Meet the Press had Gen. John Abizaid, U.S. Central Command on this morning. It was a startling interview for several reasons, first: Abizaid is extremely impressive and a great spokesman for our mission in Iraq. Why don’t we hear more from him? Second: Tim Russert asked only negative questions, did not have a single good word to say about the mission or what we have accomplished. John Kerry himself could not have asked a string of more negative, loaded questions. Fortunately, Abizaid wasn’t going to let his BS go unanswered.
Here are some, er, lowlights…
MR. RUSSERT: Why haven’t you and the Iraqis been able to secure the
borders? Why are they so porous?GEN. ABIZAID: Well, I think we could ask the same question about the
United States border with Mexico. It’s a very difficult thing to do to
secure and make a border absolutely safe and hermetically sealed that’s over
2,200 kilometers long.MR. RUSSERT: You said on Wednesday, General, “I think we will need more troops than we currently have to secure the elections process in Iraq that will probably take place in the end of January.” Where will those troops come from?
GEN. ABIZAID: Well, Tim, if people would look at the entire quote, they’d see that I said in the next sentence that those troops would come from Iraq. And when I say from Iraq, I mean Iraqis. We’re building up an additional 25,000 Iraqis in the armed forces, and we look to them to be able to help secure the election process in conjunction with American forces.
MR. RUSSERT: I want to ask you about a report that received a lot of attention here in the United States, and that was “A classified National Intelligence Estimate prepared for” the president back “in late July” which “spells out a dark assessment of prospects for Iraq….” according to The New York Times. “The estimate outlines three possibilities for Iraq through the end of 2005, with the worst case being developments that could lead to civil war.” The best case was tenuous stability. Is that an accurate estimate of the situation in Iraq?
GEN. ABIZAID: No. I don’t think it’s an accurate estimate. I have read the estimate. I think it’s overly pessimistic.
The first show of Pundit Review Radio is in the books. We want to thank Matt Margolis of Blogs for Bush for joining us in the studio. We had a good discussion on his great site, bloggin, the RNC and the election. We will have the show available on the site in a day or so. We will also share the audio file with anyone who wants it.
Next week we have a great show lined up for you. Scott Johnson of PowerlineBlog will be with us to talk about the fallout from the Dan Rather story which he helped to bring to light, the presidential debate and the election in general.
Dean from Dean’s World will be on to talk to us about a special project he is working on with Chief Wiggles. They are raising money to bring a sick Iraqi girl to the US for a life saving operation. As many of you know, Chief Wiggles has done incredible work raising funds for our troops and toys forn the Iraqi children. Because this girls family asked the Americans for help, they are now targets for assination. Dean is now trying to raise enough $$ to bring the entire family to the states. This is an entirely blog-driven enterprise and represents truly the best that blogging has to offer.
This is what we will try to bring you each week on PunditReview Radio.
Beginning Saturday September 25, we will be broadcasting a one hour show on Boston’s business news station WBIX AM 1060. The show will air from noon-1pm and will be available in streaming audio over the stations web site and then it will be archived on this site.
The goal of the show is to follow political news and current events through the eyes of bloggers. We hope to interview our favorites each week and get their fresh perspective on the news of the moment.
We already have interviews scheduled with Don Luskin of PoorandStupid and Scott Johnson of Powerline. Matt Margolis of Blogs for Bush will be our first guest.
We ask for your help in spreading the word around the blogsphere letting people know about this new forum to showcase the informative, compelling and important work of bloggers.
No event represents the growing influence of bloggers better than the CBS/60 Minutes fake documents controversy that has exploded in the past 24 hours. Free Republic and Powerline broke this story wide open and then it spread like wildfire across the blogshpere yesterday thanks to Instapundit and others. Incredibly, a major national news story went from an internet posting to the evening news to Nightline all in a single day.
Dan Rather denied the charges tonight on his newscast and let’s just say that it was underwhelming. On the specific charges of the alleged document forgery, he did not directly address it. The “expert” that Rather cited is in fact a handwriting expert. His experience is irrelevant to the controversy and raises more questions than it answers.
Here are a couple of great round-up articles on what has transpired and what it means
Belmont Club: The Shot Heard Round The World
Weekly Standard: The Hoaxing of CBS: Why were they so easily duped?