WTF? How Arianna Huffington missed the boat! [View All]

[FrenchieCat]

I read her article here....

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/huffpost/20050829/cm_huffpost/006353_200508291107

Russert Watch: This Week’s Lousy Casting
Like any other TV show, Meet the Press rises and falls with the casting. Good casting doesn’t guarantee a good show, but bad casting pretty much guarantees a bad one. And you couldn’t get much worse casting than this Sunday’s Meet the Press. In the first segment, for the second time in three weeks, we had U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad, while the second segment featured four retired generals: Wesley Clark, Wayne Downing, Barry McCaffrey and Montgomery Meigs.

If you wanted to come out of this show with a clearer picture of what was going on in Iraq, you were, as they say in the military, S.O.L.
snip
The rest of the show featured the four retired generals, who seemed to enjoy correcting Tim on his questions. (Russert Watch takes no official credit for this, unless we hear otherwise from high-ranking Pentagon officials.)

RUSSERT: Are we winning?
Gen. McCAFFREY: Well, probably the wrong question to be honest, Tim…
And again:

RUSSERT: We in the media are covering the reality. Are we not obligated to do that even though it may not, in fact, "encourage," quote, unquote, the American people to support the war effort?
GEN. MEIGS: Wrong question, Tim.
Anytime, generals, you want to sub at Russert Watch, you are more than welcome.

Meigs went on to blame the bias toward bad news in the media on the fact that reporters “have a very difficult time getting out of that Green Zone.”

Well, why is it they have trouble getting out of the Green Zone? Because of all the booming construction on new schools and electricity plants?

General Meigs also demonstrated that although we may not have enough logic or enough armor, we have plenty of meaningless metaphors:

GEN. MEIGS: Tim, it doesn't matter. We're there. We lanced the boil. We're there…So having pushed Humpty Dumpty off the wall…the Pottery Barn rule applies.
Everybody clear on what’s going on now?

It is utterly amazing that Ms. Huffington reviewed the MTP Sunday show and failed to mention anything that Clark said short of listing his name. I was really stunned that someone with such apparent lack of political astuteness could have a platform from which to speak on the state of our nation. The total "miss" on her part cannot be explained away, or can it? If there are those who think that they can, please I welcome you to provide me with something to go on.

It's bad enough that the national electronic news have been canceled to bring us a 24/7 weather report (which it would seem that local news could do most of, and national news do some), but for Ms. Huffington to make this her contribution, well it's rather pathetic.

As her article lacked substance of any kind, IMO, I was compeled to leave this comment for her (and I rated down the article, as it was obviously the only "right" thing to do):

Ms. Huffington, you missed the boat

Unfortunately, Ms. Huffington frivolously fails to mention the highlight of the MTP "casting" this past Sunday--Gen. Wesley Clark, Former Supreme Allied Commander of NATO and a candidate in the Democratic 2004 presidential election.

His MTP appearance came at the heels of an OP-Ed he penned in the Washington Post this Friday. In the OP, Clark suggested that there is an alternate choice in Iraq beyond "staying the course" and "an immediate pull-out"; "last call at correcting the course".

Since Democrats have been accused by the corporate media of failing to provide a plan for Iraq, Clark's call to Bush, in where he gives Bush a workable plan (one Bush would consider if he actually wanted to succeed in Iraq and bring our troops home as soon as possible) if Bush's "reasons" truly are; freedom and democracy. While on MTP, Gen. Clark, unlike the 3 "Stepford" Generals, gave the nation and our leadership pointers on what diplomacy should really entail to salvage the Iraq Mess. Here's the Clark's OP-Ed, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/25/AR2005082501623.html
Transcript and podcast of the MTP Interview here: http://msnbc.msn.com/id/9064938/

Of course, the President will not opt for this plan. The advantage to Democrats in offering a doable plan that is ignored, is that when things fall apart, Bush cannot blame Democrats for staying silent as they will have offered a viable alternative to Bush's current course of disaster.

This same Gen. Wes Clark also responded brilliantly when asked about Cindy Sheehan's plight: "I have the deepest sympathy and empathy with Cindy Sheehan. My son served in the Armed Forces and I worried about him every day. And, I carried a burden of guilt about his service, as I am sure most mothers and fathers do. Because, after all, we either encourage them, supported them, or sustained them in making this commitment to their country. My prayers and condolences are with every family who has lost a loved one in Iraq or Afghanistan, or seen him or her come home forever scarred or crippled. And I thank them for their loved ones' service and for their sacrifice. And I understand the depth of their feelings I believe, because every American trusts our leaders to use our men and women in combat only, only, only as a last resort. And in Iraq, this wasn't the case. And we will probably never learn the full array of motives that lead our nation's leaders to take us to this war. I warned at the time that it was "elective"--we didn't have to do it. There wasn't an eminent threat. So why did we? Cindy Sheehan, every mother and father of our service members, and every American has a right to know. It was a strategic blunder to go there. Now America sees it in hindsight. But those in power have responsibilities to do the right thing, and when they don't they should be held accountable. Cindy is doing everything she can to hold them accountable. President Bush should talk to her and tell her the truth."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/discussion/2005/08/25/DI2005082501346.html

Why Ms. Huffington would fail to mention this strong Democratic voice's appearance on MTP, as he attempts to "set up" the Iraq issue as a "loss" for the GOP in 2006 and step over the trap laid for Democrats to get pigeonholed into one of two black or white camps of thoughts (stay or go), is a wonder to me. When I hear a Democrat with 4 Stars National Security creds up the "yang yang" stating that if Bush doesn't correct his course soon, then Americans will be justified in demanding a pull out, why would a progressive blogger not want that conversation to be had? Encouraging such would make much more sense than giving us a blurp on MTP's "casting".

I had hoped that Ms. Huffington understood the larger strategy in winning in 2006, and that should would have wanted to promote a strong Democratic voice that offer something out of the usual by providing it needed exposure.

Too bad she missed the boat!
http://tinyurl.com/b8dsu