Excuses, Excuses
Reported by Judy - October 27, 2004 -
Fox and Friends and Fox News Live today (Oct. 27) used every weapon at their disposal to try to explain away the tons of high explosives missing in the Al-Qaqaa weapons depot which John Kerry has been using against Incompetent-in-Chief George Bush.
In two hours of these shows, Fox featured a discussion among the F&F co-hosts about why news accounts reporting the explosives as missing can't be trusted and complaining that CBS and The New York Times ran the story without waiting for all the facts. "We don't know what the story is" regarding the timing of the disappearance of the material, insisted E.D. Hill. Well, if we waited for all the facts, nothing would ever be reported. JFK was assassinated? Let's not report it until we know who did it.
The co-hosts also interviewed Republican Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas (with no Democratic rebuttal and the second time she has been on this week) who said it was "far beyond politics as usual" for John Kerry to campaign on the issue when the story is "falling apart." Hutchison's excuse for the administration's alleged failure to secure the weapons was that the invaders were looking for weapons of mass destruction, not conventional weapons. Geez, these explosives can be used to detonate nuclear explosions. Isn't that close enough, especially since the administration went nuts over aluminum tubes that may or may not have nuclear weapons purposes?
During Fox News Live, Steve Brown reported that Kerry was still talking about the missing explosives even though it is "unclear" when they disappeared. He predicted the issue could "backfire" on Kerry.
In an interview with Senators John Cornyn, R-Texas, and Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-New Mexico, Scott continued the focus on the missing explosives. Cornyn accused Kerry of "criticizing our troops" for failing to secure the material, a charge that Bingaman quickly countered by noting that Kerry has gone out of his way not to blame the troops and to blame Bush's rush to war for the failure to secure the material.
Scott interjected with the suggestion that "Saddam had a couple months" to move the material if he wanted to, but Bingaman effectively noted that the U.S. had satellite surveillance of the area which would have detected such a move.
Fox continued with the theme during Greg Palkot's report from Baghdad, in which he reported that he did not see the explosives when he was at Al-Qaqaa while in bed with the military, but the complex is huge and he did see many other weapons.
Scott also interviewed Eric Burns, host of Fox News Watch, who summed up most of the points made in the previous 90 minutes: the story is a year and a half old, the tipster was probably a political operative who went to the news organization in hopes of influencing the election, and the problem is with the military not with the boss (the buck stops with privates). Burns did take a shot at F&F co-host Steve Doocy, who had called CBS News and The Times "reporting partners." Said Burns, reporters don't tip reporters.
Jon Stewart's Daily Show gave the best characterization of the Bush defense for the debacle earlier this week when one segment made the point that the administration was insisting it was not incompetent in dealing with the stockpile, just ignorant, and that since Saddam hid weapons in schools and hospitals, it was unfair to expect the administration to look in a weapons depot for them. Sometimes, that show says more in two minutes than Fox could in an entire hour.
