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Now They’re Just Lying About Her

Jimmie | September 12, 2008 | Comments (0)

The next time someone tells me there’s no bias in the media, I swear I’m going to laugh right in their face. It wasn’t bad enough that last night Charles Gibson spent perhaps the most important interview he’ll have all year quizzing a grown woman like he was Art Linkletter on “Chidren Say the Darndest Things”.

Now the Washington Post is just flat-out lying about Palin. This story isn’t a mistake and it’s not a casual slip up. It is a lie. Here are the original headline and the first two paragraphs of today’s article, as quoted this morning by William Kristol.

“Palin Links Iraq to 9/11, A View Discarded by Bush”
By Anne E. Kornblut  Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, September 12, 2008; A01

FORT WAINWRIGHT, Alaska, Sept. 11 — Gov. Sarah Palin linked the war in Iraq with the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, telling an Iraq-bound brigade of soldiers that included her son that they would “defend the innocent from the enemies who planned and carried out and rejoiced in the death of thousands of Americans.”

The idea that Iraq shared responsibility with al-Qaeda for the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, once promoted by Bush administration officials, has since been rejected even by the president himself. On any other day, Palin’s statement would almost certainly have drawn a sharp rebuke from Democrats, but both parties had declared a halt to partisan activities to mark Thursday’s anniversary.”

There is so much wrong, partisan, and dishonest about this lede and it showed up on the front page of the Washington Post.

Look, just for the sake of fact-checking, let me run down the problems here.

No, Palin didn’t link the war in Iraq to 9/11. She linked what is happening right here and now in Iraq to 9/11.
She never claimed that Iraq was responsible in any way for 9/11. She could not claim such a thing because we are not fighting “Iraq” right now. We were fighting “Iraq” seven years ago, but that war ended in about a half-hour when Saddam Hussein ran away and hid in his rat hole and his army surrendered faster than France. Saddam Hussein, I’ll note for Ms. Kornblut, who seems to require a reminder, is dead.
For at least the past four years, the main group we have been fighting in Iraq is called al-Qaeda in Iraq. The first part of that group’s name might sound a teensy bit familiar to Kornblut, if she’s paid any attention to the news in the past decade. Yesterday might also have given her a clue, if she has been the slightest bit curious and that whole political truce thing.
While it is true that the President has denied a straight line connected between Saddam Hussein and 9/11, that does not mean a connection did not exist. Indeed, at least two commissions conducted detailed investigations and found that Saddam Hussein did provide support to al-Qaeda. A reasonable person would then say that even if Saddam Hussein did not know anything about 9/11 before it happened, his money and manpower helped make it happen.
Instead of letting the Democrats speak for themselves this morning, the paper decided to talk for them. Now, the Democrats don’t need to give a “sharp rebuke” since Anne Kornblut did it for them on the front page of one of the most powerful newspapers in the country. Thanks, Anne!

It is really too much to ask that these jackasses we call reporters respect us enough not to print a story this ridiculously wrong on the front page of a major American newspaper?

Yeah. Looks like it is.

That’s not the worst of it, though. At some point this morning, the Post changed the headline and first couple paragraphs without noting that it had done so.

Here is how the story reads right now.

Palin Links Iraq to Sept. 11 In Talk to Troops in Alaska
By Anne E. Kornblut
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, September 12, 2008; Page A01

FORT WAINWRIGHT, Alaska, Sept. 11 — Gov. Sarah Palin linked the war in Iraq with the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, telling an Iraq-bound brigade of soldiers that included her son that they would “defend the innocent from the enemies who planned and carried out and rejoiced in the death of thousands of Americans.”

The idea that the Iraqi government under Saddam Hussein helped al-Qaeda plan the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, a view once promoted by Bush administration officials, has since been rejected even by the president himself. But it is widely agreed that militants allied with al-Qaeda have taken root in Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion.

It’s still not right, and the fundamental lie is still in place, but at least Kornblut has stopped speaking for the Democratic Party, which is something, I suppose. Maybe the long-buried sense of shame at the Washington Post broke out, Hulk-like, from its prison in the basement and smote a couple editors.

UPDATE: Michelle Malkin is all over this, with both feet.