Iraq

Today's New York Times op-ed page includes a wide-ranging interview on foreign policy that Thomas Friedman conducted with President Obama.  Let's break down some of the low-lights.  Excerpts from interview in italics, with my comments following. And sure, when President Obama said "I don't worry about Israel's survival," he explained his insouciance in terms of Israel's military might.  But was…

The Big Three networks steered clear of labeling the Islamist group ISIS "terrorists" on their evening newscasts on Friday. Instead, ABC's World News and CBS Evening News labeled the genocidal radicals "militants." NBC Nightly News used the more benign "rebels" in their coverage of the group's latest attacks on the Kurdish part of Iraq. The closest that a journalist at ABC, CBS, or NBC got…

In the wake of the news that President Obama had ordered limited bombing on ISIS mobile artillery units – a small hit with only two 500-pound bombs – experts were not shy about declaring their concern on TV about the Obama strategy. The White House won't commit to stopping the genocide by ISIS -- as evidenced yesterday when White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest failed to provide an…

Chris Matthews is apparently no fan of blogs or websites, even when they are run by his comrades at MSNBC. On the August 8 edition of The Reid Report, guest host Jonathan Capehart welcomed the Hardball host to the program to discuss Iraq. He got a whole lot more than he bargained for. Capehart read an excerpt from a piece appearing on Ezra Klein’s Vox.com, which purports to be in the…

Of the three network morning shows on Friday, only NBC's Today made any mention of President Obama being criticized over his slow response to the terrorist group ISIS taking over Iraq. Co-host Savannah Guthrie raised the issue to chief White House correspondent Chuck Todd: "Listen to the President last night, his reluctance to get into Iraq is palpable. But on the other hand, he's facing…

On Thursday, the al Qaeda spinoff group the Islamic State seized numerous towns in northern Iraq that are home to much of the country’s minority Christian population, sending tens of thousands of them fleeing further into the Kurdish-dominated region to avoid the unforgiving and deadly extremist group. When it came to the major broadcast networks covering this story on their Thursday morning…

On Monday night, only the CBS Evening News covered what anchor Scott Pelley described as an "emerging genocide" in Iraq. In a 48-second news brief, Pelley reported: "The Islamic army known as ISIS has seized vast territory in Syria and Iraq....Now, have a look at what they're doing to the minority Shiite Muslims....In this video, Shiite men are herded together and executed in mass graves. Here…

ABC, CBS, and NBC's morning and evening newscasts have yet to cover the dire situation of Christians in Iraq, particularly after ISIS's takeover of the key city of Mosul. The Islamic extremist group drove most of the Christians out of the city, and issued an ultimatum to those who remained: covert to Islam, pay a hefty tax, or face death. Refreshingly, the New York Times spotlighted the crisis…

CNN: the home for hate-filled rants against conservatives. On the July 16 edition of New Day, a panel reacted to Jake Tapper’s testy interview with former Vice President Dick Cheney. Democratic strategist and CNN contributor Paul Begala became unhinged, resorting to personal attacks on Cheney in response to his explanations of the Iraq war. Asked by host Kate Bolduan as to why Cheney is…

Although more subdued compared to his June 18 anti-Dick Cheney diatribe, MSNBC's Chris Matthews returned on his Monday, July 14 program once again to his unhealthy, creepy obsession with the former vice president. The relevant news hook was what Matthews derided as a "Cheney family offensive," referring to a Politico Playbook lunch event held earlier in the day in Washington, D.C., featuring…

But hey, give the man credit -- how often do left-wingers ever admit that Saddam Hussein was a socialist? In the last two decades, the number of times I've heard them acknowledge this comes in somewhere around less than hardly ever. If Saddam had been a right-winger, we'd all have heard that repeated ad infinitum and then some. But because he wasn't -- just the opposite, in fact -- Saddam's…

Washington Monthly blogger Ed Kilgore has found some people he thinks conservatives hate even more than they hate President Obama: the thousands of Central American children trying to enter the U.S. at its border with Mexico. After all, righties are merely obsessed with making Obama at least as unpopular in his second term as George W. Bush was in his, but they want to “immediately ship [the]…

Something tells me Zach Carter won't be making many media appearances in the months to come, at least not while still employed by Huffington Post. HuffPo's "senior political economy reporter" -- quite possibly the only time you'll see that job title -- made a mess of things during a recent appearance on Hugh Hewitt's radio show by demonstrating that his opposition to the Iraq war is a mile…

A prominent exhibit explaining why the nation's trust in its media establishment has dropped to precipitous lows would likely include Tom Cohen's Thursday afternoon column at CNN expressing befuddlement over President Barack Obama's unpopularity. After all, Cohen's headline crows that under Obama we have "more jobs" and "less war" (!), so there's a "disconnect" which must be explained. To…