Never missing an opportunity to lash out at the Bush administration, the media will report just about anything even remotely critical of President Bush, his policies, or anything else that could possibly make him look bad. I first watched this story on NBC Nightly News on the 12th. Brian Williams and Jim Miklaszewski managed to squeeze two minutes complete with references to torture, pictures of prisoners in Abu Grhaib from the Washington Post, video of soldiers, and president Bush in meetings from about 14 seconds of remarks by Sanchez.
My first thought was simply that if the speech was so harsh, the news would have shown more of it. The headlines around the internet were typical, such as:
- NY Times “Former Top General in Iraq Faults Bush Administration“
- The Moderate Voice “Former Top General Blasts Bush Administration On Iraq“
- Belfast Telegraph “Former US commander criticises Iraq war effort“
- Washington Post “Former Iraq Commander Faults Bush” later changed to “Ex-Commander In Iraq Faults War Strategy“
- MSNBC “Ex-commander of coalition forces in Iraq lambastes ‘failure of leadership’” & “Ex-Iraq forces commander rips U.S. leadership“
So what did Sanchez really say? A lot actually, most of which the media was less than willing to report. For example, the Washington Post creatively dissected the 3,412 word speech, carving out a mere 141 words, arranged in such a way that excedes even Michael Moore’s talent for quote wrangling. That’s a exiguous 4.13% starting 1,501 (44%) words into the speech. I wonder what else he might have had to say in those 3,271 words they left out? Continue reading ‘Sanchez - The Rest of The Speech’
Say what?