Iraq

"It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain..." (The Gettysburg Address) No life is more wasted than one lost in vain.

On Monday, June 16, NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams did his best to not only spin the recent surge in violence throughout Iraq as being George W. Bush’s fault but managed to completely contradict the reporting of NBC’s own journalists.  Williams opened the broadcast by falsely declaring “As a group of heavily armed and highly motivated terrorists continues its way across Iraq, it's not…

Not exactly a ringing endorsement for the power of government. Former counter-terrorism czar and author Richard Clarke got into an argument with NRO and Telegraph blogger Tom Rogan on HBO's "Real Time with Bill Maher" this past Friday night over the rapidly deteriorating situation in Iraq. During the exchange, Clarke dismissed the United States in a manner akin to the "paper tiger" of Mao's…

The people at NBC who are agonizing over David Gregory's ongoing audience freefall at his Meet the Press perch need only look at the first half of his interview with 2012 Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney to see why it's happening. Gregory basically refused to acknowledge the existence of Romney's core argument, which is essentially that he wouldn't have done what President Obama…

On the June 16 edition of MSNBC’s Jansing and Co., guest host Craig Melvin channeled far-left anti-war opinion in his questioning of Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.). While the left has been persistent in their arguments that the Iraq War was the ultimate cause of the current conflict, Melvin was willing to take things a step further. Melvin posed quite the loaded question to Whitehouse…

Paul Whitefield "is a 30-year veteran of the Los Angeles Times who is copy chief of the editorial pages and a writer/scold for the Opinion L.A. blog." He also has a serious but far from unique case of Bush (and Cheney) Derangement Syndrome and an extraordinary ignorance of the history of last decade's war in Iraq, which included a victory in 2008 the U.S. press, with rare exceptions, refused to…

On Friday's NBC Nightly News, Brian Williams strongly hinted that the recent Islamist blitzkrieg in Iraq was completely former President Bush's fault: "Make no mistake: what's happening in Iraq right now is a direct outgrowth of the U.S. decision to invade the country over a decade ago." However, he glossed over the Obama administration's failure to negotiate a continued U.S. presence and…

The panelists of MSNBC’s Morning Joe got a little more than they were bargaining for when they brought Sen. John McCain on their June 13 program. With the Arizona Republican making the case that the Obama administration was leaving Iraq in a hostile situation in which all of America’s past sacrifices “will have been made in vain,” both host Mika Brzezinksi and Sam Stein of the Huffington…

Thursday's World News on ABC led with the rapid advance of an Islamist group into the heart of Iraq, but glossed over how correspondent Jonathan Karl grilled outgoing White House Press Secretary Jay Carney over how this development casts doubt on two of President Obama's supposed "top foreign policy accomplishments: ending the war in Iraq and decimating and destroying core al-Qaeda." Terry…

On her 12 p.m. ET hour MSNBC show on Thursday, host and NBC chief foreign affairs correspondent Andrea Mitchell was unusually critical of the Obama administration's handling of terrorists seizing control of large portions of Iraq: "Where is our intelligence? We were there for ten years. We oughta know something about Iraq. This isn't North Korea." [Listen to the audio or watch the video after…

As city after city in northern Iraq falls to deadly Islamist extremist militias pressing onward to Baghdad, questions are now being raised about the wisdom of the United States’ swift exit from the Middle East nation just a couple of years ago at the direction of President Obama. But leave it to MSNBC to preemptively shut down any criticism of the White House. On the June 12 edition of…

Al Qaeda-affiliated militants have seized control of two cities in Northern Iraq, including Mosul the nation’s second largest and Tikrit, the hometown of Sadaam Hussein. Despite the increased violence, all three network morning shows did their best to downplay or ignore the Obama Administration’s Iraq policy for potentially contributing to the violence.  On Thursday, June 12, ABC, CBS, and…

Update, June 8: one of the sources for PunditFact's reporting on Maddow, Media Myth Alert blogger W. Joseph Campbell, cited in this post. Rachel Maddow prides herself as a stickler for accuracy, though she's more than willing to shed that inclination if it gets in the way of a good meme. Her persistent penchant for the tall tale caught the attention of media watchdog PunditFact, a spin-…

Ten years ago this month, U.S. Marine Wassef Ali Hassoun disappeared from Camp Fallujah in Iraq. After a five-month military investigation, he was charged with desertion and theft, brought back to Virginia's Quantico Marine base and then transferred to North Carolina's Camp Lejeune for trial. Yet, a full decade later, Hassoun is as free as a bird. The accused deserter's whereabouts are…