Aw, bless ’em. The BBC must have been so upset by the revelations from former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates indicating that Obama did not have faith in the merit of the administration’s strategy, despite his decision to order a “surge” in troops to the region, that it is buried in the main news portal today! See if you can find it; Hint, it’s below a Schumacher story….
SHUTTING THE GATE…
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Mardell is going to love this. Proof positive that his beloved Obamessiah truly is the reluctant warrior he’s always believed Him to be, forced into action by the ugly warmongering United Statesians who just “want an unapologetically aggressive America storming ahead, out front, leading those who have the guts to follow.”
Hillary’s going to get a boost as well as take a hit from it.
Ha ha ha.
Go to the US Page. What’s the main story?
“Email scandal besets US Republican”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world/us_and_canada/
This is given the most prominent position on the whole page.
You have to go down to para 5 to read that there is no evidence to suggest that he had anything to do with it.
“The documents made public on Wednesday do not suggest that Mr Christie himself had anything to do with the lane closures, but they may contradict his assertions that none of this staff were involved.”
Lower down , and in less prominence, is what should be the main story, the explosive revelations from Robert Gates about the disastrous state of US foreign policy.
Only on the BBC – Now beyond parody.
I forgot to add that for the BBC, the fact that someone may have shut a traffic lane transcends just about every disaster perpetrated by Obama.
Christie is for now the other threat to President Hillary. So of course the BBC will rush to report anything which might harm him.
Just watched a review of Jay Carney’s performance today. White House press corps openly sniggering and smirking at his feeble lies, especially over Gates comprehensive evisceration of the buffoon Biden.
Carney now being hoist on his own petard about press cameras being allowed in to film Obama and Biden having breakfast together.
I thought these events were now only covered by “approved” photographers
The White House responded to the pressure by allowing a couple of unimportant moments to be covered by the press. You have to be pretty paranoid and extremely controlling to think the mainstream media has been out to get the President the whole time. They really do think He’s been getting harshly and unfairly treated by the media since 2009. The comparisons to Nixon and certain dictators keep piling up.
Nero?
There are parallels there, yes. Key differences, though: Valerie Jarrett ain’t no Seneca, and Nero didn’t actually start the fire.
Ah yes! Valerie Jarrett, now there’s a can of worms.
“Valerie Jarrett ain’t no Seneca”. Don’t know if you watched HBO’s “Rome” a few years back, but with her scheming and conniving she’d be a shoe in for the part played by Polly Walker.
Any further similarity between the two is patently absurd.
That’s grossly unfair to Nixon
After all how many people died as a result of Watergate?
How ignorant. Tut tut. Every death in the world from 1968 to 1979 was down to Tricky Dick.
Then Fatcher took over the job.
Has the BBC reported Gates’ revelation that Obama and Hillary both admitted they only opposed the Iraq surge for reasons of campaign politics? If so I haven’t seen/heard it on the BBC.
Really – you should know better by now. You know that will be deemed “Not Newsworthy”
Now the closing of a traffic lane – well that’s altogether something else.
MSNBC skipped that bit, so the BBC doesn’t have to mention it. All you need to know is that Gates was full of praise for the President-in-waiting.
By way of contrast, Fox News quickly reported on the emails revealing political retaliation from Christie’s staff, and even asked how far the apple falls from the tree. The hated Fox News didn’t hide things to protect their pets like the BBC is wont to do.
True – even telling viewers to google the emails.
The BBC insisted that the CRU emails were stolen, declaring a crime before any evidence was known, and tried to tell everyone it was a non-story. But with the Sarah Palin emails, it was open season and they even assigned journalists to comb through them and published extracts.
I invite anyone to compare the time and resources the BBC has spent pursuing their ideological opponents versus those who share their approved thoughts.
“I invite anyone to compare the time and resources the BBC has spent pursuing their ideological opponents versus those who share their approved thoughts.”
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The results would probably be unsurprising. What would also be interesting would be delving into motivations and explanations for such diverse reactions depending on topic.
This may prove trickier as #foiexemption lawyers emerge and senior management suddenly again get astoundingly uncurious and forgetful.
You could almost wind back to the previous Democrat administration for a similar story to Gates’ observation of politics trumping US Security (srangely enough one Gates did not serve under).
In his book Why America Slept, Gerald Posner tells a similar story of Whitehouse meetings on security matters. Security & military personnel were surprised to often find Dee Dee Myers and George Stephanopoulos holding court in these meetings and discussing the issues, more from the persepctive of how they played out in the media as opposed to what it meant for US policy and forces. In one incident one of the people Posner spoke to, recounted how during one such session a security official offered up some analysis only to have the spin doctors look at him like he’d farted in the room, only to then carry on their discussion, with no reference to what had just been offered up by the official.
Polling seemed to be the only thing that mattered under Clinton. According to the same book, Clinton’s polling suggested he only had to look tough rather than actually follow through on it – which probably explains why he took a pass when the Taliban originally offered him Bin Laden.
You’re a twonk, Mardell.
Called it. Mardell is caught in some doublethink, though. He’s on record criticizing the very war decisions Gates is talking about, but now has to let it be known that the President was right to make them, in order to make his beloved Obamessiah look good and play Gates’ opinion as entirely subjective, not to be taken too seriously.
And judging from the excerpts I’ve read, Mardell is as usual telling a little white lie to protect the President. Gates is pretty clear that the President never had any faith in the Afghanistan or Iraq policies. Yet the BBC’s US President editor spins it as losing faith along the way.
Here’s your answer you deceitful BBC journalist, straight from Bob Woodward at the Washington Post:
I don’t know how Mardell can possibly see this as the President having faith initially but losing it along the way. Of course it was for political and image purposes only. He had ObamaCare and His domestic agenda to push in the first 18 months of His reign. Appearing weak on foreign policy and surrendering to Al Qaeda and the Taliban so quickly would have put a severe damper on His domestic efforts. How can the BBC’s astute, world-class, highly experienced political analyst not realize this?
Gates doesn’t give us enough detail, so how can we know what the President was really about? The world may never know, if you believe Mardell. Either he’s lying to himself or he’s lying to us.
Also, I notice he left out the damning admissions from President-in-waiting Hillary. Of course he did. Everything is about Him, not anybody else.
I didn’t even see the BBC cover this; I only saw it in the FT. Damning from Gates; though unsurprising that Obama’s foreign policy is run by politicos and aloof academic staffers.
This morning the BBC announced the release of a man from Guantanamo by a body set up by Obama and how he planned to close Guantanamo. They forgot to mention that he promised to close it when he became president 8 years ago.