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Media lies about President Bush and “mass spying”
Gerard Jackson
As soon as the New York Times hit the streets with its mendacious attack on President Bush, accusing him of ordering the National Security Agency to secretly spy on Americans, I knew instantly that this vile hit job would be parroted in the Australian media virtually word for word. And so it came to pass, as the Good Book would say. David Nason and Patrick Walters led the attack on President Bush with
George W. Bush has allowed the US National Security Agency to spy on hundreds and possibly thousands of American citizens since 2002 without the court-approved warrants that make such surveillance legal (No warrants given for mass spying, The Australian, 17 December).
This was followed by the accusation that the “covert operation [was] secretly authorised by the President”, thus conveying the impression that the President acted alone. This is a brazen lie. This pair of phoney reporters then admitted that the sole source for their agitprop was the New York Slimes’ Bush-hating national security reporter James Risen.
Why didn’t this pair of intrepid journos investigate the story further rather than relying on the viciously partisan NYT whose reputation for integrity and disinterested journalism has been reduced to tatters by its publisher ‘Pinch” Sulzberger? Any man in the street would have had enough sense to smell a rat. Not this pair of Bush-hating lefties. If the so-called “paper of record” says Bush violated Americans’ civil liberties then that is good enough for them.
Far from acting in secret, and without the knowledge of Congress, President Bush made a point of briefing congressional leaders. How come Nason and Walters didn’t bother to find this out? Moreover, this pair’s outrageous insinuation that thousands of innocent Americans were spied on is refuted by the fact that the program is directed against the international communications of people within the US who are believed to be linked with terrorist organizations.
Yet Nason and Walters made no mention of this vitally important fact. Even more sickening is that the NYT had this fact in its possession but chose to ignore it in a despicable attempt to smear Bush as a danger to Americans’ civil liberties.
The liars at the Times claimed that they delayed publication of Risen’s article for a year to conduct further investigations. But we now learn that Risen had written a book on the subject that will be released in less than a week –– even though he finished it more than three months ago!
One would have to be a complete idiot, or a leftwing journo, not realise what the hell is going on here. Additionally, these scumbags also timed publication of Risen’s article to bury the good news from Iraq. They are obviously hoping that the book’s publication will continue this process. Hence, in their perverted eyes, they will have killed two birds with one stone. Only this time the liars are not getting away with it.
It’s becoming increasingly clear that Risen’s book State of War is another leftwing hit job on Bush. The book is being published by Simon & Schuster using the same person who acted as editor for Richard Clarke and Hillary Clinton. A coincidence? Not likely given that Simon & Schuster is owned by Viacom, a company with strong links to the Clintons. Furthermore, Viacom owns CBS. It also runs the leftwing Sundance Film Channel, promoted leftists activities and practiced censorship.
So how did Nason and Walters manage to overlook these connections and the Times obvious conflict of interest? And why do I get the feeling that what we have here is ideologically motivated selective reporting?
Now let’s examine another fact that these fearless defenders of the public’s right to know managed to overlook. Senator Jay Rockefeller, vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, was fully informed of this program from the beginning as were other members of Congress.
It was Rockefeller who requested that the special court that overseers the program should re-examine some of the NSA’s new powers of surveillance. Yet not a peep from Nason and Walters about this. According to them Bush did it all by himself. As far as they are concerned, Bush is the real enemy. And these political bigots have the nerve to call themselves journalists.
It’s more than obvious that partisan Democrats within the CIA are intent on destroying the Bush presidency irrespective of the damage it does to national security and the danger in which it puts their fellow Americans. In this regard they have a lying media fully on side.
For years now Congressional Democrats like Leahy, Rockefeller, Durbin, Kennedy and Levin have been embroiled in a number of national security scandals. Yet this has never been reporting in the Australian media. Moreover, the Democrats are notorious for using security agencies for partisan ends. In addition, evidence is surfacing that the Clintons used the IRS to harass their critics. This is another story that our media spiked.
The media are the real scandal here –– not George W. Bush.
Gerard Jackson is Brookes’ economics editor
BrookesNews.Com
Monday 19 December 2005