NPR Features Bribed Pundit Armstrong Williams

Last Wednesday, NPR did a stupid thing. They let Armstrong Williams on their airwaves. They had him on the Political Junkie segment of Talk of the Nation to discuss the Republican "debate" at Morgan State University. I put "debate" in quotes because the frontrunners for the Republican presidential nomination skipped this debate. They skipped it because the debate was geared towards African-American voters and Republicans don't support African-Americans...

because African-Americans don't support Republicans...

because Republicans don't support African-Americans.

So NPR decided to have on African-American Republican Armstrong Williams. My, my, my, how quickly we forget:

From Wikipedia:

Selling the Bush Administration's "No Child Left Behind" policy

In January 2005, USA Today reported that documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act revealed that Williams had been paid $240,000 to promote the controversial No Child Left Behind Act ("NCLB") of the Bush administration. According to USA Today, Williams was hired "to promote the law on his nationally syndicated television show and to urge other black journalists to do the same."

As part of the agreement, Williams was required "to regularly comment on NCLB during the course of his broadcasts," and to interview Education Secretary Rod Paige for TV and radio spots that aired during the show in 2004." The contract with Williams was part of a $1 million contract between the U.S. Department of Education and the public relations company, Ketchum Inc.

Melanie Sloan from Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington told USA Today that the contract may be illegal "because Congress has prohibited propaganda," or any sort of lobbying for programs funded by the government. "And it's propaganda," she said. Representative George Miller, a member of the House Education Committee, called the contract "a very questionable use of taxpayers' money" that is "probably illegal." Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington was founded in 2001 by Melanie Sloan, a former aide to Representative John Conyers (D-MI) and Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY).

After the USA Today revelations, Tribune Media Services terminated its syndication agreement with Williams. In a statement to Editor and Publisher (not available on its website), TMS stated: "[A]ccepting compensation in any form from an entity that serves as a subject of his weekly newspaper columns creates, at the very least, the appearance of a conflict of interest. Under these circumstances, readers may well ask themselves if the views expressed in his columns are his own, or whether they have been purchased by a third party."

What? NPR couldn't find an African-American Republican pundit who HADN'T BEEN BRIBED to promote a Bush policy?

I know there aren't a lot of African-American Republicans, but come on. Having on Armstrong Williams is completely disrespectful to African-Americans, pundits, and the NPR audience (but completely typical of Bush Republicans).

Bush Lies, Petraeus Lies, Traditional Media Doesn't Care

I talked a little about this last week in a post called "Did Bush Escalate So That He Could De-escalate?", and it seems like my theory might prove to be correct (or at least close).

Gen. Petraeus talked about bringing troops home next year when he gave his white-wash of a report to Congress this week. Today, news reports are claiming that Bush will soon announce that he will bring troops home next year per Petraeus's suggestions.

This appears to be all a charade because our military will be stretched to its limits by next year, and Bush will be forced to reduce troop numbers in Iraq regardless.

The clueless traditional media seems so eager to report the future troop reductions that they are overlooking the fact that such reductions will occur not by Bush's choice but because Bush has no other options. In overlooking that fact and not reporting on it, the TM is making it seem like Bush IS choosing to bring troops home because he and Petraeus are claiming that the surge escalation has worked and conditions are improving in Iraq.

Of course they're not improving, the surge escalation hasn't worked, and Bush and Petraeus are lying, but the TM is too lazy or too foolish to report that either. Thank goodness we have Media Matters for America to correct the TM:

Myths and falsehoods about progress in Iraq

Summary: Supporters of the Iraq war -- rather than waiting for testimony by Gen. David Petraeus and U.S. ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker on the effect of President Bush's troop increase in Iraq -- have engaged in a campaign to convince the media and public that progress is being made in Iraq and that the "surge" is "working." Media Matters has compiled some of the most pervasive myths and falsehoods advanced by opponents of withdrawal in service of the "surge is working" message, which many in the media have been complicit in perpetuating.

[...]On the August 20 edition of Fox News' Special Report, host Brit Hume said that "evidence mounts that the troop surge is working as planned." An August 16 editorial in Investor's Business Daily was headlined, "A Surge of Success." And on the August 21 edition of MSNBC's Tucker, U.S. News & World Report editor-in-chief Mortimer B. Zuckerman asserted: "[T]he fact is that, by far, the consensus is that the surge is working." However, by the administration's own standards, the national political reconciliation that the Bush administration identified as essential for the success of its escalation strategy has not occurred.

[...]an August 25 Associated Press article reported that while violence is down in Baghdad "from peak levels ... the death toll from sectarian attacks around the country is running nearly double the pace from a year ago." Moreover, McClatchy Newspapers reported on August 15 that while U.S. officials have said civilian casualties have decreased in Baghdad, they have "declined to provide specific numbers, and statistics gathered by McClatchy Newspapers don't support the claim."

[...]Statistics compiled by the Iraq Coalition Casualty Count on its website iCasualties.org, which publishes death count totals provided by the Department of Defense, show that more U.S. troops have died in Iraq during June, July, and August this year than the same three-month period in 2003, 2004, 2005, or 2006. The website currently lists the total U.S. death count for this period at 264.

Read the whole article for MMfA's list of myths and their debunking of those myths.

The ONLY way to support the troops, at this point, is to bring them home. Period. Not one more should die for Bush's lies.