Analysis...Apologists

This morning's "analysis" between Don Gonyea and Cokie Roberts is a excellent example of how poorly NPR serves its listeners. Gonyea and Roberts are discussing Lebanon and Iraq. Here are some of the most glaring points of misinformation they engage in:

Gonyea states: "The Bush administration'’s approach to the situtation in Lebanon, it is very different from where it was just last week, isn'’t it?"
Roberts responds: "she [Rice] seemed to be taking her time to let Israel have a chance to disable Hezbollah, but since then she'’s been there twice and not able to achieve any kind of real cease fire or any kind of what the administration keeps talking about, sustainable peace....she [Rice] will work with the United Nations for a security council resolution; this is different from that go-it-alone attitude that the United States seemed to be taking at beginning of this conflict...."

• Consider the question from Gonyea--different in what way, shape, or form? The US is still opposing any stop to the agression from Israel. Then with Roberts' response; that she can call the wholesale destruction of infrastructure, villages, and civilians "a chance to disable Hezbollah" is appalling. And then to assert that after providing weeks of stalling that Israel needed for its assault, the approach of Rice seeking a US/Israeli supported UN resolution as being a different is absurd.

On the topic of Iraq Gonyea and Roberts are unbelievable. After Gonyea mentions "significant changes in Iraq" relating to increased US troops there (esp. in Baghdad), Roberts responds, "that becomes a big problem for the President because it makes his goal of a new Middle East, a broader Middle East of peace and democracy seem more elusive…"

• New Middle East? Broader Middle East of peace and democracy? This is material that a Bush speech writer would envy. It represents an absolute acceptance of the claims that the Bush administration (and most memberts of Congress) have put forth to hide the US military grab for resources and power in the Middle East. That a supposedly informed and objective NPR employee can make such biased assertions with no sense of irony is really upseting.

Lastly, in talking about the US policy in Iraq and the its growing unpopularity with voters as evidenced by the possibilty that incumbent Democratic hawk, Senator Lieberman may be defeated, Cokie Roberts arrives at this bizarre conclusion: "This is going to have a very strong effect--not only on Lieberman--but on members running in both parties because any attempt they now see to move away from the base of the party, move to the middle is going to be punished...."

• One could write a disseration on the twisted logic of this one. In Roberts logic, Lieberman's support for illegal wiretaps, illegal detention, suspension of habeus corpus, and illegal wars of invasion represents "a move to the middle"! The middle--God help us.