With Karl Rove and Judith Miller in the news over their roles in the faulty claims that prompted the Iraq war, Megyn Kelly should be throwing at least the same kind of hissy fit that she’s been throwing at Ferguson and #BlackLivesMatter protesters.
In case you’ve missed it, Fox News contributor (and former George W. Bush advisor) Karl Rove was confronted during an event at the University of Connecticut by a student who identified himself as an Iraq war veteran last week. From the Huffington Post:
“Can you take responsibility and apologize for your decision in sending a generation to lose their humanity and deal with the horrors of war which you have never had the courage to face?” the student, Ryan Henowitz, asked.
Rove refused to apologize, saying former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein posed a threat to the United States.
“I appreciate your service, but I’m not going to apologize for our government doing the right thing in removing Saddam Hussein from power,” Rove said.
Similarly, New York Times reporter turned Fox News contributor, Judith Miller is going public with her apologia – but definitely not an apology – for her role in promoting the completely false “Iraq has WMDs” narrative that helped the Bush administration sell the war. Ahead of a book coming out tomorrow, Miller wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal that could have been called “Blame the CIA, Not Me.”
From Simon Maloy’s terrific deconstruction of it at Salon.com:
Miller makes what is now a familiar case from die-hard proponents of the Iraq misadventure: the Bush White House did not “lie” to start the war, they just got everything wrong. And, of course, Miller argues that she, as a reporter covering this march to war, barely did anything wrong herself.
…Just so we’re clear here, Miller’s defense of herself is that she wasn’t led by the nose to her wrong conclusions – she arrived there on her own steam. Congratulations! Saying she “relied on sources” is a neat little way of pushing responsibility for her own bad reporting onto others. One of the biggest criticisms of Miller from people who worked with her was that she was too reliant on her sources, whom she was overly chummy with and loathe to question.
Let’s compare the Iraq war to the Ferguson protests. As unforgiveable as the Ferguson looting was, it cost far less than the $2 trillion (which could possibly grow to $6 trillion) Iraq price tag that Reuters calculated in 2013. In Ferguson, there was one death which may or may not have been related to the rioting. Other than Michael Brown, of course. In Iraq, nearly 5,000 U.S. and coalition military members were killed. More than 100,000 Iraqis have been killed.
While the U.S. Department of Justice cleared Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson in the shooting death of Brown, the DOJ also presented a searing indictment of the racial practices of the Ferguson police. The New York Times wrote it “gave credence to many of the grievances” of the protesters and "revealed the root of the rage that brought people into the streets."
But because the DOJ had not found sufficient evidence to conclude that Brown’s hands were actually up, in a surrender position, when he was shot, Kelly has been on her (white) high horse and demanding mea culpas from just about anyone who sympathized with the Ferguson protesters or who used the now-iconic “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot” gesture and words.
On March 6, Kelly lectured African Americans about the DOJ’s findings of systemic racism:
KELLY: Wouldn’t it be so much more credible if they came out and said, “We were wrong about Officer Wilson but we want to talk about what the DOJ found with respect to Ferguson?” Then people might listen. But when they’re standing firm on Officer Wilson, not acknowledging that all the innuendo and rhetoric they ginned up was false and totally baseless, it’s tough then to listen as they get to Point B.
Wouldn’t that logic apply even more to Rove and Miller? But other than a possible “Megyn Moment” I’ll bet money you won’t see even half the outrage from “straight news anchor” Kelly over the “mistakes” of her (white) colleagues.
Watch Karl Rove refuse to apologize, below.