I think Tim misinterprets the CNN newsman's remarks about the U.S. war against Iraq to "get rid of what it was that they had." I'm pretty sure he was not (could not have been) talking about WMD. Rather, he must have been talking about: a functioning economy, running water and electricity, a government, a unified society, and an absence of Islamic fundamentalists and peace from occupation by foreign military forces. From that point of view, Blitzer's "Good point, John" was right on target.

I didn't see the original broadcast in the "Situation Room", but I did see the Roberts piece repackaged and rebroadcast this (Friday) morning with different verbage about the Iraqi sanctions. I believe the phrase used was "... and Iraq endured 11 years of crippling sanctions for weapons they didn't even have". This just seems par for the course at CNN where very little of what gets played the first time is challenged, but may (or may not) get corrected later as they use it for filler during the rest of the 24 hour news cycle.

There's no e-mail address, but if you go to:

http://www.cnn.com/feedback/forms/form4.html?2

You can send Wolfie a comment.

So they corrected the broadcast to make the point that sanctions against Iran might not work because sanctions against Iraq were unsuccessful in getting rid of something that Iraq didn't even have?

Or did they correct the rest of the segment, too? It seems like it would be pretty bad to go from having a good logical argument based on faulty facts to having a completely illogical argument based on good facts. At that point, you're better off admitting that you're stupid or at least dumping the entire segment from being re-run.

Aren't there any rules about news organizations having to report the truth. In medical journals you can adverts that look like a journal article but have to have the word "Advertisement" stamped on every page. Maybe the MSM needs a little stamp "Propangda" when journalists speak, so the audience knows what they're getting.

Oh as an FYI "John Roberts" used to be a dj for a top 40 station (1050 CHUM) in Toronto, so I'm not sure what his training is!!

Blitzer always says that to Jack Cafferty, too.

Listen, the whole Situation Room concept is a pathetic joke, so why expect anything better? Wolf intones daily, as if it's a startling development, even unprecedented, that news and pictures are coming in from around the world all the time. Stunning! OMG, is it, yes, I think it is, it's a news show on a news station. Wow, awesome.

he must have been talking about: a functioning economy, running water and electricity, a government, a unified society, and an absence of Islamic fundamentalists

Oh, you mean the economy that siphoned off billions so Saddam could bribe his French and Russian toadies and build massive palaces for himself? A "unified society" that was held together only at the end of a barrel of Saddam's Sunni minority lording it over the Kurds and Shia? Or how about that wacky Islamic fundamentalist organization Ansar al-Islam (Zarqawi's outfit) that pretty much had the run of northern Iraq? The water didn't run and the electricty was sporadic long before the Iraq war. (See above comment about Saddam's kleptocracy.) We didn't bomb any electrical facilities or water-treatment plants. They'd gone to hell long before we got there.

And, hey, what about those WMDs Saddam used against the Iranians during that war, the same one he used against Kurdish women and children at Halabja, and the ones the Duelfer Report said he was waiting to reconsitute once pansies like you took away the sanctions?

You guys cling so desperately to media-perpetrated fibs and half-truths to justify your head-in-the-sand denial of reality. (And to think you call yourselves the "reality-based community"!)

I think the thing to acknowledge here is that Wolf doesn't have to have his brain on to anchor his little spot ... he just needs to look like it .. or, well, SHOULD look like it.

Its all scripted and besides he can't be expected to add 15 or 20 words to an "exchange" when he has to "go to commercial" and when his little "guest" wasn't prepared to be contradicted AND if he did, he would be hoisting himself right onto the conservative petards as one of the liberal drum bangers who just can't let it go!! ... and. well, that beard is suspicious enough, already!!

So which to sacrifice: His creditials as an overpaid expensively coiffered mouthpiece or a thinking, functioning member of that hallowed and almost extinct sect called "journalists" ... ??? (I bet he has a SAG card)

Oh, come on!!

He likes being on TV everyday, pretending the opinion he's espousing is his very own and, besides, TV's not a very welcoming place for thinkers... (i.e. who remembers Bill Moyers, anyway?)...

.... remember, for those who support Shrub and his friends no matter what, Iraq always HAD weapons-of-mass-destruction, we just never FOUND them. In this light, the CNN exchange makes perfect sense.

You know, I'm thinking we should start calling him Weed. He was a Shrub in 2000, if that. By now, he's a Weed. Where's the Round-up?

No, you have it wrong: Not only did Saddam have WMDs, he actually used them. Defend this, you simpering moron:

http://images.google.com/images?q=halabja&hl=en&lr=&client=safari&rls=en&sa=X&oi=images&ct=title&safe=active

Maybe it's too much to ask, but at what point will the corporate media filter come clean with their conspiracy to goad us into an illegal and immoral war? Must we add journalists to those who should be hanging from lampposts for all those to see how not to fuck with democracy and truth?

this thing I love about right-wing apologists is how they twist reality and then call it truth.

Of *course* Saddam had WMD. I never said he didn't. My point was, that AT THE TIME we invaded the country, his WMD programs were clearly either dead, or close to it. I assumed this in my initial post... a reasonable assumption to everyone except right-wing apologists who took leave of reality a long time ago.

I'm not defending a murderous hound like Saddam, and don't imply that I am. The sanctions we put in place effectively ended his weapons programs, as has been clearly shown by any measure. We didn't need to invade the country and effectively destroy it to end his WMD programs. That had already been accomplished. You pathetic idiot.

If you really believe this war was worth fighting in any way, shape, or form, you are so stupid you're not worth engaging in a meaningful conversation.

There, now we've both had our ad-hominem attack moment, can we be grown-ups now? Moron?