Blah Blah Blog

Sunday was the second anniversary of President Bush's "mission accomplished" moment.



More than 1400 Americans and tens of thousands of Iraqis have been killed in Iraq since May 1, 2003, when the president announced:

"Major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the Battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed."

And as of Sunday morning, May 1, 2005:

A torrent of bloodshed — at least 140 killed in five days — followed the approval of an Iraqi Cabinet that mostly shut out members of the disaffected Sunni minority.

Also on Sunday morning: the leak of a fascinating British government memo from the summer of 2002 with a matter-of-fact admission that the White House was cooking the books on Iraq intelligence in its rush to war.

To quote the document:

C reported on his recent talks in Washington. There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. The NSC had no patience with the UN route, and no enthusiasm for publishing material on the Iraqi regime's record. There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action.

Emphasis mine. The memo is dated July 23, 2002 - fully eight months before we started dropping bombs on Baghdad.

So there you have it, Sunday morning's confluence of Iraq War news:

1. the second anniversary of the president's "mission accomplished" PR stunt;
   
2. the breaking news confirming the insurgency to be as strong as ever;
   
3. the leak of a UK memo conceding that the American government was cooking intelligence.

So what did you get if you tuned in to CNN on Sunday?

Live-from-the-scene, non-stop, breaking, breathless coverage and talking head analysis of a hoax.

A hoax that, as of Sunday morning, was already ONE DAY OLD.

A hoax that was, at best, a local news story.

A hoax that was only a national story because CNN made it a national story.

A hoax that was only a national story because unlike the many who go missing in America every day, the "missing" person in this case was rich and "beautimous."

That's not a typo: check out this P.O.S. transcript to this P.O.S. show with its P.O.S. host from Friday night - the night before the hoax was revealed to be a hoax.

GRACE: Mr. Wilbanks, our heart goes out to you so much, sir. I'm showing a picture of Jennifer right now. She is absolutely a beautiful girl and, from all sources, beautiful on the inside and the outside. Sir, did she call you every day? Were you two in touch, her with her family?

WILBANKS: It's been - her nickname is - I call her Beautimous. It's just a thing. And she'll call me on my cell and have me on speaker phone, because she knows that when I see it's her I'll say, "Hey, Beautimous, what are you doing?" And all her co-workers and everything, everybody, get a kick out of that. It's just something between Jennifer and I.

[SNIP]

GRACE: Mr. Wilbanks, tonight you were supposed to be at the rehearsal dinner, tomorrow, I'm sure in a beautiful tuxedo walking down the aisle. But I'll tell you one thing, you have shown a lot of people tonight what courage is all about. And I'm going to go out to this break with another shot of your girl, Jennifer, because she is Beautimous to us, too.

Like I said, P.O.S. host.

So what am I bombarded with this very morning as the top story - the TOP STORY - on the CNN web site?

Now that this hoax is THREE DAYS OLD?



CNN: home of irony-free headlines.

"Perplexed?" You bet.

And as Cindy paraphrased it this morning: "Our top story: some people somewhere have emotions about something."

That's not news. That's stretching the wording to make it seem like it's news when nothing new or newsworthy has actually happened. Which is bad enough.

But she turned herself in Saturday morning.

And this is the top story on TUESDAY.

Three days.

Three days, mind you, with not a peep about the memo that's making headlines all over the U.K.

"Fixed."

"The intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."

And not a peep.

Sigh.

But wait: I wonder how elaborate her kidnapping story was? Beautimous must have described her fake abducters, right? And with 24/7 coverage, CNN must have been on the record with that, too, right?

...she told [the chief of police] that when she was jogging last Tuesday, a Hispanic male and white female jumped her from behind, placed her in a van and drove off.

Hispanic male.

Gotta make your stupid fake story believable, right darling?

That fun little tidbit is in the 32nd paragraph in a 33-paragraph story.

Gotta hide it somewhere, right?

We wouldn't want CNN to interrupt our feelings of sympathy for poor, troubled, issues-havin' Beautimous, would we?

Because if we stopped caring about her - hell, we might stop watching the 24/7 coverage.

In other news: Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead.

And I weep.

Peace,

B.

UPDATE 5.06.05

Albuquerque, police said Thursday that Wilbanks also claimed she had been sexually assaulted, but recanted with the rest of her story.

Here's the Associated Press story.

I'm going to go throw up now.

Labels: in the news