Re: 2 or 4 wire smoke detector question.

["Robert L Bass" <RobertLBass@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

> Why are you talking about Bill O'Reilly?

I wasn't.  Leuck demanded info on Fox News Lies.
I provided it.  In typical Leuck fashion, he then
whined that I quoted from online sources since he
couldn't dispute the veracity of the information
provided.

> Right now even you would have a hard time
> stuffing more crow down Bill O'Reilly's throat
> about Iraq with what he has already shoved down there himself...

O'Reilly is like the rest of them.  He says whatever
will make money for him.  Right now the whole
country is against Bush because people are
starting to see that he lied about everything and
that he has destroyed our economy, squandered
the largest national surplus of any nation in all
history (which he inherited from Clinton) and turned
it into the largest deficit in all history.  People are
sick and tired of all the lies from the White House.
So guys like O'Reilly (another opportunistic slime)
jump right off the Bush-wagon and onto whatever
looks promising.  If O'Reilly thought he could
make that way, he'd apply for a job at BBC.

> He has done such a 180 degree on Iraq he
> makes you look like a founding member of
> the John Birch Society by comparison...

What makes you think I'm not?  :^)
I notice that none of the right-wing morons here
complain about that though they sure do whine
about Hillary changing her stance on Iraq once
she learned that all Bush's excuses for it were
a pack of lies.

> If Iraq doesn't improve drastically by election
> season time, I wouldn't be surprised if you two
> might be supporting the same Democratic
> candidate in '08...

You suppose he'll vote for Hillary?  Kewl!  :^)

> Checked Bush's poll number lately? Even guys
> like Glenn Beck are accusing him of being
> corrupt...

Beck accuses everyone of being corrupt.  He's a
jerk of the first water


 If you're looking for Fox News to continue to carry water for
> Bush, you might be disappointed. Fox is very sensitive to ratings. How could it be in their interest to piss off their audience by
> trying to help out Bush? You seem to think everyone working for or at Fox (News) are a bunch of rats, if so why wouldn't you think
> they would be jumping off the Bush ship about now? You think too highly of Fox News. They are not in the (Kool Aid) tank like Dan
> Rather. Dan's problem was he told us what he believed to be true, and what he wanted to be true, instead of what we all could see
> to be true. Unlike Dan Rather, Fox recognizes BS when they put it out there, and for the most part they stay away from their own
> Kool Aid. You should listen to Fox for awhile. As the Bush roast gets going in earnest, even you might find yourself gleefully
> laughing at the TV instead of shouting at it. And if you think you feel a bad change coming on (because Bush's poll numbers come
> up big time), just listen to NPR straight for a couple of weeks as an antidote and you'll be fine again. Shock and amaze you
> friends with Bush bashing quotes Fox News style. Trust me, they'll love you for it.
>
> "Robert L Bass" <RobertLBass@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:1Cdqi.3999$7w.3227@xxxxxxxxxxx
>>>> You have to understand that Fox is not a
>>>> news network.  They just make up most
>>>> of the crap they report.
>>>
>>> Name something they made up
>>
>> Since you asked...
>>
>> ===============
>>
>> Here are just a few examples gleaned from the web at:
>> http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig/steinreich8.html
>>
>> "Keep in mind that in the first three weeks of March, before the bombs started officially dropping, Fox was spreading all sorts
>> of Pentagon propaganda.  Iraq had "drones" that it could quickly dispatch to major U.S. metropolitan areas to spread biological
>> agents. Saddam was handing out chemical weapons to the Republican guard to use against coalition troops in a last-ditch red-zone
>> ring around Baghdad.  Given what we now know about Iraq, these reports seem to be laughable fantasies, but they were effective in
>> securing public backing for the war.  The following is a short chronicle of lies, propagation of lies, exaggerations,
>> distortions, spin, and conjecture presented as fact.  My comments are in brackets [ ]s."
>>
>> March 14:  On The Fox Report anchor Shepard Smith reports that Saddam is planning to use flood water as a weapon by blowing up
>> dams and causing severe flood damage.
>>
>> March 19:  Fox anchor Shepard Smith reports that Iraqis are planning to detonate large stores of napalm buried deep below the
>> earth to scorch coalition forces.   Fox Military Analyst Major Bob Bevelacqua states that coalition forces will drop a MOAB on
>> Saddam's bunker [!!] and give him the "Mother of All Sunburns."
>>
>> [After my last article, one sniveling neocon after another wrote me to tell me I was unqualified to assess defense matters
>> because I wasn't a "defense analyst" (never mind that the article wasn't on the war, and the "real" defense experts made one
>> wrong prediction after another on this war).  It's interesting how these sniveling Frumsters cheer on the college-uneducated
>> Hannity and Limbaugh when they make defense analyses supporting the neocon view.  I do know enough to say that the informed
>> Bevelacqua's suggestion that a MOAB would be used on a bunker was puzzling to say the least (given the reports of
>> less-than-dazzling performance of daisy cutters outside caves in Tora Bora).  Anyway, later reports confirmed that GBU-28 bunker
>> busters were used during The Decapitation That Apparently Failed.]
>>
>> March 23: The network begins 2 days of unequivocal assertions that a 100-acre facility discovered by coalition forces at An Najaf
>> is a chemical weapons plant.   Much is made about the fact that it was booby trapped.  A former UN weapons inspector interviewed
>> on camera over the phone downplays the WMD allegations and says that booby-trapping is common.  His points are ignored as
>> unequivocal charges of a chemical weapons facility are made on Fox for yet another day (March 24).  Only weeks later is it
>> briefly conceded that the chemicals definitively detected at the facility were pesticides.
>>
>> [Jennifer Eccleston has to be the worst reporter employed by any network. She began one segment with a "Hi there!" ? in no
>> response to any segue from the relaying anchor at Fox headquarters in New York.  Her bangs are long and constantly blowing in her
>> face in the wind.  Her head wobbles from side to side with her nose tracing out a figure 8 all the while arbitrarily syncopating
>> a monotone voice with overemphasis on the last syllables of different words (e.g., Bagh-DAD?).  The old, white-haired flag-waving
>> yahoos like her not for her professionalism ? she has none ? but because of her innocent Britney Spearsesque beauty; i.e., she's
>> a typical young piece of meat which dirty old men with too much time on their hands fantasize about.]
>>
>> March 24:  Oliver North reports that the staff at the French embassy in Baghdad are destroying documents.  [How could he know
>> this?]
>>
>> March 24: Fox and Friends. Anchor Juliet Huddy asks Colonel David hunt why coalition forces don't "blow up" Al Jazeera TV. [The
>> context of the discussion makes it clear that she doesn't know the difference between Al Jazeera and Iraqi TV!!!! Juliet Huddy is
>> a beautiful woman but not very bright.]
>>
>> March 28:  Repeated assertions by Fox News anchors of a red ring around Baghdad in which Republican Guard forces were planning to
>> use chemical weapons on coalition forces.  A Fox "Breaking News" flash reports that Iraqi soldiers were seen by coalition forces
>> moving 55-gallon drums almost certainly containing chemical agents.
>>
>> April 7:  Fox, echoing NPR, reports that U.S. forces near Baghdad have discovered a weapons cache of 20 medium-range missiles
>> containing sarin and mustard gas.   Initial tests show that the deadly chemicals are not "trace elements."
>>
>> [In the coming weeks, this embarrassing non-discovery is quickly stomped down the Memory Hole.  The missiles were never mentioned
>> again.]
>>
>> April 9:  The crowd around coalition troops toppling the Saddam statue in Baghdad looks strangely sparse despite the network's
>> assertions to the contrary.  The perspective is always in close and even then there is no mob storming the statue to hit it with
>> their shoes. Just a handful of people.  It's constantly asserted that there's a huge crowd.  [I'm perplexed.  Where's the huge
>> crowd?!]
>>
>> April 10:  Fox "Breaking News" report of weapons-grade plutonium found at Al Tuwaitha.  [In the coming weeks this "discovery" was
>> expeditiously shoved down the Memory Hole as well.]
>>
>> April 10 (2:59 EDT):  A report noting with surprise "how little" the Iraqis were celebrating the coalition invasion.  [An
>> interesting contradiction of the allegations of widespread celebration just the day before with the toppling of the Saddam
>> statue.]
>>
>> April 10 (3 p.m. EDT: Reporter Rick Leventhal)  Fox "Breaking News" report:  A mobile bioweapons lab is found.  Video of a tiny
>> tan truck?about the size of the smallest truck that U-Haul rents ? which had its cargo bed and fuel tank shot up with bullets
>> after a looter tried to drive it away. Repeated assertions that this is most definitely a "bioweapons" lab.  A graphic sequence
>> is shown of a large Winnebago-type vehicle that is massive compared to the tiny truck found.  The irony of this escapes the Fox
>> newscasters and defense "experts."
>>
>> [This was the first "bioweapons lab" found, not the larger one later found in Mosul.  A week later it is briefly conceded that
>> the tiny truck was probably never a bio weapons lab, but promises that real ones will pour forth from the landscape continue.
>> The second phantom lab, a large tractor-trailer truck was discovered around May 2 by Kurdish fighters.]
>>
>> April 10:  To show that France is in bed with Saddam Hussein, Fox begins running old footage of Saddam Hussein's September 1975
>> trip to Paris to meet with Jacques Chirac and tour a nuclear power plant.  [Because Fox strives so hard to be "Fair and
>> Balanced," it's all the more curious how it fails to inform its audience about another trip four years later, this one to Baghdad
>> on December 19, 1983 made by Reagan envoy and then former secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld (see pic below).  The network
>> again, because it's so very "Fair and Balanced," also inexplicably forgot to tell its audience about another trip by Rummy to
>> Baghdad, this time on March 24, 1984, the very same day that a U.N. team found that Iraqi forces had used mustard gas laced with
>> a nerve agent on Iranian soldiers.  Rummy obviously wasn't too concerned about the charges of gassing, as in 1986 when he was
>> considering a run for the Republican presidential nomination of 1988, he listed his restoration of diplomatic relations with
>> WMD-using Iraq as one of his proudest achievements.
>>
>> But all that's an eternity ago for Imperial Conservatives with a 20-second attention span.  The Fox newscasters rename Jacques
>> Chirac "Jacques Iraq"(yuk, yuk, yuk ? what a side splitter!) and keep going.]
>>
>> April 7:  Repeated ominous footage of barrels buried in a below-ground shed near Karbala.  The implication is that the Iraqi
>> landscape is replete with these types of shelters, all of them brimming with evidence of chemical weapons.  [These were revealed
>> to be agricultural chemicals as well.]
>>
>> April 13:  Fox Graphic:  "Bush:  Syria Harboring Chemical Weapons."
>>
>> [My favorite Fox war commentator is definitely Colonel David Hunt.  From my canvassing of all the cable network war coverage,
>> it's hard to find an analyst who is more dogmatic.  When coalition forces weren?t greeted with hugs and kisses like he predicted
>> and instead encountered stiff resistance from Iraqi forces in Basra and other places, Davey was all denial. Everything?s going
>> perfect. Rummy is God, hallelujah and praise Dubya! There's not a problem in Iraq that can't be solved by blowing some Iraqi's
>> brains out.]
>>
>> April 15:  Fox analyst Mansoor Ijaz claims that the top 55 Iraqi leaders (along with the whole stash of chemical and biological
>> WMDs they have taken with them) are now living it up in Latakia, Syria.  [This is the same 55 that appeared on the deck of cards
>> and is still being captured ? far from all living it up in Syria.]  On The Fox Report anchor Shepard Smith completely breaks with
>> any pretense of objectivity and openly mocks actor Tim Robbins after playing an excerpt of Robbins' speech to the National Press
>> Club. "Oh, that was so powerful!" Smith mocked. [Impressive objectivity there, Mr. Smith.]
>>
>> April 16:  Fred Barnes on Special Report with Brit Hume blames the looting of the Iraqi National Museum on the museum staff.
>> [Right now there are so many claims and counterclaims about the looting it's hard to tell what happened.  In a Fox segment on May
>> 19 a coalition official asserted that 170,000 items were definitely not missing.  Of course he refused to give a ballpark
>> estimate of what was missing, which he'd surely have in order to plausibly deny that the original estimate was wrong.]
>>
>> April 18:  Bill O'Reilly opens his show calling Iraqis "ungrateful."
>>
>> April 21:  Bill O'Reilly opens his show calling Iraqi Shiites "ungrateful SOBs" and "fanatics."  He concludes that "[we] can't
>> tolerate a fundamentalist state" in Iraq.
>>
>> [Whoa, O'Reilly.  I thought we promised the Iraqis that we were going to implement democracy, not democracy that gives the U.S.
>> the election results it wants.  That's not democracy, now, is it?  By now it's quite clear that despite the spinning on The No
>> Spin Zone, Iraq is descending into chaos.]
>>
>> April 22:  Lt. Colonel Robert Maginnis states on The O'Reilly Factor that the probability of finding WMDs is a 10 out of 10.
>> [This is the same Robert Maginnis who predicted a double-ring defense of Baghdad in the Washington Times on January 7.]  O'Reilly
>> states that if no WMDs are found within a month from today, then that spells big trouble.  O'Reilly promises to explore the issue
>> a month later.   [Cool, let's hold his feet to the fire on that promise.  On an earlier show he said that U.S. credibility would
>> be "shot" if no WMDs were found. ]
>>
>> May 8: Fox News Military Analyst Major General Paul Vallely states on The O?Reilly Factor that "Middle East agents" have told him
>> that Iraq?s WMDs along with 17 mobile weapons labs (1 of which was captured around May 2) are now buried in the Bakaa Valley in
>> Syria 30 meters underground.  He also claims that France helped Iraqi leaders escape to Europe by providing them with travel
>> papers [a charge that even the Pentagon later denies although it's apparent that's where Vallely got his information].
>>
>> May 11:  On The Fox Report with Rick Folbaum it is conceded that the nefarious captured trailer contains not a shred of evidence
>> of WMDs, but Folbaum hints that what?s important is that the trailer could have been used to make them.  [Hmmm.  I thought we
>> went to war for actual WMDs, not for the ability to make WMDs.]
>>
>> May 16:  Special Report with Brit Hume.  Muslims, citing Islam's ban of alcohol, are torching liquor stores and threatening their
>> Christian owners.   Under Saddam's secular regime, Christian names were banned and schools were nationalized, but guns and
>> alcohol were freely available; there was tolerance for Iraq's 1 million Catholic and Protestant Christians.  In New and Improved
>> Neocon Iraq, there's a letter circulating in Baghdad threatening violence to even the families of women who refuse to wear the
>> traditional Muslim head covering.  [The report is yet another interesting and reluctant concession of unintended consequences.]
>>
>> May 19:  O'Reilly discusses a number of inflammatory and bogus charges that were floated in the U.S. media about France (e.g.,
>> France supplied Iraq with precision switches used in nuclear weapons, French companies sold spare parts to Iraq for military
>> planes and helicopters, France possessed illegal strains of smallpox, France helped Iraqi leaders escape to Europe by providing
>> them with travel papers).  Recall this last charge was made by Major General Paul Vallely on May 8 on The O'Reilly Factor. Again,
>> the Pentagon denies all such charges although much of the Beltway thinks it's obvious that the Pentagon is the source of them.
>> O'Reilly claims that Vallely is only irresponsible if the charges don't turn out to be true.  O'Reilly refers to documents that
>> prove that the French government was briefing Saddam right until the war started. [Briefed on what?]
>>
>> May 20:  O'Reilly concedes that the Private Jessica Lynch rescue story could be a fraud, as asserted by the BBC and Los Angeles
>> Times columnist Robert Scheer.  "Somebody is lying," he states.  He says that if the U.S. military has concocted a fraud, then it
>> will be a terrible scandal but if the BBC and Scheer are wrong, nothing will happen to them.  He says he is skeptical of the BBC
>> and Scheer.
>>
>> To prove his point he brings on no other than Colonel David Hunt.  [Geez. Transcript here.]  Over and over, Hunt calls the
>> allegations of staged rescue an "assail on the finest soldiers in the world."  He claims that the ambulance with Lynch in it that
>> drove up to a Marine checkpoint was never shot at, its drivers demanded $10,000 for information on Jessica, Saddam Hospital was
>> guarded by uniformed Iraqi soldiers and Fedayeen, Jessica's life was saved, and coalition forces didn't trash the hospital. What
>> were his sources for this information?  The special ops members on the raid, some of whom are his friends and former colleagues.
>> Over and over Hunt kept saying, "They're the best soldiers in the world, they're the best in the world.  Why would they make this
>> up?"
>>
>> [What followed next was an exchange that's priceless and one of many that goes by far too un-analyzed on Fox every day:]
>>
>> Hunt:  In my opinion it's an assault, an effrontery to the finest men and women in our service, it's an assault on Jessica, it's
>> an assault on these great guys, these great special operations guys ... at a minimum we should no longer buy the L.A. Times, no
>> longer buy the Toronto Free Press, and shut the BBC off.  It's a government to government issue...this is calling into question
>> the veracity of the finest soldiers in the world and it's uncalled for, it's absolutely unbelievable."
>>
>> O'Reilly:  If you [Hunt] turn out to be right, nothing will happen to Scheer...he'll just go along blithely printing his lies and
>> living his life and getting paid for it.
>>
>> [To the Colonel:  U.S. special ops soldiers may be the best in the world at what they do, but how does it logically follow from
>> that assessment that particular actions taken during the raid were not excessive and unjustified?   How is the BBC's story an
>> assault on Jessica?!  What do you mean when you mention a "government to government issue" given that the U.S. government now
>> controls Iraq?! Is the Pentagon the most effective check on its own possible misdeeds?   How convenient if you're suggesting that
>> it is.  Who is your source that Iraqi doctors were trying to ransom Jessica?  Why hasn't this allegation made its way into any
>> other news reports?]
>>
>> [To O'Reilly:  If the raid does turn out to be mostly staged, there'll be no terrible scandal precisely because you, Fox News,
>> and the Pentagon will assert just the opposite and allow yet another embarrassment to slide into the Memory Hole.  This is
>> exactly why your demand for accountability from the BBC and L.A. Times is so hollow and hypocritical.  Instead of plumbing the
>> U.S. military to investigate itself, why don't you interview Iraqi doctor Harith al-Houssona as the London Times did on April 16
>> (where the story was first broken, not by the BBC or Robert Scheer) who actually saved Lynch's life instead of the U.S. special
>> ops who could have jeopardized it?  The doctor testifies that all Iraqi forces left the day before the raid and that Jessica was
>> delivered by an ambulance that had to return to the hospital because it was shot at by Marines.  Why would he lie?  You say you
>> automatically trust the Pentagon.   Why, when tales of Lynch's heroics in fighting off 500 Iraqi soldiers with one hand while
>> severely wounded and tales that she had amnesia have already been proven bogus?]
>>
>> May 22 (5:54 a.m. CDT):  Richard King, a military doctor, appears on Fox and Friends with promises by the show's hosts that he
>> will verify that the Jessica Lynch rescue wasn't staged.  King doesn't prove anything.  He states that he arrived at Saddam
>> Hospital the day after the rescue, concedes damage and mal-treatment of doctors at the hospital, and that he "was told " that the
>> hospital was guarded by hostile forces but doesn't specify who told him.  [The testimony of the hospital staff contradicts this
>> last hearsay.]
>>
>> May 22:  O'Reilly fails to live up to his promise to make a big stink if no WMDs are found by today.  In his Talking Points Memo
>> he wonders why the U.S. has caught such informed Iraqis as Dr. Germ and Ms. Anthrax and has gotten no leads.  He states that more
>> time is needed [contradicting what he said more than a month ago, when he said that if no WMDs were found after 2 months U.S.
>> credibility would be "shot" and there would be big trouble].   He ends his Memo saying Bush must candidly address the situation
>> soon.
>>
>> June 2:  [Unfortunately for O'Reilly, Bush isn't candidly explaining anything.]  A video clip on Fox and Friends is shown with
>> Bush in Poland claiming that "[w]e found" weapons of mass destruction.  His evidence? Two trailers found near Mosul that were
>> supposedly used as mobile bioweapons labs.  [A June 7 article by the Times' Judith Miller reports serious doubts by some analysts
>> that the two trailers were used as mobile bioweapons labs.   Said one senior analyst about the initial CIA report, it "was a
>> rushed job and looks political."   Yes, they violated U.N. resolutions but this is another red herring to suggest WMDs.]
>>
>> June 4:  O'Reilly's Talking Points Memo:  [Surreal.]  O'Reilly says that the WMD issue has now been politicized [!!].   The war
>> was a just war because there's now great progress between Palestinians and Israelis and that alone made the war worthwhile [?!!].
>> Also the mass graves and other horrors discovered add to the case for war.  The intelligence was either wrong or more time is
>> needed to find the WMDs.  [Again contradicting what he said on and before April 22.]
>>
>> June 11:  Fox reports a bus blast in Jerusalem caused by Hamas, killing 15 and wounding at least 100.  [Looks like the real
>> reason for war according to O'Reilly (Israeli-Palestinian peace) has also disintegrated, but don't expect O'Reilly to admit it.]
>>
>> ===============
>>
>> Here's another article on Fox from:
>> http://dir.salon.com/story/news/feature/2004/03/30/fox_news/index.html
>>
>> The Fox of war
>>
>> The Bush administration's case for invading Iraq may have been riddled with unreliable claims, but that didn't stop White
>> House-friendly Fox News from pumping it into America's living rooms.
>>
>> By David J. Sirota
>>
>> March 30, 2004 | Before the Iraq invasion, the Bush administration made many declarations to build its case for war: There was
>> "no doubt," as the president said, Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear weapons, making it an imminent threat
>> to America ; Saddam Hussein was working closely with Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida; and the invasion would minimize civilian
>> casualties.
>>
>> While many intelligence and military experts knew how hollow these claims were, there was one place where the Bush administration
>> was given an open microphone: Fox News. By the time U.S. soldiers were headed across the desert to Baghdad, the "fair and
>> balanced" network, owned by media mogul Rupert Murdoch, looked like a caricature of state-run television, parroting the White
>> House's daily talking points, no matter how unsubstantiated.
>>
>> Of course, Fox and the White House had forged their nexus well before Iraq. Immediately after 9/11, for instance, Fox chief Roger
>> Ailes (a former Republican Party media consultant) wrote a confidential memo to President Bush saying that America wanted him to
>> "use the harshest measures possible" in the war on terrorism. On the eve of the Iraq invasion, the Washington Post reported that
>> neoconservative Fox contributors, such as Murdoch-owned Weekly Standard editor William Kristol, were "well wired" into the White
>> House, meeting periodically with top administration national security officials and "huddling privately" every three months with
>> Karl Rove, who was urging Republicans to seek maximum political advantage from a war in Iraq. Fox News became the White House's
>> most reliable amplifier -- claims went from the podium, into the news scripts, and out to the American public as fact.
>>
>> Fox News began by broadcasting the Bush administration's line that there was "no doubt" Iraq had WMD, despite repeated warnings
>> by the intelligence community that the WMD case for war was weak and dubious. As early as August 2002, Fox News contributor Fred
>> Barnes said, "We know beyond a shadow of a doubt that [Saddam Hussein] has been pursuing aggressively weapons of mass
>> destruction, including nuclear weapons." He was refuted a month later by UPI, which reported that "a growing number of experts
>> say that the administration has not presented convincing evidence" that Iraq was pursuing WMD or nuclear weapons. (UPI is owned
>> by the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, who also publishes the conservative Washington Times.)
>>
>> But that did not stop the drumbeat. By spring, Fox was rolling full steam ahead. On March 23, 2003, Fox headline banners blared
>> "Huge Chemical Weapons Factory Found in Southern Iraq" -- a claim that never panned out. On April 11, a Fox News report
>> announced: "Weapons-Grade Plutonium Possibly Found at Iraqi Nuke Complex." Sourced to an embedded reporter from the right-wing
>> Richard Mellon Scaife-owned Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, the story was soon debunked by U.S. officials.
>>
>> Bill O'Reilly, host of the most popular Fox News show, "The O'Reilly Factor," took to the airwaves on March 4, 2003, to ramp up
>> the claim that not only did Iraq have WMD, but nuclear weapons. He stated definitively that "a load of weapons-grade plutonium
>> has disappeared from Nigeria" and that the theft "should send a signal to all Americans that a nuclear device could be planted
>> here." When he was challenged on his assertion, he insisted, "You cannot refute, and neither can anyone else, that we have
>> plutonium missing in Nigeria, we have two rogue governments, North Korea and Iraq, who are certainly capable of aiding and
>> abetting people who will plant an atomic device, a nuclear device in a city in this country."
>>
>> O'Reilly was referring to a story that week about radioactive material missing in Nigeria. But it was not plutonium, as he
>> claimed, or anything nearly as lethal as plutonium. It was a compound called Americium 241, wholly unsuitable for the creation of
>> the imaginary "atomic device" O'Reilly referred to. The compound is commonly used for industrial purposes, as opposed to
>> plutonium, which is used primarily for weapons and nuclear reactors. The compound, in fact, was misplaced by Vice President
>> Cheney's old oil firm, Halliburton. (The Nigerian operation under Cheney has sparked an international bribery investigation by
>> the Justice Department.)
>>
>> On the Saddam-al-Qaida connection, Fox never considered that the connection was nonexistent. Barnes declared on Oct. 9, 2002,
>> that "the CIA now believes there's a real connection between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda, the terrorist group that attacked the
>> United States." He provided no evidence. For years, in fact, the CIA was reporting the opposite.
>>
>> Sean Hannity, host of the Fox talk show "Hannity and Colmes," claimed with no proof on Dec. 9, 2002, that al-Qaida "obviously has
>> the support of Saddam." He specifically ignored a Los Angeles Times report of a month earlier that found "U.S. allies have found
>> no links between Iraq and al Qaeda." Hannity later announced on April 30, 2003, that he possessed documents proving a "direct
>> link between Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network" and the Iraqi regime, and disparaged critics of the war, saying, "If you listen
>> to the people on the left, they're not fazed by this evidence." They may not have been fazed because earlier that month the Miami
>> Herald reported that senior U.S. officials confirmed they had found "no provable connection between Saddam and al Qaeda."
>>
>> In June, the chairman of the U.N.'s terrorist monitoring group reiterated that there was "no evidence linking al Qaeda to Saddam
>> Hussein." A month later the L.A. Times reported that declassified documents from the 9/11 commission had "undercut Bush
>> administration claims before the war that Hussein had links to al Qaeda." That was of no concern to Fox News contributor Ann
>> Coulter, who went on the air in September to proclaim: "Saddam Hussein has harbored, promoted, helped, sheltered al Qaeda
>> members. We know that."
>>
>> Before the war began, Fox tried to minimize the inevitable human cost. Hannity echoed the administration line, claiming in
>> January of 2003 that "Iraqis are not going to be bombed by the United States. The United States will use pinpoint accuracy, like
>> we always do." Within the first few days of the invasion, the New York Times noted that aid groups estimated "thousands of
>> civilian casualties, many more than in the recent conflict in Afghanistan or the Persian Gulf War of 1991."
>>
>> Before the war, OReilly issued a promise. "If the Americans go in and overthrow Saddam Hussein and it's clean, he has nothing, I
>> will apologize to the nation, and I will not trust the Bush Administration again, all right?" This February, on ABC's Good
>> Morning America, he offered an apology. "My analysis was wrong and I'm sorry. What do you want me to do? Go over and kiss the
>> camera?" But he explained that his lack of skepticism wasn't his fault. "All Americans should be concerned about this, for their
>> families and themselves, that our intelligence isn't as good as it should be." The next day, back on Fox, O'Reilly claimed the
>> controversy over his apology was a plot by the "left wing press" who "used my words to hammer the President." Then he introduced
>> his next guest on what he called "the no spin zone."
>>
>> But Fox didn't reflect when the network's talking heads were proved wrong. Instead the talkers blamed others. Hannity said on
>> Aug. 20, 2003, that "all the predictions of liberals and Democrats in this country were wrong about thousands of people [being]
>> dead, innocent civilians murdered, and we'd anger the Arab world." Yet, the U.S. military reports that it "has received more than
>> 15,000 claims" for compensation for noncombatant Iraqi deaths, with Amnesty International reporting at least 10,000 civilian
>> Iraqi casualties. Meanwhile, the latest Pew Poll shows burgeoning anti-Americanism, not only throughout the Arab world, but
>> worldwide after the Iraq war.
>>
>> The Fox-Bush alliance was summed up, apparently without irony, by Bill O'Reilly himself. In his column this week, O'Reilly
>> observed, "There is nothing wrong with news organizations endorsing a candidate or a columnist writing about his or her political
>> preferences. But actively participating in political campaigns ... is absolutely against every journalistic standard, and it is
>> happening --  usually under the radar."
>>
>> After a review of the record, however, it is clear that Fox was an enthusiastic participant in the White House's campaign of
>> disinformation leading the country into war. And it was not under the radar -- it happened in our living rooms every night.
>>
>> ===============
>>
>> Regards,
>> Robert L Bass
>>
>> =============================>
>> Bass Home Electronics
>> 941-925-8650
>> 4883 Fallcrest Circle
>> Sarasota · Florida · 34233
>> http://www.bassburglaralarms.com
>> =============================>
>
>