http://www.opednews.com/articles/Pundits-Trying-to-Help-Che-by-Ray-McGovern-090814-289.htmlPundits Trying to Help Cheney Avoid Jail
by Ray McGovern Page 1 of 5 page(s)
The stenographers of the Fawning Corporate Media (FCM) are missing the most obvious explanation for former Vice President Dick Cheney's widely reported "disappointment" with former President George W. Bush on the issue of pardons - self-interest.
Barton Gellman of the Washington Post has now joined feature writers from Time in aping Cheney's hagiographer in chief, Stephen Hayes of The Weekly Standard. They all choose to dote on Cheney's loyalty to his former chief of staff, Irv Lewis "Scooter" Libby, while ignoring reasons why Cheney might have hoped for a presidential pardon himself.
Gellman is a talented journalist with a tainted record. He wrote a truly shameless article for the Post when it was competing with The New York Times for cheerleading laurels prior to the war on Iraq.
First Leak It; Then Confirm It
Remember those dangerous sounding "aluminum tubes" said to be procured by Iraq to develop a nuclear bomb - the ones that turned out to be for conventional artillery? The Bush administration tasked the Times' Judith Miller and Michael Gordon to push the canard that the tubes' technical properties showed the intended use to be as casings for rotors in centrifuges to enrich uranium, a key step in producing a nuclear bomb. The pair rose to the occasion with flair.
The Times front-paged their story on Sunday, Sept. 8, 2002; and on the morning talk shows Dick Cheney, Colin Powell, Donald Rumsfeld and Condoleezza Rice all referred to the Times story. The ploy worked like a charm. None of the talk show hosts dared ask an impolite question - like who gave the information to the Times.
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