Get over yourselves

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[Excerpted from The Daily Howler]

On November 4, a well-known military man said that the U.S. is losing momentum in the war on terror in Afghanistan. Who made this troubling statement? How about the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff?

Three weeks earlier, the head of the CIA had told the Senate that al Qaeda poses the same level of threat to the United States that it posed before September 11.

Then Al Gore explicitly cited Myers and Tenet in an interview basically echoing what they had said.

But when Al Gore speaks, the pundits hear fingernails on the blackboard.

Michael Kelly always gets the spin first.

The unsubtle Gore made...strident but incoherent attacks on President Bush over the handling of the war on terrorism and the economy, and, most recently, with the pronouncement that Gore had “reluctantly come to the conclusion” that the solution to the “impending crisis” in American health care was the “single-payer national health insurance plan”—the idea he savaged his 2000 Democratic primary opponent, Bill Bradley, for supporting.

Kelly’s spin about single-payer is simply wrong. Read more here and here.

But his spin on the war was something much worse—an insult to the American public interest. Gore cited two well-known authorities—the current head of the CIA and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. What more do the pundits want?

Brit Hume was next up the food chain. On his Special Report he said:

Let’s take a look at these politically interesting comments that former Vice President Gore has been making…First of all, this is what he says about the situation in Afghanistan. “Now the warlords are back in control, the Taliban is back and for a variety of reasons al Qaeda is back at full strength and Usama bin Laden is back making his threats against the U.S.” That’s Al Gore with the AP yesterday…All right, let’s take these things in turn. Warlords back in control, Taliban back, al Qaeda at full strength, Usama back. What about that?

Mara Liasson quickly embroidered something Gore had said:

Well, if you want to take them one by one, some warlords are back. But the Taliban? I’m a little unclear about that one. I haven’t seen any evidence of the Taliban being back in control. Now, al Qaeda being back at full strength, I think is debatable. Al Qaeda being back in some form, I think that the administration has admitted that. And Usama is back making his threats. I mean if you go through this, some of them are correct, and some of them aren’t.

Of course, Gore hadn’t said that the Taliban was “back in control.” But General Myers had said that Taliban forces were regaining power, and Gore had explicitly cited his comment.

Jeff Birnbaum weighed in next:

Yes, I think that Al Gore is speaking the way Democrats were supposed to have spoken. That is boldly, you know, getting right to the nub of things, saying things strongly. But he’s also saying things that are completely false, which is the problem.

The pundits scratched their heads over Gore’s deeply troubling statements.

Then Fred Barnes jumps in:

I mean, this stuff is mostly false that Gore is saying.

Where did things stand by the end of this session? No one mentioned what Tenet had said. None of the pundits mentioned Myers. But the self-proclaimed all-stars were all deeply troubled by the “completely false” things Gore had said.

Fred Barnes asked:

Here’s the point though, what would Al Gore do?

What would Gore do? Here’s what he’d said to Katie Couric two days earlier. Two days earlier, Gore had explicitly answered Fred’s question. Fred must have been dozing off:

What would I have done differently? I think we did lose focus. First, by refusing to allow the international community to put enough forces into Afghanistan to establish peace and order there. Now the warlords are back in control, the Taliban is back in the country, and al Qaeda is back at the—posing as much of a threat, according to our intelligence agencies, as they did in the weeks leading up to September 11th. I think it was a mistake to allow that to happen. I think we should have been single-minded.

It’s easy to say what Gore would do—but Barnes kept viewers in the dark.

You get two choices as you watch these pundits. First possibility: They may be just as uninformed as they would have you believe.

But there is a second, more likely possibility. These people may know what Tenet has said. They may know all about General Myers. And it may be that Mara, Fred and Jeff understand what Gore has said, too. In short, these people may simply be spinning you blue—deceiving you at a time of great peril.

What species of people behave this way, even at a time of great peril? Barnes, Liasson, Birnbaum, Hume—they are, without question, a “special” breed. The American people deserve to know what Myers and Tenet and Gore have said. Such figures deserve to have their words reported and respected. And, at a time of major peril, great nations will want to discuss such statements.

But over at Fox, they’re spinning you blue. Courtier pundits are bowing to power—and they’re reciting their net’s approved scripts. Myers and Tenet? That was news they could lose. Gore, of course, is always lying.

General Myers’ statement was reported atop front page of the Washington Post on Friday morning, November 8. It was even discussed that evening on Hardball. According to a Nexis search, it has never been mentioned on Fox.