Snow Job

[Nbadan]

http://www.newsday.com/media/cartoon/2006-04/23153707.jpg

Snow at CPAC: We didn't create the war in Iraq, We didn't create the war on terror
Max Blumenthal
Published: Thursday March 1, 2007


On the first day of the 34th annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), White House Press Secretary Tony Snow, a former Fox News Channel anchor, made a speech in which he argued that terrorists were to blame for the Global War on Terror, not the United States.

Speaking at the Omni Shoreham Hotel's Regency Ballroom in Washington DC, the presidential advisor said, "We didn't create the war in Iraq. We didn't create the war on terror."

Snow also vowed that the US would "capture terrorists hiding out in their caves and their spider holes, tapping away on keyboards."

The Raw Story (http://www.rawstory.com/news/2007/Snow_We_didnt_create_war_in_0301.html)

What a fucken MORON, BUT CPAC gave him a standing ovation, so what does that say about them?

[BIG IRISH]

BUT CPAC gave him a standing ovation, so what does that say about them?


http://ibdeditorials.com/IMAGES/CARTOONS/toon012307.gif

[whottt]

Who?

[xrayzebra]

Has no spine, you mean like the dimm-o-craps. Pandering to
the left.

Come to think about it, Clintons may be the only one of their
crowd that does have backbone, they will bury you under the
floorboard in a New York minute.

I see where Bill is going to try and bail Billary out with the
black voters.......Hehehehehe.

[boutons_]

The Spokesman Made for Cable

By Dan Froomkin
Special to washingtonpost.com
Friday, March 2, 2007; 1:36 PM

Tony Snow is increasingly being embraced as a rock star in Republican circles -- but his responsibilities as White House press secretary are suffering accordingly.

Snow's glib, confrontational approach to reporters -- rarely giving straight answers to even the simplest and most legitimate questions -- has made him a hero to Bush partisans and a darling of the right-wing media.

But it's becoming increasingly clear that the fears that some journalists had when Snow first came to the job from Fox News last May have been realized.

Not surprisingly, considering his background, Snow seems to treat his encounters with the press more like a cable show than as an opportunity to provide the public with a fuller picture of what's going on inside the White House. His prime goal seems to be to "win the half hour" -- which generally entails out-talking and mocking your opponent, rather than mustering facts and actually staking out a persuasive position.

In a departure from past practice, Snow last year became the first White House press secretary to actively campaign during an election, headlining a slew of fundraisers across the country.

Since then, he has kept on going, speaking at Republican fundraisers in Pennsylvania and North Carolina just last week. (At the Pennsylvania event, he was introduced as a possible future Senate candidate.) And Snow gave a rousing exhortation yesterday to the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington.

All modern White House press secretaries can reasonably be expected to spend a lot of their time trying to spin the facts to make their boss look good. But in his fervor to make his case, Snow sometimes says things that are simply not true.

In the latest example, Max Blumenthal writes for Raw Story that at his speech yesterday to CPAC, Snow insisted: "We didn't create the war in Iraq. We didn't create the war on terror."

( the hidden text here is that dubya and dickhead were obligated, forced to invade Iraq, so they are absolved for Iraq going to Hell. )

One could certainly argue that the 9/11 terrorist attacks demanded an aggressive response and that President Bush's campaign against terror was not a matter of choice. But the war on Iraq was a war of choice if there ever was one. The Iraqis didn't start it.

To say the White House didn't create that war may be a thrilling rhetorical flourish, but it is also a blatant rewriting of history.


I've been chronicling Snow's more egregious behavior in my column.

Among the recent examples: Snow's assertion in a Feb. 6 briefing that "by some calculations" Bush's tax cuts "have paid for themselves and then some." Bush himself has found all sorts of artful ways to imply that his tax cuts have paid for themselves, without exactly saying as much -- because it's simply not true, as even Bush's economic advisers admit. But Snow has no such scruples. (See the "Tax Cuts Don't Pay for Themselves" section of my Feb. 7 column.)

In my Feb. 8 column, (see the section "Snow Makes More Stuff Up") I related Snow's eye-popping claim, in his Feb. 7 briefing, that nuclear development is now championed by Greenpeace -- the environmental organization that, as its Web site makes clear, "has always fought - and will continue to fight - vigorously against nuclear power because it is an unacceptable risk to the environment and to humanity. The only solution is to halt the expansion of all nuclear power, and for the shutdown of existing plants."

Like most of Snow's flights of fancy, those two passed almost without a trace. No further coverage, certainly no retraction -- until last week, at least, when Julie Mason of the Houston Chronicle called attention to that Greenpeace line: "As whoppers go, that was a good one," she wrote.

Then she put it all in context: "White House reporters don't expect much from Snow, which goes part of the way toward explaining why his claim about Greenpeace went largely unremarked.

"It's been less than a year since Snow started the job amid a clamor of hype -- including claims by Snow and others at the White House that he would be in the room for the heavy policy stuff, with a voice and a role to play.

"The former Fox News personality quickly established himself as a glib and energetic adversary for the media, sometimes short on information but strong with a comeback. He learned everyone's name and all their peccadillos.

"These days, whatever honeymoon he had has largely worn off. . . .

"Reporters complain that Snow is frequently unprepared and that he personalizes encounters -- Snow recently told CNN's Ed Henry to 'calm down' during an exchange over White House claims the Iranian government was behind explosives seized in Iraq.

"Most damning, by Washington standards, many reporters covering the White House don't believe Snow has the inner-circle role and the access he was promised."

Snow enjoyed a long period during which the press gave him positive remarks.

As William Powers noted critically in the National Journal in October (subscription required), Howard Kurtz of The Washington Post and Sheryl Gay Stolberg of the New York Times both wrote puff pieces about how Snow had tamed the media within one week alone.

But one of the first signs that Snow's honeymoon might be coming to an end came in December, when Dana Milbank wrote a column for The Washington Post emphasizing another galling habit of Snow's. It's the rhetorical flip side of his penchant for making stuff up: He denies he knows anything at all.

"When Snow took over as White House press secretary earlier this year, reporters found it refreshing that he was willing to admit when he didn't know something," Milbank wrote.

"This has become rather less refreshing as Snow, while claiming access to Bush's sanctum sanctorum, continues to use the phrase -- more than 400 times so far in televised briefings and interviews. Sometimes, it seems more of a tic than a response; usually, it's a brushoff. . . .

"Unsurprisingly, this method has done some damage to briefer-questioner relations. It doesn't help that Snow, though admired for his quick wit, has been lobbing names at his inquisitors. After labeling as 'partisan' a question from NBC's David Gregory last week, Snow accused CBS's Jim Axelrod yesterday of asking a 'loaded' question; the two men exchanged unpleasant looks. Snow further branded a question by Fox's Bret Baier as 'cynical' and one from [CNN's Elaine] Quijano as 'facile.'"

From his very first formal briefing, on May 16, Snow has often put his foot in it. (At that one, he said his reaction to the 2,500th American death in Iraq was that "it's a number" and he used a phrase -- "tar baby" -- that some consider racist.)

And he is frequently combative. As I described in my June 16 column, Snow often demands that reporters define the terms that he himself has just used.

Sometimes, he picks fights over obvious facts. Case in point, at Wednesday's press briefing, he was asked about testimony from Bush's new spy chief that Osama bin Laden is alive in Pakistan and reestablishing training camps. Snow responded by suggesting that bin Laden might not really be the leader of al Qaeda.

While the press corps rarely complains about the press secretary, Snow is due to encounter protesters tonight when he speaks at the Bush Library on the Texas A&M campus on " The Press and the Presidency."

A spokesman for the groups planning the protest, David McWhirter, said in a statement: "Tony Snow on a daily basis provides misinformation and 'spin' that have contributed significantly to the Bush administration's pursuit of the misguided, illegal and immoral war in Iraq."

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WH Press Secretary is ususally "offical liar", but it appears that Snow goes further.

If a Repug/right-winger's lip are moving ....