Nothing Special Tonight
Reported by Nancy - December 1, 2004 -
As usual, last night's edition (11/30) of Special Report was mostly a rehash of stories aired earlier that day on Fox News Live. The most glaring example was Jonathan Hunt's repeat of (yes, again) gossip, innuendo & speculation masquerading as a "report" on the alleged UN Oil-for-Food Scandal.
Hunt's segment was essentially a repeat of what aired on FNL, & I won't bore you or myself with it here (if you're interested -- or just masochistic -- please see my entry for FNL on 11/30 called "FNL Can't Quit Canada-Bashing").
Suffice it to say that (yes, again) Hunt failed to mention any of the US companies (e.g., Exxon Mobil, ChevronTexaco, Coastal Corp) or individuals involved, or that Condi Rice was on the board of directors at Chevron during this program, or the fact that the entire program was devised by the US & UK, or the fact that without the program we'd have killed far more Iraqi kids than we actually did with our sanctions ("only" tens of thousands over the course of 12 years), or ...
It's a form of damage control: as long as they keep harping on how "evil" Kofi Annan is, & how those rotten Europeans dealt with the arch evil-doer Saddam Hussein, they're hoping people will forget the picture of Rumsfeld shaking hands with Hussein & will ignore the fact that the weapons & intelligence & other support that Reagan & Poppy Bush provided to Iraq all through the 1980s killed millions of people. I wish they'd apply the same "zeal" to covering any of the many criminal investigations of Halliburton currently underway.
Here's a tidbit Fox viewers aren't likely to learn any time soon: Rupert Murdoch AND Paul Volcker (who is heading up the UN's in-house investigation of the Oil-for-Food allegations) both sit on the 17-person advisory panel to the Chief Executive of Hong Kong.
