Is GOP Senator Kit Bond a Liar or Just Plain Stupid?

Posted by Bob Geiger at 11:01 AM on June 13, 2007.

Lost in the coverage Monday of Senate Republicans blocking the no-confidence vote on Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, was a silly little speech given by Kit Bond (R-MO) about the Iraq war, the Democratic response to the quagmire and, as the Congressional Record labeled it, "Media Bias" in reporting on the American occupation.

Bond covered all the usual Republican bases, saying that Congress should not oppose the war because "it is critical that we not fall into this trap set by al-Qaida" and that withdrawal resolutions tell "the Sunni terror cells and the Shia militias that America's political will is wavering."

Blah, blah, blah.

But this time, Bond, who recently returned from a trip to Iraq that I'm sure included John McCain-like protection and carefully-selected photo opportunities, said that what he's seen in Iraq compared to recent media coverage at home tells him that the horrible liberal press is once again doing its hate-America thing.

"We had the opportunity to meet with the commanding officers and troops on each location," said Bond of his trip. "On the floor of the Senate I spoke to you about witnessing firsthand some of the progress being made. Since I have seen so little coverage of that progress, I think progress bears repeating."

Bond then gave a glowing report of how well things are going on the ground in Iraq.

"The new plan, the counterinsurgency plan, is showing initial signs of progress. Violence in al-Qaim, Haditha, Hit, Ramadi, and Fallujah has dramatically decreased due to local leaders now siding with coalition forces pursuing al-Qaida in Iraq," declared Bond. "In Baghdad, U.S. and Iraqi security forces are clearing and holding some of the most dangerous areas, and sectarian violence has decreased."

So I decided to go to one of the prime sources of liberal media bias, the place where I'm sure we'll see a real slant against how peachy things are going in Iraq -- Stars and Stripes military newspaper.

"Violence outside Baghdad on the rise since ‘surge’ started," proclaims a headline in today's Stars and Stripes, in which they describe a quarterly United Nations report on the situation in Iraq.

“The situation in Iraq remains precarious. Insurgent attacks persist and civilian casualties continue to mount,” Stars and Stripes quotes the report as saying. “While there was a brief lull in the level of sectarian violence early in the reporting period, it now appears that militia forces are resuming their activities, including targeted killings and kidnappings.”

And more:

“The security situation has been further compounded by the increase in car bombs in the vicinity of entry checkpoints” to the Green Zone, the report found.

The report also noted that in Baghdad military casualties have gone up as civilian casualties have gone down.

But this is nothing new from those left-wing naysayers at Stars and Stripes. On Sunday, they ignored how swimmingly things are going in Iraq by publishing a story called "Iraqi district struggles to accommodate families fleeing violence in other parts of the country."

The article talks about 4,000 Iraqi families who have fled civil-war violence in one part of Baghdad for another, cites a U.N. report that says "more than 2 million Iraqis have been displaced inside Iraq" and echoes the belief of international aid groups that what's happening there is "a humanitarian crisis."

Bond, who ironically enough, is the ranking Republican member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, went on to complain about the media bias evident in reporting on an attack that took place in Fallujah at the end of May in which up to 25 people were killed by a suicide bomber near a police recruiting station.

Based on an e-mail he claims to have received from one soldier in Fallujah, the Missouri Republican took both the Baltimore Sun and the Los Angeles Times to task for their coverage saying "A number of media outlets carried these headlines. From the Baltimore Sun, 'Attack on Iraq Police, At Least 20 Dead.' From the Los Angeles Times, 'Twenty Iraqis Die in Suicide Attacks.'"

According to Bond, the e-mail he received said that the soldier had "…checked it out every way he could, but it appears to have been a false report."

"The headlines refer to the failed attack but depicted a dramatically different outcome," said Bond. "There has been no apparent retraction, so thousands upon thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands who saw the headline assumed yet another tragic incident occurred in Fallujah and just lumped that in with all the other bad news that makes up a grim picture of Iraq. And you see why our men and women fighting over there are frustrated."

Eager to see how some other liberal rags handled this coverage, I went over to the Army Times and the Marine Corps Times to see what half-baked, leftist propaganda they would be spewing.

They both had the same headline, from the same Associated Press story on May 31: "Suicide bomb at police recruit station kills 25," and they go on to give the news to their military audience that " A suicide bomber hit a police recruiting center in Fallujah on Thursday, killing at least 25 people and wounding 50, police said."

Neither has issued the retraction that Bond seeks which naturally begs the question: Why do the Army Times and the Marine Corps Times hate the troops?

It should also be noted that those rat-bastard communists at the Wall Street Journal ran the same report and have also failed to take it back, based on Bond's e-mail source.

But Senator Bond ended his speech on Monday with an odd reference that pretty much tells us where his head is at.

"I was able to see an article, a TV story by Ollie North this past Sunday, a war story. He was talking about the good old days in World War II. If there was anything good about the old days in World War II, Hollywood and the media were on the same side as our troops. What a wonderful vestige of the old times."

Freakin' liberal media.

Tagged as: kit bond, senate

Bob Geiger is a political writer, specializing in coverage of the United States Senate for AlterNet and other Progressive web sites. You can reach Bob at geiger.bob@gmail.com and read more from him at BobGeiger.com.