"You're suggesting that by quoting the report, I'm trying to make a partisan argument?"Gregory asked

Blue Bayou
A reader blog about politics and current events with John Whiteside
http://blogs.chron.com/bluebayou/2006/12/fractures_over_iraq.html

December 09, 2006
Fractures over Iraq

On Thursday night, Sen. Gordon Smith, an Oregon Republican, called our Iraq policy "absurd" and possibly "criminal"http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/08/AR2006120801579.html in a floor speech. This would have been bigger news a year ago, but with the Bush administration having achieved complete lame duck status after the midterm elections and the release of the Iraq Study Group's report last week, it's not all that surprising. There's no political gain in continuing to support an unpopular president on an issue where the public views his policies as disastrous. I won't be surprised is we hear more GOP criticism in the coming months.

The interesting question, though, is what Bush will do. What happens in Iraq in the next two years will be a big factor in determining Bush's legacy. When it comes to Iraq, his administration has resolutely chosen faith over reason, informing the public that everything is going well even as all objective evidence suggested the opposite. Can he switch gears now and leave office with a bit of dignity in two years?

Watching Tony Snow's performance talking to the press about the study group report, I suspect not. When David Gregory read him a passage from the report and asked him if there was any way to see it as anything other that a repudiation of Bush's policies, Snow accused him of partisan hackery.

"You're suggesting that by quoting the report, I'm trying to make a partisan argument?" Gregory asked, clearly astonished.

Watching the tape of it, I was reminded of a comment that satirist Stephen Colbert made on his show (in his right-wing pundit persona) during an interview with Jim Lehrer: "Doesn't information itself have a liberal bias?"

Colbert got a laugh out of it, but it's uncomfortably close to the truth for this administration; inconvenient facts are the enemy. Watching Snow play out the usual script - if you confront us with facts, you are trying to be partisan - I wonder if the administration will be able to break out of its pattern of the last six years and change policy.

The price of failure to do that won't be just a legacy of public disgust with the president's foreign policy, though; it'll include more bloodshed in Iraq. That's quite a legacy in itself.

Posted by John Whiteside at December 9, 2006 08:52 AM

Yes, tony, your fucking administration should be repudiated for your ignorant, arrogant, lying, garbage failure of a foreign policy and your administrations total fucking lack of knowledge of military strategy. Hopefully, david gregory will whip your ass live on CSPAN before your criminal administation comes to an end.

at the correspondents dinner. I could be wrong. Plus Steven will use a great line over again, who doesn't?

the party to throw him to the wolves.

Nothing burns me up more than this tactic.

If the facts are on your side, pound the facts. If the facts aren't on your side, pound the table.

to control history.

to control the adverbs and adjectives of history.

to control a disasterous outcome. how that outcome is viewed.

of course gregory is astonished -- wouldn't we all be when confronted by the breathtaking audacity of that?

the breadth and depth of what this admin has tried to do -- not just with the illegal war -- but it's control of the ''facts'' and how those facts are viewed has simply escaped the msm -- they are as ill equipped to deal with this reality as bushco is to deal with the reality of iraq.

I applaud David Gregory's attempt at asking the hard questions. He is one of the few of the WH press corp that even bothers to stay on point. But, it is this group's free pass for the first 4-5 years of the junta that has brought us to this point.
The WH, so used to defining it's own version of the truth, now can stand up there and defend their illusions.
The press has accepted the illusion as fact. Now when a press member asks for truth, the WH can answer with illusion - that is truth to them. I suppose Mr. Colbert hit it on the head with "truthiness" as a philosphy.
Gregory, meanwhile, takes a pounding from the right for being a part of the ficticious "liberal media".

It's really a classic piece of brainwashing.

It's called journalism Tony...I can understand why it's difficult for Snowjob to recognize, as the practice is completely foreign to this Faux-bred asshat.

Thank you Mr. Gregory! :applause: