This morning (3/19/13) MSNBC host Joe Scarborough’s commentary looking back at the Iraq War took aim at some politicians and media outlets who were supportive of removing Saddam Hussein from power. But somehow he forgot to include his own words.
“George W. Bush was far from being the only politician in Washington” who advocated for the Iraq War, he explained, digging up comments from Democrats like John Kerry, Nancy Pelosi and Hillary Clinton. As he put it, “The very same people who spent years beating up George Bush were the very ones beating the drum for Iraq’s regime change and Saddam Hussein’s ouster.”
Fair enough. He also mentioned media—specifically the New York Times and the Washington Post—that editorialized about Iraq’s weapons. “How short our memory is,” Scarborough lectured viewers.
Well, that’s not true for all of us.
On April 9, 2003, the very pro-war Scarborough bashed the media outlets he thought were too negative about the war:
I doubt that the journalists at the New York Times and NPR or at ABC or at CNN are going to ever admit just how wrong their negative pronouncements were over the past four weeks.
The next night (4/10/03), he went on a tear against anti-war activists:
I’m waiting to hear the words “I was wrong” from some of the world’s most elite journalists, politicians and Hollywood types…. I just wonder, who’s going to be the first elitist to show the character to say: “Hey, America, guess what? I was wrong”? Maybe the White House will get an apology, first, from the New York Times‘ Maureen Dowd. Now, Ms. Dowd mocked the morality of this war….
Maybe disgraced commentators and politicians alike, like Daschle, Jimmy Carter, Dennis Kucinich and all those others, will step forward tonight and show the content of their character by simply admitting what we know already: that their wartime predictions were arrogant, they were misguided and they were dead wrong. Maybe, just maybe, these self-anointed critics will learn from their mistakes. But I doubt it. After all, we don’t call them “elitists” for nothing.
Scarborough’s lack of self-awareness about Iraq isn’t new; in a Politico column (12/19/11), he wrote:
I cannot resist returning to the scene of the crime to take one last look at the shameless hypocrites and liars on both sides who used this tragedy for their own political benefit.
He even cribbed a media critique from FAIR—without attribution:
The media reviews were equally effusive, and like George W. Bush, many in the press suggested that the war was over.
Leading up to the president’s “Mission Accomplished” speech, the Los Angeles Times ran a front-page story with a headline that read, “Iraq Is All But Won; Now What?”
Three days before Bush put on his flight suit, NPR‘s Morning Edition declared that “the war in Iraq is essentially over and domestic issues are regaining attention.”
PBS‘s Gwen Ifill praised the president’s performance as one-third superhero, one-third movie star, and one-third political icon:
“The president was picture-perfect. Part Spider-Man, part Tom Cruise and part Ronald Reagan. The president seized the moment on an aircraft carrier in the Pacific.”
All of those examples—and many more—were published by FAIR (in the same order) in 2006—along with a few quotes from Scarborough that he neglected to include. One can understandable why Scarborough wouldn’t want to draw attention to what he was saying about Iraq. But that doesn’t make it go away.
He’s lucky to be working in an industry that doesn’t emphasize accountability.
This article was originally published on March 21, 2003, two days after the onset of the US assault on Iraq.
1. The unprovoked and illegal invasion of Iraq by the United States is an event that will live in infamy. The political criminals in Washington who have launched this war, and the wretched scoundrels in the mass media who are reveling in the bloodbath, have covered this country in shame. Hundreds of millions of people in every part of the world are repulsed by the spectacle of a brutal and unrestrained military power pulverizing a small and defenseless country. The invasion of Iraq is an imperialist war in the classic sense of the term: a vile act of aggression that has been undertaken on behalf of the interests of the most reactionary and predatory sections of the financial and corporate oligarchy in the United States. Its overt and immediate purpose is the establishment of control over Iraq’s vast oil resources and reduction of that long-oppressed country to an American colonial protectorate.
Not since the 1930s—when the fascist regimes of Hitler and Mussolini were at the zenith of their power and madness—has the world been confronted with such a display of international gangsterism as that being provided by the Bush administration. The most direct historical precedent for the violence that is being unleashed against Iraq is the invasion of Poland in 1939. The announced intention of the American military to launch a barrage of thousands of missiles and bombs on the city of Baghdad is part of a conscious strategy to terrorize the Iraqi people. What the Pentagon brass refers to as the strategy of “Shock and Awe” draws its inspiration from the infamous blitzkrieg methods employed by the Nazi Wehrmacht at the opening of World War II. This is how one historian described the Nazi destruction of Poland.
“The storm of fire and steel that struck the Poles during the first few days of September left that unhappy people stunned and shattered. At the end of ten days, the German mechanized spearheads had sliced through the Polish defenses all the way to Warsaw. Most of the inadequate Polish air force had been destroyed on the ground before it could even get into action; the fighter planes and Stuka dive bombers of the Luftwaffe, acting in tactical support of the advancing ground forces, disrupted Polish communications and spread terror and destruction from the skies. ‘The Germans,’ reported an American journalist, ‘are today crushing Poland like a soft-boiled egg.’”[i]
http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/03/19/iraq-m19.html
As a Republican Senator from Florida, Scarborough sponsored a bill to remove the U.S. from the United Nations, voted against federal funding for Public Broadcasting and raising the minimum wage, and voted for reducing Medicare. He should not be surrounding himself with like-minded guests and spewing propaganda for the far right as host of Morning Joe on MSNBC or any other major talk show.
On the show where they were trying to vilify the Democrats in Congress they edited Nancy Pelosi’s comments to make it sound like she was supporting the war when in fact her full comments did anything but. Plus she voted against the war.
Thanks for that, CherryT.
Where is Michael-e seeing this is how Liberals (and others) talk and not with the CMSM.
Im not even going to dignify this with comment, unless we can do a story about Joe Kennedy being a shill for the Nazi’s in the lead up to WW2.So long ago you say?Why -as at this very moment DHS is building a well equipped army for some reason they will not reveal(though Obama did say he wanted a civilian force as well armed as the army as you may recall) are we going back to revisit reporters words from 12 years ago?And why no comments on the threats from North Korea?People on this sight constantly say that Israel is never threatened by Iran or the PLO or whomever..As if everyone went brain dead and have forgotten.Next you will be saying it concerning North korea.Iraq is behind us.Thank God they are not at this time part of the evil forces at this time threatening the worlds peace.Just say thankyou and move on.
http://www.flowerboxforu.com/jboQPRuEV2VaeskJ2138.html