Caveat lector

YOU KNOW THEM, AL (PART 1)! Al Gore said we’re being deceived. Fred Barnes quickly made him a prophet:

FRIDAY, AUGUST 8, 2003

WHAT FRED DOES BEST: It was Mort’s aggressive spinning that grabbed us the most, although Fred ran to make the most desperate remark. On last night’s Special Report, Brit Hume started the panel in orderly fashion; he read off six “false impressions” about Iraq which Al Gore had blamed on the Bush Admin. “Well, some of it was true,” Juan Williams said, agreeing with the things Gore said. And that’s when Barnes began his faking. No, we really aren’t making this up. Yes, the corrupted man said it:

WILLIAMS: Well, some of it was true.

BARNES: I didn’t notice any.

WILLIAMS: Well, I think it’s true when [Gore] says that President Bush led us to believe that somehow Saddam Hussein might have had connections to Al Qaeda—

BARNES (continuing directly): I think Bush said exactly the opposite, consistently! Exactly the opposite!

ACKERMAN AND JUDIS: In speeches and interviews, administration officials also warned of the connection between Saddam and Al Qaeda. On September 25, 2002, Rice insisted, “There clearly are contacts between Al Qaeda and Iraq…There clearly is testimony that some of the contacts have been important contacts and that there’s a relationship there.” On the same day, President Bush warned of the danger that “Al Qaeda becomes an extension of Saddam’s madness.” Rice, like Rumsfeld—who the next day would call evidence of a Saddam-bin Laden link “bulletproof”—said she could not share the administration’s evidence with the public without endangering intelligence sources. But Bob Graham, the Florida Democrat who chaired the Senate Intelligence Committee, disagreed. On September 27, Paul Anderson, a spokesman for Graham, told USA Today that the senator had seen nothing in the CIA’s classified reports that established a link between Saddam and Al Qaeda.

ACKERMAN AND JUDIS: Bush’s speech brought together all the misinformation and exaggeration that the White House had been disseminating that fall…Bush also argued that, through its ties to Al Qaeda, Iraq would be able to use biological and chemical weapons against the United States. “Iraq could decide on any given day to provide a biological or chemical weapon to a terrorist group or individual terrorists,” he warned. If Iraq had to deliver these weapons on its own, Bush said, Iraq could use the new unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) that it was developing…This claim represented the height of absurdity. Iraq’s UAVs had ranges of, at most, 300 miles. They could not make the flight from Baghdad to Tel Aviv, let alone to New York.

Yep—if you watched last night’s Special Report, you got to see the corrupted Barnes selling his body parts to the devil. But you also saw Fox’s brilliant “all-stars” sitting back and refusing to correct him. Surely, every member of Brit Hume’s panel knew that what Barnes said was false. But Fox’s “all-stars” are deeply corrupted—they’re store-bought, and they’re dead-dog cowards—and they know what they’re paid to convey to Fox viewers. “Well, I—that was the impression that we were left with,” Williams muttered, slinking back in his chair for the ten millionth time. And Hume and Kondracke both said nothing—although they surely knew that what Barnes had said was utterly, one hundred percent false.

Millions of Americans tune in to Fox without understanding that they’re being deceived. Al Gore, politely, noted that in his speech. So Fred and Mort knew what to do. Just like that, they got lying.

BAD TIMING: Sadly, we’re tied up on an all-day event. But the press corps’ reaction to Gore’s major speech will be examined here in much more detail. More tomorrow on Kondracke’s comments—and more on Chris Matthews’ consummate faking on Hardball. That cable money must spend real good when you see what these fake men will do for it.