Ari Fleischer's bullshit propaganda counter-Scotty piece in the Guardian UK...

[marmar]

:wtf:


I have scars to prove itMy press room successor says the media were soft on Bush in the leadup to war. The opposite is true

Ari Fleischer The Guardian, Thursday June 12 2008

Among the allegations in former White House press secretary Scott McClellan's book is his assertion that the national press corps was "too deferential to the White House", and that the media were "complicit enablers" of President Bush's agenda. The press, he charges, failed to aggressively question the rationale for war. As someone whose duty it was to assume the position of a human piñata every day in the briefing room, I only wish Scott were right.

Liberals have made this charge for years, and prominent reporters have split their verdicts. Critics and journalists have also said they were intimidated after 9/11, and pulled back from tough questions. Katie Couric, who was at NBC in the lead-up to the war, has called it "one of the most embarrassing chapters in American journalism". ABC's Charlie Gibson says journalists did ask hard questions but that the White House didn't answer them. At the risk of agreeing with one of my toughest protagonists in the briefing room, NBC's David Gregory, the press was tough, plenty tough. I have the scars - and the transcripts - to prove it.

Less than five hours after the September 11 attacks, as we flew on Air Force One, the travelling White House press corps asked me if the "president should be satisfied with the performance of the intelligence community". "Has he asked to find out where the gaps were," reporters demanded. "Is he concerned about the fact that this attack of this severity happened with no warnings?"

Even before the fires were out at the World Trade Centre, journalists pointed fingers and raised important questions. On a personal level they were stunned, like everyone else. On a professional level, they dug in.

Over the next few weeks - during the period when critics charge that the press did not do its job and was caught up in the post-9/11 patriotic fervour - I was challenged every day about intelligence mistakes, military plans and whether George Bush was "going soft" on Vladimir Putin to gain his support. During the war in Afghanistan, I was grilled over the conduct of the war itself. I refused to answer questions about operational military details, questions that no White House press secretary should ever answer. I often returned to my office beaten down from the clashes in the briefing room. But those clashes have always been part of the job. ......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/jun/12/georgebush.usa

[Tangerine LaBamba]

1. Who gives a rat's ass what Fleischer says?

He's filth, spewing the old Fuckface cant. Screw him. He's just trying to discredit the man who decided to tell the truth.

They can't handle the truth.