Newshounds: Hannity v. Clark on Iraq War Problems

Since Stephanie Miller just did a 15-minute segement on Wes Clark's appearance on Hannity & Colmes last night, I thought I'd post this here:

As I have written before, Sean Hannity is a one trick pony who "debates" every political issue by blaming and attacking Democrats, preferably with gotcha questions. Last night, in response to Rep. John Murtha's call to begin the immediate withdrawal of troops from Iraq, Hannity responded by blaming and attacking harder but with the same old trick questions. Unfortunately for Hannity, Gen. Wesley Clark, who knows a thing or two about fighting, easily disarmed Hannity's bluster with reason and common sense.

Hannity started off in a fury and on his high horse. "You know, General, I've got to tell you something. I have had it with members of your party undermining our troops, undermining our commander in chief while we're at war, calling our commander in chief a liar, saying that he hyped, saying that he misled. They have done all of this without any evidence or proof."

Clark interrupted him right away to say that there is plenty of proof.

Hannity started yelling and jabbing his finger, "You want to call the President a liar?"

Clark remained cool and said that it's time "to get down to the facts on this... Let's stop the labelling... and go to the facts." He calmly recited that Saddam Hussein was not part of 9/11, he did not have nuclear weapons and "Dick Cheney and the Administration hyped the connection between Hussein and 9/11 and his weapons capabilities."

Rather than defend Bush or Cheney, Hannity went back to attacking Democrats. Hannity was so overcome with emotion, he forgot to put on his sincere, concerned look with the squinted eyes (as if he's contemplating the great beyond) and the slanted head. He started yelling that John Kerry, Hillary Clinton and Bill Clinton said the same thing. As usual, the ever-aggrieved Hannity claimed the name-calling is coming from the other side. Then he demanded that Clark go with him to call on Democrats and Republicans to see if they agree with John Murtha.

Clark calmly answered that the US "went to a war it didn't have to fight."

Hannity interrupted to shout, "Tell that to Hillary and John Kerry, who you voted for."

"We went there because the intelligence was cherry-picked and given to the Congress and the American people were fed hyped-up information."

When it was Alan Colmes' turn, he told the other guest, Bill Bennett, that "It's not accurate, it's not fair to compare what the Administration knew and what these Democrats said based on different information." Bennett accused Colmes of getting his information from "left-wing blogs" (Colmes said it came from Knight-Ridder) and insisted that the only reason Democrats didn't get the same intelligence is because they didn't do enough of their homework. Comment: Just a night or so ago, Colmes played a clip of Republican Senator Pat Roberts acknowledging that senators do not have the same access to intelligence as the president.

Bennett claimed it's important to know if Democrats agree with Murtha because Democrats "smell blood." Always concerned with other people's morals, Bennett thought it important to discover if the Democrats think it's worth it to "lose Iraq" for "a political victory."

Comment: Hannity and Bennett, a FOX News contributor and a radio show host, must know what the San Francisco Chronicle reported, that, "Murtha's outspoken stand" is shared "with only a minority of House Democrats." So their demands that other Democrats announce their position is phony posturing for the sake of denigration. Because they also know, as the Chronicle said in the same sentence, that Murtha's stance is an indication of "the growing discontent within Congress over the war's progress."

Clark jumped in and said, "I'll tell you who's with John Murtha and it's the American public... The real issue is this: We're in Iraq now. We've got to put the right policies in place... To succeed in Iraq, you've got to deal with Iraq's neighbors - Syria and Iran."

Hannity interrupted again. "How can we do it when we have Democrats undermining..." His fury growing, Hannity jabbed his finger at Clark and asked if John Kerry hyped, Hillary Clinton hyped, "Did all your liberal friends hype? Or was just George Bush hyping?"

Clark tried to answer but Hannity kept baiting him and interrupting about "the hype." Finally, Clark paused and said, "Here's the hype. When Cheney said, in 2002, that Saddam was about to get a nuclear weapon, that's hype... I think Dick Cheney owes the American people an explanation."

Hannity peevishly said, "So does Hillary."

Comment: While Hannity is trying to blame the Democrats for changing their stance on Iraq, he seems to have conveniently overlooked Dick Cheney's change of heart. As the Center for American Progress reports on its blog,

In an interview with the British Broadcasting Corporation in 1992, Cheney said: “If we’d gone to Baghdad and got rid of Saddam Hussein — assuming we could have found him — we’d have had to put a lot of forces in and run him to ground someplace…Then you’ve got to put a new government in his place, and then you’re faced with the question of what kind of government are you going to establish in Iraq? Is it going to be a Kurdish government, or a Shia government or a Sunni government?” Mr. Cheney continued. “How many forces are you going to have to leave there to keep it propped up, how many casualties are you going to take through the course of this operation?”

http://www.newshounds.us/2005/11/18/sean_hannity_tries_to_blame_democrats_for_iraq_war_problems.php#more

Usually after an appearance like this, WesPAC posts the full transcript, so check it out later today:

www.securingamerica.com

Yelling. Going off-topic, accusing Democrats, ignoring the facts...there's not much to him. Losing in smarts to your average wind-up toy.

:puke: :puke: :puke:

sean is bought and paid for by the right wing, how does it feel to be a kept man?????

with far tougher guys than little piss-ant sean. sean thinks he`s a tough guy but let him go up against some of those serb bastards clark faced..

When then 3-star Clark wore down the murderer Milosevic. Not a final solution--these things seldom are--it took a war in Kosovo to bring Milosvic to justice. But in 10 years of keeping the peace in Bosnia, not a single US serviceman or woman has died in the effort.

Theres's a commemoration event yesterday and today in Dayton. Getting a lot of attention in the Bosnian press, they are so happy to be out from under the tyrant's fist. Clark is the keynote speaker at the dinner tonite.

gonna say before he sez it! O'Reilly's playing the same tune these days.

i'm happy to say i've never watched that show ...

i very much appreciated Clark's statement that you included: Clark remained cool and said that it's time "to get down to the facts on this... Let's stop the labelling... and go to the facts."

this is not just a disease of the demented right-wing; it's a disease seen far too often right here on DU ... Clark's call for substance over rhetoric reminded me of a statement i made yesterday ...

yesterday i posted a thread (http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x2256861) challenging those supporting the idea that we should remain in Iraq for another year or more to make their case ... in that thread, i wrote:

"you want to make a case for not leaving Iraq now then stop the damned name calling and make your case"

how many showed up to defend this position????? zero ...

they're happy to pile on and criticize those who disagree with their candidate ... they have a whole arsenal of phrases: fuckwads, lefty freepers, left-wing extremists, Kerry haters, bashers, circular firing squads etc ...

this is their technique ... they organize; they insult; they pile on ... and then they accuse those who criticize as the ones hurting the Party and helping bush ...

BUT THEY JUST DON'T SEEM TO WANT TO DISCUSS THE ISSUES ... NOT ONE SUPPORTER OF THIS POLICY RESPONDED ... NOT ONE ...

it's too bad this type of political operative abuse passes for discourse in a discussion forum ...

Your subject line put me off, I guess. It just seemed like one more inflammatory rant I didn't need to read. I didn't notice you were the author or maybe I would have looked. I know your posts are usually thoughtful, informative, and well reasoned, even when we disagree.

But honestly, I don't know what still needs to be said on the subject. I think almost all of us agree we're only making it worse by being there. Some of us think it will get a LOT worse when we leave--bad enough we might even be forced to go back in, assuming that's even politically feasible. And some of us think that given the right strategy, it MIGHT be possible to get out without the carnage we fear.

But whatever we think, the Bushies aren't listening to us, and they're not about to start anytime soon. Isn't it better to figure out how to get them the hell out of office, and out of control of Congress? THEN maybe we can actually influence how and when we leave Iraq. Because I don't see any Democrats, save maybe Lieberman and I'm not sure about him, who don't want us out as soon as possible.

it's interesting you chose not to open that thread ... i very intentionally avoided mentioning Kerry by name in the title (and i think in the thread as well) because i wanted the focus to be on the policy disagreement within the Party rather than getting into a People Magazine personality debate about Kerry ...

i just wrote in another thread that subject lines like: "Kerry's position on Iraq totally sucks" would have gotten all kinds of responses .. but i wanted the focus to be on the policy ... i raised very specific challenges to those supporting the position ... i wasn't "bashing" Democrats; my goal was to challenge those supporting the position of Kerry and other Senate Dems to defend their thinking ... zero responses ... it kind of seems like the only way to stimulate discussion here is to directly criticize the personalities by name rather than discussing their underlying positions on the issues ... it's really too bad ...

and i don't at all agree with your statement that no further discussion is required on the issue ... in fact, i think it's almost tragic that you believe that ... i think this war is killing our country ... really killing it ... we can't just focus on politics and elections ... we have to help build a consensus in the country to stop the war ... educating and energizing the American people is a very real task; we shouldn't just "wait til we're in power" to take action ...

also, we have a very real, heartfelt divide on the war within the Party ... we can't just say "let's all just get along" ... as Kerry said today, we need an open debate on the issue ... it's healthy ... unfortunately, too much that passes for debate on DU is not debate at all ... we don't often get beyond the "Kerry is great; Kerry sucks" level of discourse ...

finally, i wanted to thank you for your kind words ... they really are appreciated ... unfortunately, there are many DU'ers who don't seem to agree with you ...

Is that I can't think of anything I need to say on the subject anymore. I've posted at least a dozen times about why I think we should not pull out immediately. Maybe I'm just tired of the discussion. I don't think it's something we can ever agree on.

You make a good point about needing to educate and energize the American people. But I'm not sure we gain that by thrashing the subject around here. Nor do I think we need to be in agreement to accomplish that. At least, not from my position anyway. Maybe if your goal is to have them all demand we get out asap, then more education is necessary. All but the unreachable hard-core right is starting to see for themselves how screwed up it all is and that BushCo's got some serious 'spainin' to do.

Btw, I assume you mean Clark and not Kerry in your post. Or maybe I misunderstand your point. If you had posted "Kerry sucks" I would have avoided your thread like the plague--I can't stand the threads that bash other Democrats. If it had been "Clark sucks" I would have grudgingly gone in, feeling an obligation to defend him.

first, the "Kerry sucks" reference was just a reference to a post i had made in another thread ... i didn't intend it here to address your specific allegiance to Clark ... nor do i post threads that use titles like that anyway ...

again, i disagree that "it's all been said" on Iraq ... we had some extremely eloquent remarks from Congressman Murtha yesterday that made an articulate case, whether one agrees with him or not, for why he thinks we should withdraw immediately ... i think his points are worth knowing about and i think they're worth discussing ...

we may indeed have discussed the issue a million times but most don't really discuss the issue at all ... you get a press release about a statement Kerry made on Iraq ... then you get a bunch of "i wouldn't vote for that jerk after he conceded the election" ... then you get "i'm sick of all the bashers ... DU is just a circular firing squad" ...

and i'm left wondering why i couldn't get a simple answer to my initial question about why Kerry thinks we have a right to remain in Iraq if 80% of the Iraqi people want us to leave ...

you're right; it's all been discussed a million times ... and it hasn't really been discussed at all ...

finally, i believe Democrats should be working to further "democratize" the Party ... many of us do not feel that our views are being represented ... the Party should not just bury its head in the sand ... discussions and negotiations on the Party's positions better end up representing, at least to some degree, the views of each and every Democrat ... right now, in my view, a majority wants out of Iraq ASAP ... i've seen a recent CBS poll that said the number was somewhere around 70% ...

in the end, differences will remain ... but in the end, if we haven't done all we can to reconcile our differences and bring as many people on board as possible, we're not serving the country; we're not serving the Party and we're not serving the best interests of our democratic processes ... what we're doing now is NOT OK ... something has to change ...

Just not his conclusion. He leaves out the points that argue against his position. Which is fine. Either they're not as important to him or he doesn't think they're true. What I don't see is a single of his points that hasn't been brought up hundreds of times here at DU, and countered with other points almost as many.

Regardless, I'm glad he stood up like he did and I think it will help our common cause. ALL of us want to get out of Iraq with as little loss of life as possible. That's what matters, and where our consensus lies imo. And as I posted elsewhere, I personally believe his statement was "strategic and coordinated" with others among the Democratic leadership. Maybe I'm giving them all much more credit than I should.

But concerning our own disagreements, let me ask you something. Is there anything that you could envision happening that would lead you to change your mind that maybe we should stay longer? Or that we should take the political position that we should stay longer? If not, what room is there to compromise on that point? Better, I think, to work on where we agree. And I am sure there's more we agree on, in relation to where the Repubs are, than on what we disagree.

here's my answer, already written, from an earlier thread:

from this thread: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x2259824

another DU'er: #5. I'm thinking of a compromise that would set benchmarks, but have a definite funding cut off date. The troops could leave earlier-but they would surely be leaving by some date.

welshTerrier2: 6. SUBJECT: a process towards unity ...

well, there you go ...

if the Democratic Party hopes to be united next year, and more importantly if they want to have the support of most Democrats and the American people as well, ideas like the one you proposed need to have a real forum for discussion ...

right now, i think those who supposedly speak for the Party are speaking out of political fear ...

i am very strongly in favor of immediate withdrawal ... if it were up to me, the troops would come home this weekend ...

nevertheless, you put a near-term "date certain" on the table, and i would be more than open to considering the specifics of your proposal ...

too many think that unity will be achieved by telling the anti-war crowd to shut up and just go along ... they expect unity to be achieved without negotiation ... it's nonsense and it isn't going to happen ... if Democrats want to go into next year as a unified party, they better "democratize" the intra-party discussion on Iraq ... if they don't, progress will not be made ... i can be every bit as stubborn as they're being ... it's not necessary and it will hurt all of us ...

You know that it's not possible to put everybody on a plane tomorrow. So you propose to set a deadline, independent of events, where everybody's out. Benchmarks in between, but ultimately a final date.

Personally, I think that if we're gonna set a hard and fast "drop dead date," it might as well be tomorrow (or rather, a date as early as is physically possible). It strikes me a immoral to ask anyone to serve in Iraq a day longer once the decision is made that nothing is worth staying for.

Which goes back to my question(s) which you did not answer. Is there anything that you could envision happening that would lead you to change your mind that maybe we should stay longer? Or that we should take the political position that we should stay longer?

If there were, perhaps it would be possible to assess the odds of those events occurring, what indicators might foretell that they would or would not happen, and courses of action for each possible eventuality. Maybe not at our level of interaction, given the limits of our information, but someone could try.

Ya know, I think we've sort of hi-jacked this thread. We probably ought to drop it, or take it to another. But then, you've already started one (or more?) on the subject. It's just not something I see much point in debating further. You and I have a fundamental disagreement there.

you could clarify your position in this thread:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=132&topic_id=2263098&mesg_id=2263098

and i apologize for not providing a direct answer to the questions you raised ... here are my answers:

Is there anything that you could envision happening that would lead you to change your mind that maybe we should stay longer?

YES ... if i came to believe that the US was not an imperialist country run by powerful, wealthy, corporate interests who are seeking their own commercial gains and truly held the best interests of the American people and the greater community at heart, i would be willing to consider the use of force to achieve certain objectives in Iraq ... if we really were the good guys and our force could be used constructively, with the full consent of the Iraqi people, i would be more than willing to entertain the idea of staying longer.

Or that we should take the political position that we should stay longer?

I'm not exactly sure what this question means ... i assume you're asking me whether i think it would ever be acceptable to stay longer in Iraq, even if i thought the policy was wrong, IF the Democrats could make political gains by doing so ... i hope that's what you meant ... if not, please clarify ...

My answer to this question is: NO ... i would highly value the importance of making political gains ... but i would not endorse an abhorrent, immoral, illegal policy under any circumstances to do so ... the reality is, i ultimately would not even accept the premise of the question ... my view is that the best policies make the best politics ... the goal of politics should not be to get elected; it should be to get elected because you offer the best ideas to make the country better ... furthermore, i believe an overwhelming majority of Americans would love to get out of Iraq NOW ... and this number is growing rapidly ... by the midterms next year, i expect there to be zero tolerance remaining for a "longer stay" ...

As usually, Clark comes through for me. His own man - no need for him to get a DNC clearance to say the right thing.
Such as Rahm Emmanuel or the sainted Kerry.

Once in a while, we need some example too.

I would love to see this! Thanks for posting, TC. :hi:

and showing some leadership (and calling for substance over rhetoric) than I am.

:hi:

TC

posted here

http://securingamerica.com/video/news

for that sack of shit google eyed Bush lover.How awful it must be to be in his shoes at the moment.

To watch Hannity. But he was so hysterical that he looked like a total fool going at Wes. Clark wouldn't get into a screaming match with him and just resolutely kept repeating the facts, which made the shithead even more unhinged.

Hannity stopped just short of putting his fingers in his ears and saying "I can't hear you". Instead he and Bennet talked at the same time as Clark so none of their faithful good hear the truth. At least Clark held his ground and made us proud.

Hannity's favorite questions. It's his "I know you are but what am I?" that he used on Kucinich yesterday.

He's like the kid on the schoolground who gets a really long stick and is whipping it around so nobody can get near him and make him get rid of the stick and fight fair.

Looks like Dick's point of view just twists with whatever wind is blowing him at the time.

Must've been like shooting fish in a barrel for Clark.

Julie

This was two on one.

And thus it has been described: two crazed monkeys and a lion tamer.

General Clark, a Rhodes Scholar has taken four bullets, and faced down a genocidal maniac. What in the hell have Bennett and Hannity ever done?

a lion?

He fought the devil on his own turff and won.