointing out omission (see bottom of post).

Rep. Jack Murtha (D-Pa.) passed away earlier today, and the Washington Post has already published a 26-paragraph obituary.

Post staffers Martin Weil and Carol Leonnig don't gloss over some of Murtha's political controversies, such as his penchant as a pork barrel appropriator and his role in the Abscam scandal.

Yet oddly enough, Murtha's most profoundly jarring political scandal -- his insulting and untrue smear of U.S. Marines at Haditha as cold-blooded killers -- went unmentioned.

Meanwhile, the Associated Press, for its part, noted the controversy...:

Murtha's criticism of the Iraq war intensified in 2006, when he accused Marines of murdering Iraqi civilians "in cold blood" at Haditha, after one Marine died and two were wounded by a roadside bomb.

Critics said Murtha unfairly held the Marines responsible before an investigation was concluded and fueled enemy retaliation. He said that the war couldn't be won militarily and that such incidents dimmed the prospect for a political solution.

...although it failed to mention that the Marine officers charged with a coverup of the supposed massacre have been acquitted.

Update (19:15 EST): The Post tweeted the following from their @PostPolitics account about two hours ago thanking me for noting the omission:

Good point, Ken; thanks for the heads-up. Obit is updated to include mention of "in cold blood" remark. http://ow.ly/15e7M

Below is the paragraph the Post added:

In 2006, he accused Marines of murdering Iraqi civilians "in cold blood" at Haditha, after one Marine died and two were wounded by a roadside bomb. Critics said he unfairly held the Marines responsible before an investigation was finished. Eight Marines were originally charged with murder or failing to properly report or investigate the killings. Charges against six were dropped, and one was acquitted. A court martial for sole remaining defendant has not yet scheduled. 

It ain't easy being a laid-off hack leftist cartoonist with a penchant for slandering 9/11 widows and equating U.S. soldiers with suicide bombers. But Ted Rall got a big break on Friday when he got a chance to do a fundraising pitch for his planned trip to Afghanistan as an "unembedded" journalist.

On his January 29 program, MSNBC's Dylan Ratigan introduced Rall as "an award-winning cartoonist who caught our eye with cartoons like this one showing some Wall Street types chatting about President Obama's bank tax."

But Ratigan must be ignorant of or apathetic regarding Rall's penchant for soldier-smearing left-wing screeds. After all, he all but personally endorsed Rall's fundraising pitch (audio available here):

RATIGAN: You're also a writer and a journalist who's reported from places like Afghanistan. Newspapers and magazines no longer put much money up for this type of work, so you're now using public donations to finance your journalism? How does that work?

RALL: Well, there's a Web site called kickstarter.com that I've been using to ask for donations, pledges, to help send me back to Afghanistan this summer, to do some independent, unembedded journalism of the kind that I think is sorely missing, especially since so many magazines, as you said, just don't have the money anymore. 

RATIGAN: Alright, kickstarter.com.  Ted, a pleasure, thank you so much.

Less than two months after receiving a Nobel Peace Prize, the President is proposing a huge increase in war spending.

Despite his campaign pledges to the contrary, Obama's new budget calls for expenditures associated with the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq to increase to levels only ten percent below the average of former President George W. Bush's last two years in office.

Given the media's anti-war predilections, it's going to be fascinating to see how the following numbers revealed by Politico a few hours ago will be reported in the coming days:

President Barack Obama's new budget, to be released Monday, forecasts two consecutive years of near $160 billion in war funding, far more than he hoped when elected and only modestly less than the last years of the Bush Administration.

In 2011 alone, the revised numbers are triple what the president included in his spending plan a year ago. [...]

The president's 2010 defense budget a year ago requested $130 billion for operations in Afghanistan and Iraq and just $50 billion in 2011. The new budget ramps up 2010 spending to $163 billion and for 2011 requests $159 billion in overseas contingency funds for the military.

This reverses the drop in war-related spending seen in fiscal 2009, which ended last Sept 30th and was a transition year of sorts between the two administrations. When compared to the peak war spending of the Bush years, Obama is only about 10% below Bush's annual average of $176 billion in fiscal years 2007 and 2008-the time of the Iraq war surge.

This budget proposal comes just five days after Obama blamed current and future budget deficits on his predecessor "not paying for two wars."

With this in mind, and given how the media loved to ridicule Bush for what they felt was unnecessary military spending, it's going to be fascinating to see how they react to Monday's announcement.

Stay tuned. 

On Thursday’s The O’Reilly Factor, FNC host Bill O’Reilly used the show’s regular "Reality Check" segment to highlight comments made by Hearst columnist Helen Thomas in which she questioned whether terrorists really should be called "terrorists," and seemed to express a view of moral equivalence between the United States and the terrorists with which America is at war.

When asked in an interview with Mediaite what her point was in repeatedly asking Deputy National Security Advisor John Brennan at a January 7 press conference why al-Qaeda terrorists are trying to kill Americans, as if to suggest that such behavior was provoked by wrongdoing by the U.S., Thomas responded:

I was trying to find out why, why, what’s, look, we’ve been in this war, eight, nine years, against this so-called terrorism. And I do say "so-called" because in the newspapers, if you read, you read about the militants, you don’t read about us bombing everybody, and never really explaining why, and going into three, four different countries, Middle East, Africa, and so forth. Who are we? And why are we doing this?

On Monday’s The O’Reilly Factor, the FNC host had previously highlighted Thomas’s bizarre exchange with Brennan from January 7:

HELEN THOMAS: What is really lacking always for us is you don't give the motivation of why they want to do us harm.

JOHN BRENNAN, DEPUTY NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISOR: He was motivated by a sense of religious sort of drive. Unfortunately, al-Qaeda has perverted Islam and has corrupted the concept of Islam.

THOMAS: And you're saying it’s because of religion?

BRENNAN: I'm saying it's because of an al-Qaeda organization that uses the banner of religion in a very perverse and corrupt way.

THOMAS: Why?

BRENNAN: This is a long issue, but al-Qaeda is just determined to carry out attacks here against the homeland.

THOMAS: But you haven’t explained why.

Below are transcripts of the relevant portions of FNC's The O'Reilly Factor from the Thursday, January 14, show, followed by the Monday, January 11, show:

#From January 14:

BILL O’REILLY: "Check" three, our pal Helen Thomas was asked by the Web site, Mediaite, about her hectoring of Obama terrorism guy, John Brennan.

UNIDENTIFIED MAN CLIP: You asked John Brennan about, you said, "Why are they trying to attack us?" A lot of our readers had questions about that, were critical. What were you trying to get at with that question?

HELEN THOMAS CLIP: I was trying to find out why, why, what’s, look, we’ve been in this war, eight, nine years, against this so-called terrorism. And I do say "so-called" because in the newspapers, if you read, you read about the militants, you don’t read about us bombing everybody, and never really explaining why, and going into three, four different countries, Middle East, Africa, and so forth. Who are we? And why are we doing this?

O’REILLY: Once again, "Check" will try. Helen, there are bad people who want to kill you. They lived in Afghanistan before 9/11, which is why the USA went in there. Saddam was also a very bad man. He killed hundreds of thousands of people, and defied the United Nations on weapons inspections. So we took’em out. Now, you may disagree with those policies, but you should understand them. I hope.

#From January 11:

BILL O'REILLY: "Check" six, 89-year-old Helen Thomas still working full-time at the White House and still very curious about al-Qaeda.

HELEN THOMAS: What is really lacking always for us is you don't give the motivation of why they want to do us harm.

JOHN BRENNAN, DEPUTY NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISOR: He was motivated by a sense of religious sort of drive. Unfortunately, al-Qaeda has perverted Islam and has corrupted the concept of Islam.

THOMAS: And you're saying it’s because of religion?

BRENNAN: I'm saying it's because of an al-Qaeda organization that uses the banner of religion in a very perverse and corrupt way.

THOMAS: Why?

BRENNAN: This is a long issue, but al-Qaeda is just determined to carry out attacks here against the homeland.

THOMAS: But you haven’t explained why.

O'REILLY: Okay, Helen, here's why, all right? Here it is. These people are haters. They are like the Nazis. Remember the Nazis? Heard about them on NPR. They hate Jews, Americans, infidels of all kinds. There is no reasoning behind it, Helen, none. "Check" hopes that is settled once and for all.

The media has frequently made the deplorable decision to present prisoners at Guantanamo Bay as innocent choir boys, wrapped up in the evil that is a U.S. prison system run by blood thirsty prison guards. Such is the case of a recent piece by the BBC, covering a love-fest reunion between the former Guantanamo guard who has seen the light, repenting for his evil ways, and two ex-inmates whose only goal in Afghanistan back in 2001 was to provide aid work, sight see, and smoke dope.

The BBC interview with the three individuals - former prison guard Brandon Neely and former inmates Ruhal Ahmed and Shafiq Rasul - asks the question: "But what were the pair doing in Afghanistan in 2001?"

Ahmed's response goes unquestioned (emphasis mine throughout):

Mr Ahmed admits they had a secret agenda for entering Afghanistan, but it wasn't to join al-Qaeda.

"Aid work was like probably 5% of it. Our main reason was just to go and sightsee really and smoke some dope".

Indeed, a true to life Harold and Kumar.

But what were the benevolent ones, Ahmed and Rasul, really doing at the time that the BBC would rather whitewash in their reporting?

In a television program known as Lie Lab, in which programmers (who had already presupposed the two were telling the truth) used newly developed MRI techniques to see if their subjects were honest, a column in The Guardian notes the following about Ruhal Ahmed's appearance:

"...when confronted with results that suggested he was less than forthcoming with the truth, Ahmed confessed (Rasul had refused to go through with the test) not only to visiting an Islamist training camp but also handling weapons and learning how to use an AK-47."

Individuals with less than nefarious aspirations tend to shy away from jihadist camps and assault rifles. Yet, the BBC report fails to mention this in any capacity. In fact, they simply take the word of Neely who believes in his former captives wholeheartedly:

Does their former prison guard believe them? Yes, says Mr. Neely, who says he thinks it was a case of "wrong place, wrong time".

Case closed. The reasoning behind Neely's compassion towards Ahmed and Rasul is noble in and of itself:

"It was no different from me sitting at the bar with a friend of mine talking about women or music," says Mr. Neely. "He would say, 'you ever listen to Eminem or Dr Dre' and he threw off a little rap and it was just funny. I thought how could it be somebody is here who's doing the same stuff that I do when I'm back home."

It would seem that Mr. Neely's assessment eclipses that of the U.S. government because, well, terrorists simply don't listen to Eminem or Dr. Dre.

Brandon Neely is a controversial figure himself. He is a former member of Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW), which is a clear indication of his leftist stance on the War on Terrorism. Additionally, the IVAW has had some other questionable members in its ranks, most of which are simply embellishing their role in the military to a drastic degree.

However, they have also had some domestic terrorists in their own ranks, including a wannabe bomber of the Gathering of Eagles, and another who made assassination threats against conservative author Michelle Malkin.

Neely on the other hand, falls into another category all together - army veteran who refuses a subsequent call to serve his country. Not only did Neely get away with his scheme to avoid his duty to country, he also advises others to follow his path, as author Andy Worthington recalls:

The Army attempted to recall Brandon from his Inactive Ready Reserve (IRR) status to active duty in May 2007, but this is his explanation of what happened next: "I ignored all letters to my house. I refused to sign for anything at the house and refused to pick up mail at the post office. I was sent threatening letters and emails stating that my discharge would be changed if I did not respond. Well, I never responded and on June 23rd 2008 I received my honorable discharge from IRR in the mail. My advice would be: if you are recalled just ignore it, they never once came to my house or job."

Meanwhile, the tactic used by the BBC to treat Guantanamo prisoners as paperboys caught up in the militant American occupation is nothing new for an organization that feels compelled to place the word 'terrorists' in quotation marks, as if to express alarm that anyone could be identified as such.

In a report covering the release of five Guantanamo Bay Britons in 2004, the BBC again fails to mention a word about the reason the two were detained, instead focusing on Rasul's love of soccer, fashion, clubbing, and describing Ahmed as 'a very friendly boy' who was a keen kick-boxer.

Which begs the question, if feet are your weapons of choice, why the AK-47?

Photo Credit: BBC

Sometimes being such fans of President Obama makes liberal media types tie themselves into knots.  As I documented earlier today, the New York Times went to great lengths to insist America's rising debt is not the administration's fault.

MSNBC ranter Keith Olbermann decided to try his hand at the absurd apologetics Tuesday by concocting a wild vision of intelligence officials who care nothing about the country's safety, and only about their bureaucratic "turf."

According to Olbermann, this quasi-conspiracy theory is a possible explanation for how Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was able to board a plane bound for Detroit. (video and transcript below the fold - h/t Hot Air's Allahpundit).

OLBERMANN: ...are people thought to have been deliberately withholding information so that the dots could not be connected?

WOLFF: The question is, was this information that was shared -- remember, there was some sharing of information but it involves the father of this in the end terrorist who walks in to see the CIA officials in a foreign embassy. This is an american embassy in a foreign country. You know, that information, was it shared fully? Why wasn't it shared fully? The question there is, again, cork up or conspiracy? Was there a reason these agencies were at war with each other that prevented that intelligence from being shared?

OLBERMANN: Is the implication there that there is at least a possibility somebody understood how serious this could be and yet withheld information to make some other part of the counterterrorism system look bad?

WOLFF: That has got to be an area that the white house is looking into and, you know, motives can be hard to assess because it's not clear that this person was easily identified as a terrorist, even with the father coming forward saying they had concerns. Was that more of a family concern or were there enough fingerprints here about the radicalization of this individual to suggest that it should have been taken to a different level? At the very least, a security level beyond more than a nominal sharing of information. That's where this inquiry is, this internal inquiry for the moment, has to go.

OLBERMANN: Well, certainly, not to get too far ahead of what the information the white house doesn't have and presumably thus you don't have and certainly I don't have, but that seems to be what you're describing at least in theory is a far greater threat than a guy with explosives on an airplane whether or not he succeeds in blowing them up.

WOLFF: Well, it's the most important line of defense. I don't know that it's a threat in itself but you can defend every airport as much as you like. In the end the most efficient, safest borderline for security has got to be human intelligence. There seems to have been plenty of human intelligence in this case.

It seems that in an effort to shield the Obama administration from criticism--most notably his Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, who has been under pressure to resign after she initially (and puzzlingly) insisted that security measures worked as designed. Olbermann and Wolff attempt to divert the blame from security officials to intelligence officials.

This is hardly the first hint at conspiracy theory Olbermann has uttered on air. He came very close to suggesting that the Bush administration was complicit in the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. He seems quite willing to use attacks (successful and unsuccessful) on the United States for political purposes--to shield those who share his views and attack those who do not.

Following in comedian Jon Stewart's footsteps, Al Gore's Current TV mocked President Obama's Nobel Peace Prize ceremony Friday.

In a "SuperNews" segment, animator Josh Faure-Brac showed Nobel Chairman Thorbjorn Jagland getting uncomfortable with the idea of giving the President a peace prize while he's sending 30,000 more troops to war.

Frustrated by the exchange, Obama turned the tables on Jagland asking him to solve the problem in Afghanistan.

After fumbling for an answer, Jagland marvelously said, "Maybe if we found a charismatic leader who had the entire planet shouting, 'Hope' and 'Yes we can,' maybe then we would be in a position to change things. But where we going to find a guy like that?"  

This angered Obama, who said, "I am not the Messiah," and eventually grabbed his prize storming off the stage claiming, "I got s**t to do" (video embedded below the fold, h/t Story Balloon; pay particular attention to the changing chyrons in the bottom left of the screen):

In the end, much like Stewart's marvelous segment Thursday, Current was attacking Obama from the left.

When Jagland did his "charismatic leader" bit, the chyron read, "Thorbjorn Flips It: Wants 'Campaign Obama' back." 

Isn't that what most media members want? 

Which is what makes this kind of satire safe: folks can poke fun at Obama by saying he's not liberal enough, and that makes it okey dokey -- especially if you include a poke at the previous administration, i.e. "That feels very Bushy to me, you know, like Bush." 

Yeah...I know.

The coverage yesterday by the Associated Press's Stephen Bernard of payroll and human resources giant ADP's monthly jobs report for November focused on a relatively small reduction in the size of the decline in jobs lost and not on the fact that continuing to lose jobs is a bad thing.

That rhetorical sleight of hand enabled the AP reporter to tell us that ADP's reported private sector job loss during the month of 169,000 -- down from 203,000 in October -- was actually good news, because even though it was a decline in the number of people working, the decline of the decline "was not as much as forecast." The forecast was for 160,000 jobs lost.

Readers of a previous version of this post will note that I allowed myself to believe that Bernard had erred when he did not. I apologize for not getting that right. And here I thought I would make it through the whole year without a mistake. :--> 

What follows is a graphic of the first few paragraphs of Bernard's report:

Having disposed of that confusion, let's move on to the incredible bar-lowering in the final excerpted paragraph. Since when is "stabilization in cuts" part of what "is considered vital to a strong economic recovery"? Since when is "stabilization in cuts" part of a recovery at all? If the cuts "stabilize" at 150,000 - 200,000 a month, will we really be "recovering"? That would be roughly 2 million jobs lost per year, and we still supposedly be in the process of a "recovery." I suppose they could "stabilize" at a higher number and still be okay by Bernard's definition.

Bernard's bobble could be excused as an isolated incident if other similar mistakes weren't so rampant in other AP business reports. But they are. Just off the top of the head, their journalists think that:

• The national debt is the sum of Uncle Sam's reported annual deficits. We should be so lucky, but that's not the case.
• That the Iraq and Afghanistan wars were major contributors to the $962 billion increase in the reported fiscal 2009 deficit vs. fiscal 2008. As seen here (go to Page 2 at link), the entire Defense Department's year-over-year spending increase of $42 billion was less than 5% of that total, so the wars themselves couldn't possibly have been a major factor in the overall year-over-year increase.
• Seasonally adjusted job losses, which is what the government reports each month, represent real jobs lost in the real world. They don't. For example, job gains on the ground in October (subject to adjustment tomorrow) were 641,000:
  

  

  But because the reported on-the-ground gain was less than the gains in most previous years (the 2004-2007 average gain was a bit under 800,000), that led to a reported seasonally adjusted job loss of 190,000.

This level of ignorant and biased reporting from AP is why people are proactively seeking alternatives. As they should.

Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.

Charlie Daniels, the legendary country and rock musician, is NB's newest blogger.

Considering the condition of most of the media in this country, I can't say I'm surprised at their reaction to the murder of 13 and wounding of 30 soldiers at Fort Hood, Texas.

They are trying to blame Maj. Nadal Malik Hasan's terrorist act on the stress of being in the Army and harassment by other soldiers because of his religion. In other words, trying to blame it on anything besides what it is. The fact is that he is a radical Muslim who hates the United States of America and wants to destroy it.

Hasan had never been to war anywhere, so that dog won't hunt. He was a major, and if he was under such heavy persecution why didn't he simply resign his commission?

People are going to say that the Army knew about his disapproval of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and his radical Muslim beliefs, so why didn't they simply put him out of the Army?

The answer to that is simple; it's the accursed policies of political correctness. Can you imagine what would have happened if the Army had gotten rid of an officer because he was a Muslim? It would have been the biggest news story in the country. The justice department under Eric Holder would have ruined the careers of anybody who would have been a part of it.

So let's forget all the Dr. Phil B.S. about stress and strain and persecution and all the rest and lets look at the facts.

No matter how the media tries to spin it, no matter how many times the president tells us not to jump to conclusions, no matter how many psychiatrists and psychologists they bring on board, the fact remains.

Hasan is a radical Muslim.

According to a classmate, Hasan viewed the War on Terror as a war against Islam. One of the strongest clues to Hasan's mindset, prior to his rampage, was a post he made on a message board. On it, he tried to compare Islamic suicide bombers with heroic soldiers who would willingly jump on a grenade to save the lives of their fellow soldiers, implying that by blowing up themselves and their enemies, they were saving the lives of fellow Muslims. The thought of going to Afghanistan where he would be surrounded by soldiers who were killing Islamic terrorists was probably more than he could take.

Hasan hated America's War on Terror policies, and reportedly shouted "Allahu Akbar" -which means "God is great" in Arabic- before he deliberately murdered and maimed 43 innocent Americans. He is a terrorist, plain and simple and there is no other was to define it.

I know that all Muslims are not terrorists. I have met some who seemed like fine people. However, radical Islam represents the biggest threat to the United States of America from without and within and if the Muslims of America truly care for this nation they need to start making a lot more noise than they have been.

If Islam is truly a peaceful or even a humane religion, this act should be totally condemned in all of the mosques of this nation. Instead of preaching jihad, the Mullahs should be steadfastly convincing their young people that what Hasan did is nothing more than murder.

On the other hand, it is up to the president and the powers that be to deal with this incident as what it is, an act of domestic terror.

And if anything should make Obama refute his order to close Guantanamo Bay, this should be what does it. Can you imagine bringing Islamic terrorists to the American mainland and putting them on trial knowing there are people out there who would be willing to murder the judge, jury and prosecutor before, during or after the trial?

I know Obama is supposed to be a smart man, but it is downright stupidity to even consider bringing these murderers to American soil and trying them in an American courtroom. They were captured on the field of battle and should be treated as military combatants and spies, falling under the auspices of a military tribunal.

If the prisoners at Gitmo are tried in America, the defense lawyers can demand and obtain the secret documents of the CIA and military intelligence exposing the names of our operatives and rendering them useless as well as placing them in danger of Islamic vengeance.

How many more Hasans are out there waiting to explode? How many deep cover crazies are in our society living as ordinary citizens and waiting for the time when they are activated to walk into the streets of America and shoot down our families.

How is the Obama administration going to deal with this? I know how they'd treat it if one of our soldiers went berserk in the marketplace in Bagdad and shot down 43 people.

This situation needs immediate and decisive action right now, not tomorrow, and to tell you the truth I don't believe that Obama has the guts to deal with it.

Only time will tell.

My prayers and condolences go out to the families who lost loved ones at Fort Hood, and the ones who were wounded.

There's something about these big events that cause MSNBC "Hardball" host Chris Matthews to go off script and say something seemingly ridiculous.

Matthews has publicly admitted President Barack Obama has given him a thrill up his leg after a campaign speech in Feb. 2008, and uttered "oh God," earlier this year after an Obama address to Congress, prior to the Republican response from Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal earlier this year. And on Dec. 1, he referred to West Point as "the enemy camp" in coverage following a speech from Obama announcing his intentions to increase troops in Afghanistan. And, later that night - Matthews took a shot at former Vice President Dick Cheney (emphasis added).

"The president said tonight that we're fighting in Afghanistan because al Qaeda is in Pakistan," Matthews said. "Is that what this is all about? Is that why we're fighting and some are dying in Afghanistan? To deliver the message to the government over in Pakistan to fight harder against al Qaeda. It sounds more Rube Goldberg than ‘Remember the Alamo.' Also try tonight to workout whether the president's goals in Afghanistan are achievable. Are they? And of course, there's always Dick Cheney who jumped it from under his bridge to bite the president's ankle even before he made the speech tonight."

Later in the broadcast, in a segment with Mother Jones reporter David Corn, Matthews backtracked on the claim he made earlier in the evening - the West Point was the "enemy camp" (emphasis added).

"He went up there to West Point, okay, and maybe earlier tonight I used the wrong phrase, ‘enemy camp,' but the fact of the matter is that he went up there to a place that's obviously military. People in the voluntary army that - and you have officers up there, people who have been tough," Matthews said. "McChrystal, Petraeus identified with the Bush strategy, much tougher, more hawkish. He went up there, it was almost like he telegraphed the fact that he was going to, what, change sides on the issue of dove versus hawk."

Either MSNBC "Hardball" host Chris Matthews let one slip tonight, or it was an extremely poor choice of words.

Following President Barack Obama's Dec. 1 speech, which he announced his intentions for increasing troop levels in Afghanistan, MSNBC followed with wrap-up coverage of his speech with arguably three of their most prominent on-air personalities - "Countdown" host Keith Olbermann, "The Rachel Maddow Show" host Rachel Maddow and Matthews.

Matthews referred to a scene from "Gone with the Wind" about the American Civil War as an example of "excitement" going into a war. He said that was lacking in the room during Obama's speech.

"I think it's true of most wars," Matthews said. "They start with a lot of excitement. I remember the scene in ‘Gone with the Wind' where the rebels are so excited about going to war with the North, a country they can't beat because of its industrial advantage and population advantage. They are going to lose that war eventually."

However, Matthews also said he saw a lot of skepticism among some of the older audience members at West Point, which he called "the enemy camp" and "a strange venue." (emphasis added)

"It seems like in this case, there isn't a lot of excitement," Matthews said. "I watched the cadets, they were young kids - men and women who were committed to serving their country professionally it must be said, as officers. And, I didn't see much excitement. But among the older people there, I saw, if not resentment, skepticism. I didn't see a lot of warmth in that crowd out there. The president chose to address tonight and I thought it was interesting. He went to maybe the enemy camp tonight to make his case. I mean, that's where Paul Wolfowitz used to write speeches for, back in the old Bush days. That's where he went to rabble rouse the "we're going to democratize the world" campaign back in '02. So, I thought it was a strange venue."

Writing for Newsweek magazine’s feature on the top ten “startling scoops” of the past ten years, ex-CBS Evening News anchor Dan Rather identified the most shocking: “Abu Ghraib has opened our eyes, serving as a dark icon that reminds us our fiercest enemies – hubris, cruelty, and ignorance – wage war from within.”

Rather went on to proclaim that the prisoner abuse scandal “is still the subject of debate and the source of despair, a shadowy gateway to learning how these wrong-headed practices became American policy.”

Early in the brief article, Rather claimed: “Many don’t know that the story aired in the wake of debate and delay. At the time, there were deep fears that all of us would face a blast furnace of criticism for taking on the administration, ‘undermining the troops,’ and possibly exposing our soldiers to fresh anger from the Muslim world.” Rather certainly was not concerned with going after the Bush administration with fraudulent documents later that same year.

Rather defended the decision to break the story by arguing: “It was only the American public that was in the dark, never consulted or considered when these policies were approved. Back then, we all needed awakening to what was being done in our names.”  He then alleged more widespread abuses by the U.S. military: “A couple of years earlier, when our team was in Afghanistan, we had heard whispers of abuse underway at Baghram Airport, where Americans were in charge of an unknown number of prisoners. We flat out didn’t believe it. Now we know better.”

The budget for "Brothers," per director Jim Sheridan, is $25 million, which probably doesn’t include marketing for promotion and … well, tell me again how Hollywood is driven by profit and not ideology? We’re a month away from 2010 so it’s hard to argue “Brothers” went into production before everyone was well aware that every single war film flopped miserably.

But who does the snob Sheridan choose to blame in advance should his war-themed film flop? Not his own bonehead decision to jump into a genre with a 100% failure rate, not the investors who dove in with him … no, he blames We The American People: 

Midway through a conversation with director Jim Sheridan about his latest film, “Brothers,” he abruptly asks, “Do you think anybody will go see this movie?”

I say what I think he wants to hear – that a cast led by Tobey Maguire and Jake Gyllenhaal is sure to draw people. But we both know that movies that so much as touch on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have turned out to be tough sells. …

“I think the American people just don’t think there is a war on, so why should they have to go to a movie about something that doesn’t exist? Their state of denial is hard to overcome,” Sheridan said.

Unbelievable.

The Leftist Hollywood Playbook:

1. Make movie no one wants to see.
2. Insult audience prior to flop.
3. Blame audience after flop.
4. Receive ”brave” tag by fawning entertainment media.
5. Position on Hollywood cocktail party circuit remains firmly in place.

But as is always the case with a Hollywoodist, you can take Sheridan at his word and still come to the same conclusion: If you’re a director who wants to make a profit – a film people will want to see — and you believe Americans are in denial over the war — why spend $25 million on a war-themed film?

Predicting what will hit and miss at the box office is a fool’s game. Maybe “Brothers” will be the genre’s outlier, who knows. But how tired and played does this description from the original Danish version of “Brothers” sound:

Then Michael comes home with a full-blown case of post-traumatic stress disorder…

The trailer tells the rest of the story.

Am I the only one who eagerly awaits the $25 million film — a serious drama like “Brothers” – where the screwed-up brother returns from a tour of duty transformed into a responsible, resourceful and mature man ready to take his place in the world? That would not only be an inspiring and more accurate story worthy of the brave men and women who serve our country … it would finally be a fresh idea from an industry drowning in their own leftist cliches.

Originally published on November 30, 2009, at Andrew Breitbart's Big Hollywood blog, where Nolte serves as editor-in-chief.

Photo above of "Brothers" director Jim Sheridan, taken by Lorey Sebastian for the San Francisco Chronicle. 

It's a night and day difference between the media's scrutiny of former President George W. Bush and the current command-in-chief, President Barack Obama. And the coverage of three Navy SEALs now facing a court martial that captured one of the most wanted terrorists in Iraq, who allegedly was the mastermind of the murder of four Blackwater contractors in Fallujah in 2004, is proof.

John Scott, host of "Fox News Watch" noted this story on the show's Nov. 28 episode and asked why there hasn't been more coverage about it.

"Pretty outrageous story came out, in my view, this week," Scott said. "These three Navy SEALs who were involved in capturing one of the most wanted bad guys in Iraq - the guy supposedly responsible for planning the execution of those four Blackwater contractors. The SEALs are now facing charges because the guy somehow wound up with a bloody lip. Is the media paying attention?"

Syndicated columnist and "Fox News Watch" regular Cal Thomas said there was a distinction between this and the coverage of the 2004 accounts of torture and prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib in Iraq. The difference he said was the ruling party in Washington, D.C.

"You know, it's an interesting contrast here with Abu Ghraib," Thomas said. "That's when George W. Bush was president and Republicans were pretty much running things in Washington. ‘This was a horrible violation of human rights. People should be brought up on charges. We put the pictures all over the place.'"

And he was right - Bush was repeatedly condemned in the media for Abu Ghraib. However, the scrutiny of the Obama administration's handling of these Navy SEALs has been lacking.

"Now you got a couple of Navy SEALs who allegedly give a bloody lip to one of these scumbags and where's the outrage?" Thomas continued. "You're only seeing into on Fox and on the New York Post. I haven't discovered it anywhere else."

(The following is satire -- I hope)

Forget Ford Hood and investigating the so-called "terror" connections of Nidal Hasan.

Yours truly has come across something the current crowd running our government might see as even more sinister. The Obama administration, the FBI, the Justice Department, and, most importantly, the White House's speech police simply have to get on this right away.

You see, General David Petraeus visited the Air Force Academy last week and may have uttered a word once thought to have been stricken from all speeches and discussions relating to military matters.

The word is .... v-v-v-v-vi .... well, I'd better let Tom Roeder of the Colorado Springs Gazette take it from here (bold is mine) in his November 5 report on Petraeus's appearance:

Petraeus tells cadets military will follow Obama's commands

Army Gen. David Petraeus, commander of U.S. Forces throughout the Middle East, said he’s continuing talks with the White House about strategy in Afghanistan, but in the end will do whatever he’s told.

Petraeus spoke to hundreds of cadets at the Air Force Academy on Thursday, telling them his secrets to leadership. He addressed Afghanistan when one cadet asked him how he would handle a disagreement with President Barack Obama on strategy there.

“We will support the decision that is made by the president,” said Petraeus, who heads U.S. Central Command.

The general signaled that any change is more about how troops are used rather than how many are sent to battle. He addressed his strategy in Iraq during the 2007 “surge” that sent troops into cities to enforce security, clearing out insurgents ahead of rebuilding work.

“The surge was more than 30,000 extra troops,” he said. “It was a surge of ideas.”

He cited the Iraq changes, including pushing soldiers into neighborhoods, as a key to victory in Iraq. That’s starting to happen in Afghanistan, as soldiers pull out of remote areas to concentrate on securing cities and towns.

I realize that the word "victory" in Roeder's last excerpted paragraph is not in a direct quote. If it was, there would be no need for an investigation. Petraeus would be taken directly to the woodshed and told in no uncertain terms that no one in the government, civilian or military, can ever again utter that despicable seven-letter word in connection with military matters again.

But since that terrible word is not in quotes, the administration needs to find the transcript, seize all audio, video and other evidence, interrogate the General and Mr. Roeder, and get to the bottom of this right now.

If General Petraeus lapsed into pre-Obama language, he must be disciplined, and be told in no uncertain terms to improve on his own personal discipline. After all, the President visited the Faw Palace at Camp Victory in Iraq back on April 7. The transcript of that speech reveals that he was able to avoid uttering that awful word. We would expect no less from the General.

That same day, administration spokesman Robert Gibbs, at the end of the Press Gaggle at the Faw Palace, accidentally mentioned "Camp Victory." His rear end is still red over that slip-up.

If the administration learns that Roeder used the term on his own, the matter will be turned over the American Society of Professional Journalists for further action relating to what would be self-evident Code of Ethics violations.

(end satire)

Victory Davis Hanson at FrontPage comments on the administration's aversion to the word that describes what has really taken place in Iraq:

.... (This administration's) moral equivalence is little concerned with any redress of pathologies that in fact led to 9/11: Western appeasement of, or indifference to, radical Islam, whose extremism was the natural dividend of a region torn by enormous oil wealth, and age old statism, tribalism, gender intolerance, and dictatorship. In the era of Obama, radical Islam and the West merely have different narratives, rather than a fascistic creed trying to destroy the notion of Western freedom and tolerance.

Abroad as both sides refocus on the Afghanistan theater, somehow Obama is more demoralized by our victory in Iraq than the Islamists are by their defeat; and we have forgotten in the Bush ‘reset’ button rhetoric that support for bin Laden and suicide bombing–given the terrible dividends they earned–had plummeted in polls in the Middle East. In addition, in the “Bush did it” Obama narrative there was no mention of the arrest of Dr. Khan, the Syrian exit from Lebanon, the surrender of the Libyan WMD stockpiles, or the absence of another 9/11.

The result is that many in the radical Islamic world–especially after Obama’s serial trashing of the Bush-era security protocols like retaps, intercepts, and Guantanamo– may well be emboldened to think that either America questions its successful efforts at thwarting another attack since 9/11, or in some strange way sympathizes with some of the writs against itself.

The Obama administration apparently doesn't need to worry about whether its establishment media apparatchiks will slip and use the dreaded word -- at least without qualifiers, sarcasm, or derision. In a Google News Archive search on [military "victory in Iraq"] (typed as indicated between brackets) returning 188 items, I didn't see a single establishment media result that actually declared the situation in Iraq as what it is and has been for a year -- a military victory.

Despite media avoidance and administration reluctance, to paraphrase Reagan before he and others toppled the Soviet Union: We won; they lost.

Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.

At the end of Sunday’s Face the Nation on CBS, host Bob Schieffer offered commentary on the cause of the mass shooting at Fort Hood: “That doctor [Major Nidal Hasan] should not have been at Fort Hood. I don’t care how hard-up the Army is for mental health professionals....sadly, this shows the Army still does not take protecting soldiers’ mental health as seriously as it does training them to shoot.”

Schieffer went on to argue: “And then there is the other part that often happens in government. Don’t deal with the problem, shuffle it off to somewhere else. When he had problems at Walter Reed hospital, the doctor was just packed off to Fort Hood.” In similar fashion, Schieffer “shuffled off” the responsibility of an overly politically correct media that continually denounces profiling of criminal suspects or terrorists.

Earlier in the broadcast, Schieffer asked Congressman Ike Skelton: “Do you think this is a sign that the military is simply overextended?”

Speaking to Senator Lindsey Graham, Schieffer referred to Hasan’s Islamic extremism, but countered: “Islam doesn’t have a majority – or the Christian religion has its full, you know, full helping of nuts too.”

Here is a full transcript of Schieffer’s commentary:

10:55AM

SCHIEFFER: Finally today, the President has asked the nation not to jump to conclusions about what happened at Fort Hood, which is usually good advice, but it’s also what government officials generally say when the government fouls up.

Good advice or not, I am jumping to an obvious conclusion. This should not have happened. That doctor should not have been at Fort Hood. I don’t care how hard-up the Army is for mental health professionals. A government psychiatrist with bad performance ratings who has been trying to get out of the Army and who had been saying what Dr. Hasan had been saying about the war on terrorism should not have been shipped off to Fort Hood to give grief counseling.

What do you suppose he was telling the soldiers? That after what they had done, they ought to feel bad?

Certainly no officer with his record would have been allowed to lead soldiers into combat. But sadly, this shows the Army still does not take protecting soldiers’ mental health as seriously as it does training them to shoot.

And then there is the other part that often happens in government. Don’t deal with the problem, shuffle it off to somewhere else. When he had problems at Walter Reed hospital, the doctor was just packed off to Fort Hood.

Investigators confirm now that someone by his name had been posting messages on the Internet about how suicide bombers are as heroic as American soldiers who fall on grenades to save their comrades. But the investigators say it is not clear if Dr. Hasan actually wrote those messages. Based on what we found out so far, my question is, do you suppose anyone has even asked him?