Taliban

Even MSNBC's Brzezinski Shows Doubts About Obama Deal with Terrorists
By Brad Wilmouth | June 3, 2014 | 11:56 AM EDT

On Tuesday's Morning Joe on MSNBC, normally left-leaning co-host Mika Brzezinski repeatedly showed skepticism toward President Obama's decision to release five high-value Taliban prisoners in exchange for the release of hostage Bowe Bergdahl from the Haqqani terrorist group.

In the absence of Joe Scarborough, Brzezinski introduced the show by recounting some of the correspondence involving anti-America and anti-military sentiments between Bergdahl and his parents, suggesting he may have deserted his post before he was captured.

As she turned to guest Al Hunt of Bloomberg View, she posed the question:

Unhinged Ed Schultz Questions Ted Cruz's Patriotism on Prisoner Swap: 'Nothing American'
By Scott Whitlock | June 2, 2014 | 6:07 PM EDT

An furious Ed Schultz on Monday questioned Ted Cruz's patriotism after the Senator spoke out against the prisoner swap deal that involved top Taliban leaders and a U.S. soldier. The Ed Show host played a clip of the Senator wondering, "What does this tell terrorists? That if you catch a U.S. soldier, you can trade that soldier for five terrorists we've gone after?" Schultz spewed, "Ted Cruz has zero credibility. He has zero foreign policy experience. He's a guy from Texas who doesn't have a clue." 

The host then openly questioned Cruz's patriotism, dismissing his remarks: "And it's all pablum, anything to take down the President. There's nothing American about Ted Cruz." [See video below. MP3 audio here.] Earlier in the segment, the anchor praised the deal made by Barack Obama, saying of the terrorists: "We're not prosecuting them. We're not doing Habeus Corpus. We're afraid to bring them to the United States and go through the judicial process."

NBC and CBS Hosts See Prisoner Swap As 'Good Sign' of 'Diplomatic Breakthrough' With Taliban
By Kyle Drennen | June 2, 2014 | 3:44 PM EDT

While all three broadcast networks provided critical coverage of the Obama administration's decision to exchange five Taliban terrorists for American soldier Bowe Bergdahl, Meet the Press host David Gregory and CBS This Morning co-host Norah O'Donnell both attempted to spin the controversial deal as brilliant diplomacy. [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump]

Interviewing Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel on Sunday's Meet the Press, Gregory argued: "This is potentially a good sign if you think about the future of Afghanistan....does this pave the way for perhaps a new round of negotiations with the Taliban directly between the United States and the Taliban about the Taliban's future in running Afghanistan?"

NBC's Lauer Actually Grills Jay Carney: Has White House 'Endangered the Lives of All Americans?'
By Kyle Drennen | June 2, 2014 | 10:43 AM EDT

On Monday, NBC Today co-host Matt Lauer actually held outgoing White House Press Secretary Jay Carney's feet to the fire over the administration releasing five Taliban terrorists from Guantanamo Bay to secure the release Army Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl: "These are guys who are considered at very high risk to launch attacks against the U.S. if they were freed. So has the administration now, though, endangered the lives of all Americans for the safety of one American?" [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump]

Carney argued: "...we believe that this is not a security threat to the United States and that there's sufficient mitigation to be comfortable with the transfer of those detainees to Qatar." Lauer pushed back: "Is this semantics here, Jay? Are we calling it a prisoner swap when, in fact, it is negotiating with terrorists?"

10 Best ‘Lone Survivor’ Takedowns of Liberal Media
By Matt Philbin | January 13, 2014 | 5:01 PM EST

CNN’s Jake Tapper would have done well to read “Lone Survivor,” rather than just seeing the new movie, before interviewing former Navy SEAL Marcus Luttrell last week. If he had, Tapper might have been more careful than to describe the deaths of Luttrell’s SEAL comrades in Afghanistan as “senseless.” And he would have been wary of Luttrell’s contempt for the liberal media.

The film “Lone Survivor, which ” took in $38.5 million at the box office its opening weekend is based on a 2010 book by Luttrell that tells the tragic story of a 2005 operation in which the three other members of Luttrell’s SEAL team, along with 17 other special ops warriors, were killed. The story turned on the team’s agonized decision to turn lose some Afghan goat herders who had stumbled onto its concealed position. As the SEALs had feared, the freed civilians went straight to the Taliban, precipitating the battle.

Per Libs' Book 'Double Down': Obama Told Aides Last Year That He's 'Really Good at Killing People'
By Tom Blumer | November 3, 2013 | 7:39 PM EST

I think we have the winner in the "If a Republican or conservative had said it" media bias category this year, if not this decade.

In the book "Double Down" by liberal journalists Mark Halperin and John Heilemann (reviewed by Peter Hamby at the Washington Post on Friday), President Barack Obama, while discussing drone strikes in 2012, reportedly told aides that he's "really good at killing people." This would have been headline news three seconds after Hamby's review, and Hamby would have headlined it himself instead of casually mentioning it in Paragraph 11. A Google News search on an obvious search string ("really good at Killing people" obama; sorted by date) at 6:45 p.m. returns only 11 items, none of which are establishment press outlets. Michael Kelley at Business Insider, which did not show up among the search items returned, had some interesting thoughts on Obama's alleged remark Saturday evening (bolds are mine throughout this post; Update: important links relating to CIA practices which can only be considered barbaric are in the original):

AP Reporters: Motives of Ft. Hood Shooter Hasan a 'Difficult Question'
By Tom Blumer | August 18, 2013 | 11:02 PM EDT

Two reporters at the Associated Press covering the trial of the alleged (but really confessed) perpetrator of the Ft. Hood massacre still believe there is a "key but difficult question" which needs to be answered: "Why did Maj. Nidal Hasan attack his fellow soldiers in the worst mass shooting ever on a U.S. military base?"

Although the narrative of Nomaan Merchant and Michael Graczyk is couched in the context of what prosecutors will allow themselves to say in the trial itself — after all, the government claims that the murders represent an incident of workplace violence, and therefore not one involving terrorism — the pair's opening, which is what will get most readers' attention, still makes it appear that Hasan's motives remain vague (bolds are mine):

MSNBC's Finney Suggests Bush War on Terror Wasn't About 'Unseen Foes,' Unlike Obama War on Terror
By Andrew Lautz | June 18, 2013 | 5:15 PM EDT

If you need any further proof that the Lean Forward network is all in for the Democratic Party, look no further than the weekend program Disrupt. The newly-minted show is hosted by Karen Finney, frequent MSNBC contributor and former Director of Communications for the Democratic National Committee (DNC).

Finney decided to rewrite history on Sunday, suggesting to guest Heather Hurlburt that NSA surveillance is acceptable under the Obama administration, but was unacceptable under the Bush administration, because fighting a “global war on terror with these unseen foes” is the “new normal.”

MSNBC’s Krystal Ball Gushes Over Obama Speech, Claims the President is 'Reining In His Own Power'
By Andrew Lautz | May 24, 2013 | 3:42 PM EDT

In a way you have to hand it to Krystal Ball. The former Democratic congressional candidate-turned-MSNBC co-host is always hard at work spinning for the Obama administration, come what may. Appearing on Thursday's Politics Nation, the co-host of MSNBC’s The Cycle raved about President Obama’s May 23 national security speech, claiming the president is “reining in his own power,” a “remarkable and incredibly unusual” move.

Ball fawned over the president’s speech to host Al Sharpton, claiming he “put the steps in place” to close the Guantanamo Bay detention facility, before offering this proclamation about Obama’s executive power:

Headline Change at Thrush's Politico Pity Party: From 'Obama: Hey guys, I'm Still Here' to 'Obama: Hey Guys, I'm Still Relevant'
By Tom Blumer | April 30, 2013 | 7:03 PM EDT

The email announcing the supposedly momentous occasion of another column by the Politico's Glenn Thrush arrived in my mailbox with the following headline and subhead: "Obama: Hey guys, I'm still here -- The president's press conference brimmed with frustration and was filled with tantalizing promise."

On clickthrough, I learned that the online website's massagers-in-chief changed those items (but not the underlying URL, which reflects the email) to the following in the published article: "President Obama: I’m still relevant -- Obama finds himself hemmed in by the familiar constraints of partisanship and world events." Thrush's text identifed another problem supposedly hemming Obama in, complete with a slavery analogy: "the shackles of his own commitments." Poor guy; he has to deal with the world as it is, not how he'd like it to be, and those darned things he promised to do to get elected and reelected. Gosh, life is just so unfair, isn't it? Excerpts following Thrush's theme follow the jump (bolds and numbered tags are mine):

New York Times Columnist Maureen Dowd, 'Fabricating' Hypocrite
By Clay Waters | February 19, 2013 | 10:43 AM EST

New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd, "fabricating" hypocrite. Her Sunday column about the lack of veracity in the current crop of award-nominated movies, "The Oscar for Best Fabrication," has some interesting revelations on the true history behind the stories of "Zero Dark Thirty" and "Lincoln."

But Dowd is the last person to credibly comment on the subject, given her own history (item #3) of fabricating quotes, in the form of leaving out vital words from her May 14, 2003 column on President Bush's pursuit of the Taliban – a tale broken on Times Watch. Dowd wrote on Sunday:

NBC Panel Scolds Prince Harry: 'Why Do You Need to Antagonize the Taliban?'
By Kyle Drennen | January 23, 2013 | 5:01 PM EST

During a panel discussion on Wednesday's NBC Today, attorney Star Jones and the network's chief medical editor Nancy Snyderman hyperventilated over Britain's Prince Harry revealing in interviews that he killed Taliban fighters during combat in Afghanistan. Jones fretted: "Why do you need to antagonize the Taliban?" [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump]