March 20, 2003

At War With Journalists

Somebody shoot me, please, before I have to listen to more reporters unencumbered by actual brains ask stupid questions and issue inane speculation - and before I have to hear Dan Rather state the plainly obvious as if it were a revelation of God, and then report repeatedly all the things he doesn't know. And then there's the reporterette who just asked Ari Fleischer if President Bush hoped last night's attack on the Iraqi leadership would speed up the completion of the war or make it easier. No, Little Miss Stupid, he hoped it would make the war last longer and be more difficult to win.

And then there's Judy Woodruff. While other networks were explaining how the videotape of Saddam was possibly taped before the airstrike, and might even be of a Saddam lookalike, and there was no confirmation yet of who was or wasn't in that Baghdad bunker and no confirmation yet of whether Saddam was alive, dead, or sunning himself on the coast of Brazil, Woodruff at one point stated that the video showed the attack on the leadership had obviously failed.

No, Judy. It's not obvious. That tape could be one of six things:

1. The real Saddam, taped after the airstrike, and he's alive.
2. The real Saddam, taped before the airstrike, and he's alive.
3. The real Saddam, taped before the airstrike, and he's dead or injured.
4. A Saddam double, taped after the airstrike, and the real Saddam is alive.
5. A Saddam double, taped before the airstrike, and the real Saddam is alive.
6. A Saddam double, taped before the airstrike, and the real Saddam is dead or injured.

Not long after that bit of genius from Ms. Woodruff, she asked a retired general serving as a military "analyst" for CNN the following question regarding the launch of a few Iraqi scuds against Kuwait: Doesn't that show that, contrary what we were led to believe, Iraqi troops in southern Iraq are not demoralized and ready to surrender? The general noted that it was still too early to make that assessment and he expected there would be many who surrendered and some who decide to fight.

Not done yet, Woodruff then asked if missing Saddam in the bunker - she just assumes we missed - proves our intelligence service is a failure. The general replied no, but that intelligence is never perfect. The truth is, we could have been right that Saddam was in the bunker, hit the bunker, and he managed to survive the hit. Or he might have left just before the bombs arrived. Or maybe he was never there, but we vaporized his kids. Neither is an "intelligence failure."

Woodruff, on the other hand, appears to be facing an intelligence failure of her own.