W

ith Barack Obama, perhaps more than any president in recent times, symbols are important, from his very own logo to where he gives his first presidential interview. As such, the interview with the Al-Arabia TV network is symbolism of a very high order.

Comments on the transcript at Al-Arabia bear this out:

Great interview. Cant wait for the months ahead and the speech in the muslim country he talks about……….

Please do not miss the meaning of the fact that the very first interview he gives as President of the United States, is to Al-Arabiya.

This is the best Arab and Muslim world is going to get from West. He is I think sincere and want to change the relationships for good. Believe me he is taking a very high political risk and if Arab and Muslim world do not respond in Kind then I think no peace for next 50 years

well done Barack

Despite some reservations about what he said, I’ll echo that last comment: Well done, Barack. Not everyone agrees:

Guess who B. Hussein Obama is doing his very first formal TV interview as president with? Just guess. If I’m an Israeli, I would run, not walk, early and often, to vote for Binyamn Netanyahu for president there, because there ain’t no way that Obama is gonna support Israel when push comes to shove — so, therefore, the Israelis will need their leader to be a guy who is willing to do the pushing and shoving on his own regardless of whether the American president gives his okay. (American Spectator blog)

Certainly, friends of Israel have reason for concern both with the symbolism and the content of the interview. They would have preferred the interview be with Haaretz, but I see Obama’s point. He wanted something big and this was packed with more symbolism than any other symbol he could have chosen. Not that I didn’t clench my teeth when I read stuff like this:

But if we start the steady progress on these [Israeli/Palestinian] issues, I’m absolutely confident that the United States — working in tandem with the European Union, with Russia, with all the Arab states in the region — I’m absolutely certain that we can make significant progress.

I’m sorry; did I miss it when he mentioned Israel? And there was this:

Look at the proposal that was put forth by King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia — I might not agree with every aspect of the proposal, but it took great courage — to put forward something that is as significant as that.

Significant? Like giving up land for peace? Tried that. Didn’t work out too well. But it’s an idea Obama likes:

… I also believe that there are Israelis who recognize that it is important to achieve peace. They will be willing to make sacrifices if the time is appropriate and if there is serious partnership on the other side.

That’s not change; that’s land for peace. Obama says in a portion of the interview that’s critical of Bush that he understands that words are important; these words are telling Israel, even with the obligatory “I will continue to believe that Israel’s security is paramount,” that Obama will be asking them to trust the Arabs once again.

Kick the football, Charlie Brown!

I realize that saying “Israel aside, …” is enough to throw many of my readers into convulsions, and I’m certainly not ready to put Israel aside.  But, Israel aside, there is a larger picture. I would like to see little neo-con Americas springing up from Mogadishu to Tashkent, but since that’s not scheduled for this week, a different approach to the Muslim world is worth trying. I’m not at all confident it will work because history gives me no faith in the idea of Arabs working honestly and keeping their word when it comes to Israel, and because al Qaeda leadership doesn’t give a hoot about Obama and what he says.

But go ahead, Obama. Give it a shot. You might win. But if you fail, don’t fail Israel. Just learn a lesson about the limits of charisma.

Meanwhile, AP’s coverage of the interview was, in a word, disgusting.  It was all of what we’ve come to expect of AP of late:  Blame for everything wrong in the world lies at the feet of George W. Bush, and Obama is the beginning of everything right:

CAIRO, Egypt – President Barack Obama chose an Arabic-language satellite TV network for his first formal television interview as president, delivering a message Tuesday to the Muslim world that “Americans are not your enemy.”

The interview taped Monday underscored Obama’s commitment to repair relations with the Muslim world that have suffered under the previous administration.

As I recall it, relations suffered under the previous administration because a group of guys from the Muslim world killed over 3,000 of us and would have taken out our president if it weren’t for a couple of our guys yelling, “Let’s roll!”

But no, to AP the problems all lay on Bush, even as they tried to push Obama’s choice to go on Al-Arabia as breakthrough while acknowledging that Bush had gone there before:

During his presidency, former President George W. Bush gave several interviews to Al-Arabiya but the wars he launched in Iraq and Afghanistan prompted a massive backlash against the U.S. in the Muslim world.

Again, no reference to the base cause of all this – Islamists – even though the interviewer opened the door by mentioning 9/11.

For his part, neither did Obama mention 9/11, but I can understand that.  He’s going for breaking new ground, and he’s right not to bring up 9/11 in interview number one.  But neither can he ignore it.  It’s there and all that it stands for – jihad, hatred of the Great Satan – is still very much a part of the Islamic world.

There was an other comment on the Al-Arabia transcript that shows just how difficult this all is:

Please Mr President … make sure you meet with and listen to Hamas.

Yes, the terrorists who hold the Gaza Strip. And the nuke-crazy mullahs in Tehran. And the radical mosque funding Saudis. And the resurgent Hezbullah terrorists in Lebanon. And the Taliban sympathizers in Pakistan. And the terror spawning grounds of Somalia and Yemen. And the school girl beheaders in Indonesia.

And on and on and on it goes. Not symbols, but really dangerous real world stuff.   Obama started symbolically, and more power to him for doing so. I really hope he can capitalize his change image and truly change the Muslim world’s view of us and of jihad.

But when that fails, and the chances of failure are very great, I pray that he doesn’t try to pull a dangerous agreement out of the failure, but rather, recognizes it for what it is and sees the need to make a change of direction we can believe in.

2 Comments »

The latest news tonight from The Times of India has six foreigners dead among the 101 killed by the Mumbai terrorists, and up to 40 Brits and other foreign nationals as hostages. Faced with this,

President-elect Barack Obama on Wednesday condemned the Mumbai attacks and said the United States must work to strengthen ties with India and other nations to “root out and destroy terrorist networks.”

“These coordinated attacks on innocent civilians demonstrate the grave and urgent threat of terrorism,” Obama’s chief national security spokesperson, Brooke Anderson, said in a statement.

“The United States must continue to strengthen our partnerships with India and nations around the world to root out and destroy terrorist networks.”

I’m all for closer ties with India; it’s a must-do.  The problem is, these attacks could well pit India against Pakistan – that’s clearly a strong possibility for the ultimate rationale behind the attacks.  India uncovers ties between the terrorists and Pakistan’s closet jihadist intelligence agency behind the attacks, things heat up, more evidence, more attacks, more heat.

And so it may quickly come down to India and Pakistan looking to Obama and asking, “Who’s side are you on?”

If Obama wants to keep his one macho card, his one rattling saber, his commitment to more war in Afghanistan, he’s going to have to go with Pakistan.  No Pakistan, no route for materiel to Afghanistan.  So working to strengthen ties with India is a nice idea but a dangerous bit of wording that won’t fly far in Islamabad.

No Comments yet »

I

n yesterday’s Sunday Scan, I referenced a Thomas P.M. Barnett article on 12 lessons we should (have?) learned from the war in Iraq, including one I didn’t agree with.

The redirect on Iran was a complete waste of effort.

Due to our strategic tie-down in Iraq and Afghanistan, America can’t stop Iran from getting nuclear unless we go nuclear. We won’t do that, meaning we should have welcomed Iran’s offered help in both locations and not wasted our troops’ lives in the meantime.

I protested that going nuclear is not the only option, and that welcoming Iranian offers of help is a risky business, like accepting large horsey gifts from Trojans Greeks (thanks, Bob). Behind my thinking on the risks of working with Iran is the utter failure of the European initiative to talk Iran out of its nukes. They’ve had five years to convince Ahmedinejad and the Mullahs to behave themselves and play by the most rudimentary of international rules, and have gotten nowhere.

I take that back: They have gotten somewhere, and it’s worse than where they started. The Europeans have been corrupted by the Iranians and are doing foul deeds at their behest – hardly a get tough policy on Iran’s nukes. Here’s what I’m talking about, from Spiegel:

Hoping to accommodate Tehran, [the EU] placed an Iranian dissident group on the EU list of terrorist organizations — and got the bloc’s agriculture ministers to rubber stamp the decision without any debate. Now lawyers from across Europe are accusing the EU of abusing the law.

Europe’s agriculture ministers had been bickering over the usual topics for hours: the reform of agricultural policy, the economic misery of many fishermen, the import of genetically modified varieties of soy, the distribution of fruit and vegetables in schools.

Then they had to deal with a particularly unusual point on the day’s agenda: the European Union’s new list of terrorist organizations. Following an “exhaustive examination,” according to the press release, the ministers voted unanimously in favor of the list.

However, those who took part in that meeting on July 15 recall that the submission was approved silently “without any discussion, without a single word being spoken and without a formal vote.” Most of those present had “no idea” what the document was about. The agriculture ministers could hardly have realized that their silent decision would lead two months later to a huge political stir.

Part of any reasonable Iran strategy is to encourage dissent within Iran, yet here we see the EU shoring up the corrupt and dangerous regime, by turning its back on a group that could attack the Mullahs from within – while getting nothing to show for it in return.

How did the EU decide to add the group – the People’s Mujahedin of Iran (PMOI) – to the terrorist list? Simple … and foul:

The decision that the agriculture experts made in their meek ignorance had been prepared and formulated by a group that meets in secret. The names of the members of the group is classified as is the location where they meet and the dates of the gatherings. Every six months they update the so-called black list, which currently contains 48 organizations and 46 individuals suspected of terrorist activities. Those on the list can have their accounts frozen, and it is illegal to donate money to them or to support them in any other way. The organizations in practice lose the means to support themselves.

The EU’s handling of the matter – slipping the measure through secretly while proclaiming a public process – shows how dangerous it is to trust the Europeans with sensitive diplomacy when issues of the magnitde of nuclear weapons are in play.

If the Europeans have failed so miserably with Iran, we cannot afford to blame it entirely on the wimpy vicissitudes of the Europeans; we have to also give the Iranians their due: They are set in their policy, they are unwavering; they don’t feel threatened; they are threatening. Are these the sorts of folks we should accept offers from?

2 Comments »

S

arah Palin’s stumbling response to Charles Gibson’s question, “Do you support the Bush Doctrine?” was the low point of last night’s interviews. Her posture and voice both went defensive, and she came across, as I noted here and here, as not knowing the answer.

On second thought, though, the problem may easily have been that she didn’t know which answer, not the answer. That’s because the Bush Doctrine is actually many doctrines:

• The right of the United States to treat countries that harbor terrorists as terrorists (the justification for the Afghanistan invasion)
• The policy of preventive war, or the right of the United States to depose foreign regimes that represent an immediate threat (the justification for the Iraq invasion)
• The policy of supporting democracy in the Middle East and around the world in order to squelch terrorism
• A willingness to pursue U.S. military interests unilaterally. (A hat-tip to Wikipedia, for compiling the points so succinctly.)

Let’s consider the initial substantive answer she provided:

I believe that what President Bush has attempted to do is rid this world of Islamic extremism, terrorists who are hell-bent on destroying our nation.

That is a credible endorsement of each of the four elements of the Bush Doctrine, all of which are directed at ridding the world of Islamic extremism, but because it was not presented as, “Yes, I endorse the doctrines because …” it has not been viewed as credible.

In my company’s media training programs, we teach executives and politicians that if they don’t understand the question, to ask for clarification, and we counsel not to guess at answers. Palin guessed at an answer last night and it came across – perhaps rightly, perhaps wrongly – that she didn’t know what the Bush Doctrine is. That’s hardly an endorsement of her foreign policy prowess – but why all the angst? There are only so many hours in a governor’s day, and they’re filled with local, state and federal issues, not foreign issues. It’s been the same with great foreign policy presidents (Reagan) and disastrous ones (Carter).

Her better response would have been, “Which Bush doctrine are you asking about, Charlie? I support them all generally, but I want to answer your specific question.” That would have set Gibson back in his chair and would have put a stop to all the prattle (here, here, here, etc.) this morning.

Update:  Charles Krauthammer – who coined the term “Bush Doctrine” – agrees. (Thanks, Christa)

5 Comments »

T

he other CSM has a chilly little story today rolling out the five foreign policy principles of Russia’s president, Vladamir Putin Dmitry Medvedev. Christian Scientists may have the patience to wade through the entire story to ferret out the five principles, but I know you, so:

1. Protect Russians wherever they are. What’s a Russian? Just someone with a spanking new Russian passport, like those the Russians are handing out like cheap vodka shots in Crimea, which is independent but happens to host an important Russian naval base?
2. Attend to Russia’s “privileged interests” – oil, gas, warm water ports – in Moscow’s area of influence, which we can translate as areas that used to be in the USSR but are not in Russia today.
3. Make sure the world is not “unipolar.” Hmm. That one kinda hits close to home. I’d sure like to see the tactics they’ve penciled out in support of that goal.
4. Do not be isolated. Russian boots tromping through Georgia, Russian policy chiefs controlling the flow of much of Europe’s energy resources – yeah, that’s keeping Russia out from behind its walls.
5. Oh, and in case you’re getting a little hot and bothered by now, let’s wrap up with principle #5: Comply with international law. Ahhh! All better!

The other CSM casts this news rightly:

Is this Cold War II? It’s more like a throwback to the 19th century, when great powers carved up the world like a pot roast.

That was an era in which Czarist Russia expanded into the Caucasus, Central Asia, and across Siberia. When America told Europe “hands off” in Latin America. When Europe’s monarchies sliced up colonies in Africa and Asia.

That era is over, or so the world thought.

No Comments yet »

B

ill’s stewing. He wanted to give a big, broad speech (not a big broad speech, if you catch the difference), but the Obama camp has told him to stick to the theme of the evening, “Securing America’s Future,” and talk about foreign policy. Sez Politico:

While Bill Clinton remains angry about how he and his wife were treated by both Obama backers and the news media — and he is particularly resentful at what he sees as unfair allegations that he tried to exploit racial divisions for political advantage — he has made the decision that he will put forward a positive face for Obama’s benefit at Denver.

It is harder to do that when the topic is foreign policy and national security, which lends itself to restrained, rather than boisterous, partisan rhetoric.

“That puts him in a terrible bind, because you can’t give a ringing endorsement when you’re talking about foreign policy,” a longtime Clinton adviser said.

Help me understand this. Isn’t all the Bushitler, WMD, War on Terror in quotes stuff nothing if not boisterous, partisan rhetoric? What’s the bind? Any speaker capable of even a minor barn-burner, and Clinton is much more than that, should be able to get the Dem convention to break into zombie-like chants of “Obama! Obama! Obama!” just by mentioning GOP foreign policy. You know, taking on terrorism, promoting democracy, all that stuff the Dems hate so.

But the same former Clinton adviser quoted above did say something I find utterly above reproach:

“Obviously, the hard thing to talk about with Obama is commander in chief, of all his many talents.”

Yup. Because he has no commander in chief talents. Teleprompter-reader in chief. Looking pretty in chief. Saying a lot of words that say nothing in chief. But not commander in chief?  No, the Clinton guys have that right; no way.

No Comments yet »

J

ohn McCain is enjoying his foreign policy superiority over a confused and halting Barack Obama this week, but he’s in serious danger of overplaying his Georgia card and should back off until he gets his mouth right.

The biggest risk of too aggressive a stand against Russia is that a war-weary American electorate will fear McCain will drag them into another conflict, while the doves of peace that dreamily circle around the haloed head of Obama signal peace, brothers and sisters. Yet McCain’s speeches yesterday, replicated in today’s WSJ op/ed, look too much like a scattering of the doves. Are we in fact all Georgians, as McCain says? Or do we wish this little nowhere rough-edged democracy would just leave us alone? Quite a lot the latter; a bit of a stretch on the former.

McCain needs to be careful here, vetting his comments so they appear deeply knowledgeable on foreign policy, tough enough to stand up to trouble, but wise enough to read the truth in every situation he faces. The lead of his op/ed totally blew that image out:

For anyone who thought that stark international aggression was a thing of the past, the last week must have come as a startling wake-up call.

This most unfortunate sentence got an immediate drubbing down from the Left. Yglesias is as good as any for this illustration:

We all recall, of course, John McCain’s outrage when the United States violated this rule back in 2003.

Rule: Don’t hand-feed laughers to the left. Words are important, and here the important words “against democratic nations” are missing. Iraq was the disposition of a tyrant who was killing his people after years of international diplomatic efforts to bring about peaceful change; Georgia was a crushing military attack against a (weak and flawed) democracy carried out as a surprise without so much as a head fake to the diplomats. But McCain ineptly let the left focus on this canard instead of getting to the meat of the issue: How do the candidates respond to international crises?

Later in the op/ed he did articulate the thought correctly:

The world has learned at great cost the price of allowing aggression against free nations to go unchecked. (emphasis added)

McCain may be a maverick, but he still needs a message deck that tames the maverick enough so he doesn’t throw away his strength now or cause international incidents later, should he win in November. The conservative blogs are full of praise for McCain on all things Georgian. I started there, but I’m afraid McCain is playing his Georgia card more worrisomely with each passing day.

No Comments yet »

I

t is, in the end, all Bush’s fault.

Isn’t it always? 9/11, Iraq, gas prices, and now the Russian invasion of Georgia, to the Bush-hating left, there is a common cause for all this, and its middle initial is W. Here’s the position, as espoused by Fred Kaplan in Slate:

Regardless of what happens next, it is worth asking what the Bush people were thinking when they egged on Mikheil Saakashvili, Georgia’s young, Western-educated president, to apply for NATO membership, send 2,000 of his troops to Iraq as a full-fledged U.S. ally, and receive tactical training and weapons from our military. Did they really think Putin would sit by and see another border state (and former province of the Russian empire) slip away to the West? If they thought that Putin might not, what did they plan to do about it, and how firmly did they warn Saakashvili not to get too brash or provoke an outburst?

As always, there’s no effort to look at the other side. What would have happened if we hadn’t been friendly to Georgia? If we hadn’t offered military training and accepted their involvement in Iraq? If we hadn’t pushed to expand NATO to the former Russian republics slave states? My hunch: Putin’s KGB-based Russia would have attacked Georgia one way or the other.

But to the Left, the position is to see a crisis, dredge up a one-dimensional recitation of Bush policies and blame all the evil on Bush. And from that base assumption, everything the Bush administration does must be just as evil. More Kaplan:

Vice President Dick Cheney reportedly called Saakashvili on Sunday to assure him that “Russian aggression must not go unanswered.” We should all be interested to know what answer he is preparing or whether he was just dangling the Georgians on another few inches of string. The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Zalmay Khalilzad, told the Security Council, “This is completely unacceptable and crosses a line.” Talk like that demands action. What’s the plan, and how does he hope to get the Security Council—on which Russia has veto power—to approve it?

Again, what is the alternative? Would Kaplan prefer Cheney call Saakashvili and tell him, “Tough luck. We’re OK with Putin sending tanks into free democracies?” Is Khalilzad supposed to tell the UN no line was crossed when Russian troops poured over the borderline? That lifts appeasement to the level of acceptance and support and no American president, not even Jimmy Carter, has ever taken such a position.

Of course Russia must answer for its aggression because of course they crossed the line. Kaplan is right that there is no military solution; heck, the military options (short of nuclear holocaust) were gone as soon as Russian air strikes started because getting a military force into Georgia is a logistical nightmare – but not as bad as the idea of fighting Russian troops on the edge of the Russian nation.

Like many of us, when it comes to Georgia, I’ve gone a vaguely supportive, lightly educated follower of Saakashvili’s democratic revolution to a fairly well read interested party, but I’m hardly a policy wonk on the issues. With that introduction, here’s what I think:

We’re on the right side. Standing up for democracies is something we just have to do, even if they’re poorly functioning. We never supported Georgia to goad Russia; we did it to encourage more democracy in the region, including in Russia.

We should continue to push for NATO expansion. Kaplan says that if Georgia were in NATO, we’d be in a shooting war with Russia now, but that’s ridiculous. If Georgia were in NATO it’s much more likely Russian troops would not be in Georgia now. So, with the knowledge that we no longer need to or should support Europe with the sort of military actions that were anticipated when NATO was formed following WWII, we should continue expansive military alliances there, just as we promote economic alliances.

We should make Russia pay, literally, for rebuilding. They’ve got the money and if we force the issue at the U.N., they’re likely to be in the unfortunate position of having to veto the action, which would be a PR disaster for them.

We should work with nations dependent on energy from the trans-Georgia pipelines to secure broad legal protections for Georgia’s control over them, not Russia’s.

We should look to the other former Soviet vassal states and see what sort of support we can give them. Some are feeling very vulnerable today, and the creation of a united front of indignant outrage that includes these states and many, many others will send a message even to Russia.

We should not spill any blood over Georgia. Our support should be broad and deep but there’s no point in sending troops into anywhere we can’t sustain them.

Russia should be dis-invited from the G8 until they learn how to behave like a civilized nation.

We should pass quite a lot of anti-Russian legislation at the federal and state level. Public portfolios should be cleansed of any Russian filth. The Air Force tanker contract should to to Boeing because it’s the only bidder that doesn’t have partial Russian ownership. No banking or trade favors allowed.

And we should pass a law that no American president can ever again look a Russian president in the eye, see his soul and deem him trustworthy. That was, in fact, a very big mistake by George W. Bush

1 Comment »

W

hat’s at stake in Georgia today, as Russia seeks to secure its military advances? Let’s ask the country’s president, Mikheil Saakashvili.

Most obviously, the future of my country is at stake. The people of Georgia have spoken with a loud and clear voice: They see their future in Europe. Georgia is an ancient European nation, tied to Europe by culture, civilization and values. In January, three in four Georgians voted in a referendum to support membership in NATO. These aims are not negotiable; now, we are paying the price for our democratic ambitions.

Second, Russia’s future is at stake. Can a Russia that wages aggressive war on its neighbors be a partner for Europe? It is clear that Russia’s current leadership is bent on restoring a neocolonial form of control over the entire space once governed by Moscow.

Saakashvili paints a story in his WSJ op/ed today of a compromise-seeking Georgia, an aggressively expansive Russia and a Europe that cried for negotiations and diplomacy, but took no overt action. Sound familiar?

Saakashvili was kind to us because he was writing in the WSJ to American opinion leaders, but he could have included us with the Europeans. President Bush has visited Georgia and praised it as a showcase of how democracy can bloom where totalitarianism once reigned. (Of course, that vision was tainted by Saakashvili’s heavy-handed treatment of opposition in Georgia’s last election.) We’ve cast our lot with Georgia, encouraged its participation in NATO, and stood by its president. Now Georgia is turning to us … and not finding much beyond words at this early hour.

The NYT’s focus this a.m., natch, was on the sort of criticism of America Saakashvili avoided.

Georgians around Gori spoke of America plaintively, uncertainly. They were beginning to feel betrayed.

“Tell your government,” said a man named Truber, fresh from the side of the Tbilisi hospital bed where his son was being treated for combat injuries. “If you had said something stronger, we would not be in this.”

He had not slept for three days, and he was angry — at himself, at Georgia, but mainly at the United States. “If you want to help, you have to help the end,” he said.

What can we do? What should we do? It’s a question that will play itself out in our election. Today, both candidates have pretty much the same position (after Obama ratcheted up his rhetoric from his early bland mumble-mouth position – see Gateway Pundit for more).

If we take this back to the Cold War, where we fought Soviet expansionism through proxies, which candidate would be more likely to provide Georgia with arms and training? McCain, of course. If it’s to be a diplomatic war, which candidate would be more likely to be able to put together an international condemnation of Russia with sufficient teeth to influence Moscow?

Good question. Obama is the international darling so the answer should clearly be him. But would his appointments be the ones that could carry out such a task? So far, it looks like Obama foreign policy will be that of Madeline Albright, which doesn’t bode well. McCain has the pugnaciousness to bare some teeth and has been drawing on a kitchen cabinet of foreign policy pros from Kissinger to Kristol that in my opinion are much better suited for this sort of affair.

Lots of questions … but one’s already being answered: The American left is going to duck the issue. Tigerhawk did the digging:

Well, as of this morning, you can find no mention of the war on A.N.S.W.E.R.’s home page. The group is addressing many other pressing matters, but apparently not the unremitting attack on Georgia. Code Pink? Nyet. Democracy Now!, which is a left-wing media group, has lots of news about American wars on its web page but nothing about Russia or Georgia. Nothing from the comrades at Peace Action. Stop the War Coalition? What war? You can search the home pages of left-wing groups until the cows come home and not find anything on the Russo-Georgia war.

For its part, Daily Kos poses a survey question this morning. No, not about Russia and Georgia, but about how the summer weather’s been this year.

1 Comment »

MSM Still Blowing Off Edwards Love Child Story

I

just ran a Nexis search of newspapers and newswires over the last week for “John AND Edwards AND Enquirer” and it’s obvious that the MSM are not the least bit interested in reporting on John Edwards’ affair while his wife fights cancer.

Here’s the Nexis tally for Edwards: Six stories total, appearing in the Miami Herald, SF Wrongicle, Boston Herald, The Columbian in Wash. state, the Kansas City Star and the Philly Daily News. No major papers at all, no newswires. This after the story has now been verified by Fox News.

Meanwhile, the foreign press is doing the job journalists are supposed to do. Here’s the stodgy London Sunday Times:

Sleaze scuppers Democrat golden boy

Gotcha: Senator John Edwards, whose wife has cancer, has been caught in a sex scandal that ends his vice-presidential hopes

SCRATCH John Edwards off the list of potential vice-presidential candidates. The former White House contender, who had been hoping to get the nod from Barack Obama, is in the midst of a full-blown sex scandal.

Every supermarket shopper knows that the preternaturally youthful former senator for North Carolina may have fathered a love child with a film-maker while Elizabeth, his saintly wife, is dying of cancer. There are sensational new details on the National Enquirer website, although most of the media have done their best to ignore them.

The tabloid magazine cornered Edwards, 55, leaving a Los Angeles hotel where Rielle Hunter, his alleged mistress, and her baby were staying, at 2.40am last Tuesday. He ran down a hallway and dived into the men’s bathroom. A hotel security guard confirmed the encounter. “His face just went totally white,” the guard said.

The story has been bubbling away for months, but so far there has been not a word about it in the mainstream newspapers, even though Edwards was John Kerry’s running mate in 2004 and has been tipped for a prominent job in an Obama administration – if not vice-president, then attorney-general or antipoverty tsar. (Read more here)

See, it’s not that hard to report this story … if you’re not an American newspaper in the pocket of the DNC.
Continue Reading »

No Comments yet »