380 Tons of Excuses
Reported by Nancy - October 27, 2004 -
In their ongoing campaign to diminish & belittle the issue of 380 tons of explosives gone missing in Iraq, FNL hit a new low today (10/27): blaming the US military.
Steve Brown & Wendell Goler filed their usual reports about the Kerry & Bush campaigns, respectively. Since Goler didn't have immediate footage of Bush giving a speech, FNL showed old stock video of Bush walking to & boarding Air Force One.
At 11:01am (ET), Brigitte Quinn interviewed Nick Calio (GOP, former legislative aide to GWBush) & Don Fowler (Dem, former DNC chair) about the 380 tons of missing explosives. Fowler pointed out that this is just one of many things the Bush administration is responsible for due to their lack of planning. Calio tried to imply that the IAEA was responsible. Fowler called Calio on a couple of his distortions, Calio talked louder, & Quinn gave up any semblance of control. When she tried to regain control by saying Calio could have the last 10 seconds, Fowler jumped right in & said "if he gets 10 seconds, I get 10 seconds too" & proceeded to take them.
Since they hadn't had live footage of Bush at a campaign event to show during Goler's earlier report, FNL showed video of Bush arriving in Lancaster, PA, during Quinn's interview with Fowler & Calio.
Later, at 11:16am (ET), Quinn interviewed Eric Burns (Fox News Watch) about the same issue of the 380 tons of missing explosives. Burns & Quinn both attempted to spin the story as being a "media issue" because CBS was "holding" the story until Sunday 10/2 but realized it wouldn't "hold" so the NYTimes went ahead & published it. [comment: can you imagine the faux Fox outrage if CBS had indeed tried to hold the story for its regular Sunday night broadcast of "60 Minutes"?] But Burns took it beyond that, saying that "Bush was not on guard duty" [comment: apparently without realizing how this might echo how Bush also wasn't on guard duty in Alabama] & that, at worst, it's "military incompetence".
This was followed at 11:22am (ET) by Bret Baier, reporting a "timeline" for the missing 380 tons of explosives, which he claimed showed that there were only 28 days when someone could have moved all of that, over roads guarded by US troops.
Having successfully laid to rest any doubts about who's at fault re the missing 380 tons [comment: anybody but Bush], FNL went back to its usual staples: video of Rip Torn after an arrest for drunk driving, millionaire murder, OJ Simpson & their perennial fave, Scott Peterson.
At 11:25am (ET), Quinn was in the process of interviewing yet 2 more attorneys about the Peterson case. This essential "story" was (gasp!) interrupted for breaking news: Bush was speaking in PA. Viewers were treated to several minutes of this, after which Quinn recapped & interpreted what Bush had just said, in case viewers missed how important that was. Then it was back to Scott Peterson, & more news you can't use.
When David Asman joined the show at 11:35am (ET), he profusely thanked Baier for the timeline on the arms CACHET. [comment: yes, he said CACHET -- I guess he didn't want to be thought too French by pronouncing it correctly].
