Author: Jonathan Schwarz

All right. I’m getting a little pissed off by all the criticism of Tim Russert. Everyone’s jumping on him for saying this on Bill Moyers’ show about the performance of the press on the WMD story:

RUSSERT: …there were concerns expressed by other government officials. And to this day, I wish my phone had rung, or I had access to them.

Atrios, Digby, David Sirota, Jane Hamsher—they’ve all taken a whack at Mr. Russert.

And of course it seems easy to make fun of him here, given that he’s the Washington Bureau Chief for NBC. But what none of these people apparently understand is that Russert doesn’t have a phone that makes outgoing calls. It’s unfortunate, but NBC and GE simply can’t afford it. It’s so very easy to miss that when you’re sitting pretty atop your lucrative blog empire. But every night in America, some gigantic corporate conglomerate is choosing between buying food for its anchors and making outgoing phone calls.

And what this means is, Russert’s job is to show up at 9 am, and wait until somebody calls him and tells him what’s going on. And he does it very well. He sits by the phone all day, because if he misses a call, he has to wait until they call him back.

Also, keep in mind that these “other government officials” to which he refers are sealed in a titanium vault at the center of the earth. So how exactly would Russert get access to them? I’d like to see you try it, all you big shots.

On the Bill Moyers documentary last night, he pointed out that Oprah Winfrey did a show about Iraq on October 9, 2002. Her two guests were Judith Miller and Kenneth Pollack. They said things like this:

MILLER: The US intelligence community believes that Saddam Hussein has deadly stocks of anthrax, of botulinium toxin, which is one of the most virulent poisons known to man.

POLLACK: And what we know for a fact from a number of defectors who’ve come out of Iraq over the years is that Saddam Hussein is absolutely determined to acquire nuclear weapons and is building them as fast as he can.

Has she had them back on to explain how they got things so completely wrong? No.

That’s interesting, because when James Frey turned out to have made things up for his book A Million Little Pieces, she made him come back on so she could shame him in front of America:

OPRAH: James Frey is here and I have to say it is difficult for me to talk to you because I feel really duped. But more importantly, I feel that you betrayed millions of readers. I think it’s such a gift to have millions of people to read your work and that bothers me greatly.

Pretty strong language, which Frey certainly deserved. But he didn’t actually help start a catastrophic war.

So, I think progressive organizations should get together and ask Oprah to invite Miller and Pollack back on the show…along with someone like Scott Ritter or British expert Glen Rangwala. I suspect it would be quite an enlightening program.

(Thanks to Sam Husseini for pointing out the Frey parallel.)

Charles Davis, a freelance print and radio reporter, briefly interviewed Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) last Wednesday. Rockefeller, Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, made this startling statement about how our government really functions:

ROCKEFELLER: Don’t you understand the way Intelligence works? Do you think that because I’m Chairman of the Intelligence Committee that I just say I want it, and they give it to me? They control it. All of it. All of it. All the time. I only get, and my committee only gets, what they want to give me.

I’ve stuck the long background to this—which is truly a matter of war and peace and life and death for millions of people—on my site. Included is a transcript and mp3 of the entire Davis/Rockefeller exchange.

From Dennis Kucinich’s press secretary:

Congressman Kucinich Will Hold Press Conference to Announce Introduction of Articles of Impeachment Relating To Vice President Richard Cheney

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) will hold a news conference tomorrow afternoon to announce the introduction of articles of impeachment relating to the Vice President of the United States Richard B. Cheney.

Where: Cannon Terrace (intersection of Independence Avenue and New Jersey Avenue)
When: Tuesday, April 24, 2007
Time: 12 p.m.

I think we can expect more news about this soon.

Do not miss Glenn Greenwald’s post about the latest eruption of psychosis from America’s right. It turns out, according to an article by British hack Melanie Phillips in the Spectator, that IRAQ HAD WMD ALL ALONG! And this is being covered up by FORCES AT THE HIGHEST LEVELS!!1!

Read Greenwald’s post for the horrifying details, including how it’s been embraced by the biggest conservative blogs here. I’ll just mention my favorite part, which comes from something Philips posted on her website:

…at Russian insistence, Saddam agreed to sell or transfer his CW/BW stockpiles to other Arab states in the weeks and months before the war.

Yes…you can see how this would happen. When faced with attack by a far more powerful foe, countries always attempt to give away their weapons. This is a pattern that’s repeated itself throughout history.

And it’s not just the WMD! My sources have informed me that just before the war:

• At Brazil’s insistence, Saddam agreed to give away Iraq’s artillery

• At Malaysia’s insistence, Saddam agreed to give away Iraq’s rifles

• At Burkina Faso’s insistence, Saddam agreed to give away Iraq’s forks

But as always, this bombshell is being covered up by FORCES AT THE HIGHEST LEVELS!!1!