Scrapbook
Scrapbook Douglas Brinkley Reports for Duty Here's how "presidential historian" Douglas Brinkley figures it: Various factual inaccuracies and contradictions in Tour of Duty, his famously...
...And "it's no secret I think he would make a first-rate president...
...So, nah, Brinkley's "not worried" about appearing biased, he tells the New Orleans Times-Picayune in a "wide-ranging interview in the soaring lobby of his Uptown home" published August 27...
...Item the first: The good professor is happy to help the New York Times prepare a front-page August 20 story reporting that the unflattering accounts of John Kerry's Vietnam career being offered by Swift Boat Veterans for Truth are "riddled with inconsistencies...
...I swear in the name of Allah on this issue...
...Also, He's Handsome Speaking of the Times, even THE SCRAPBOOK must admit that sometimes that paper's coverage of politics genuinely is superb...
...But, hell, "I'm not a partisan" or anything, he points out...
...The story's authors find especially useful in this context a previously unpublished interview with Kerry's Vietnam-era commander conducted by "Mr...
...Item the fourth: Mere hours later, a smiling Douglas Brinkley shows up on MSNBC's Hardball, where he reassures host Chris Matthews that John Kerry "showed courage time and again...
...admits...
...Alas, "that's just how gutter politics is played sometimes in America...
...Whereupon a man named Todd East-ham, who plainly lacks the necessary temperament to serve as North American news editor for the Reuters wire service—^but holds that job anyway— emailed Johnson right back, as follows: "What's your plan for parenting & educating all the unwanted children you people want to bring into the world...
...I try to be judicial...
...SUMIDE'I: By Allah, I would like to say something...
...Eastham quit his current job and become a presidential historian...
...If the American mothers, sisters, and wives—and this is a message directed at the American people—if they knew what was happening to their children in Iraq, no woman could sleep in her bed at night, and you would see women and children in the streets of America, down on their knees, throwing dirt on their heads because of what is happening to the American forces in Iraq...
...If this hair touches the human body, within a short period of time the body becomes black or blue, and then there is an explosion in the blood cells in the human body—and the person dies...
...Give me a frigging break, will you...
...INTERVIEWER: According to your personal knowledge, are the casualties in Iraq of the American forces and their allies much greater than what the U.S...
...The Americans place the casualties inside white or black bags, seal them and toss them from a plane into the lake...
...You hadn't heard about that, had you...
...There is also a lake near Al-Sa'diya...
...Whereupon Douglas Johnson, legislative director for the National Right to Life Committee, sent out an email press release highlighting the importance of this fall's presidential election to the future of the Supreme Court and the practice of abortion both...
...I don't have some ax to grind against President Bush...
...The Post explicitly fingers Brinkley as a major source of this confusion...
...Item the fifth: Despite all the gutter politics—a subject Prof...
...Seymour Hersh will want to get on this right away...
...Brinkley since I began raising questions about the inconsistencies/factual errors in his book...
...A judicial activist, you might call him...
...Item the second: Two days later, a much more comprehensive and therefore persuasive story on the same subject appears in the Washington Post, which concludes that "both sides have withheld information from the public record and provided an incomplete, and sometimes inaccurate, picture of what took place" in Vietnam...
...Kerry's authorized biographer, Douglas Brink-ley," and "provided by Mr...
...This is one of the miracles performed in support of Falluja, and the Jihad that took place in Falluja...
...Brinkley to the New York Times...
...And what better proof of his academic objectivity and integrity could there be than that...
...A mass grave was created in a desert area near the Saudi border for the American soldiers killed...
...The American soldiers left, holding the legs of this spider, and I too, in one of the Friday sermons, held up a spider, with all its magnitude, in front of the satellite channels and in front of the world...
...Which makes it all the more unfortunate that Brinkley "did not reply to messages left with his office, publisher and cell phone...
...SUMIDE'I: This is the truth...
...Frigging" Reuters Last Thursday a U.S...
...troops in Falluja and elsewhere...
...district court judge in New York ruled unconstitutional last year's Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act, notwithstanding his finding that the surgical procedure at issue is "gruesome, brutal, barbaric, and uncivilized...
...Item the third: The day after the Post story runs, reporter Michael Dobbs chats with visitors to the paper's website and reveals that "I have not heard back from Prof...
...The first miracle that occurred in Falluja took the form of spiders that appeared in the city—each spider larger than this chair, or about the size of this chair...
...Oh, sorry...
...THE SCRAPBOOK recommends that Mr...
...This spider also had thick black hair...
...Brinkley is familiar with only by dint of his scholarly research, you understand—some people have behaved beautifully, he reminds MSNBC's Deborah Norville two days later (last Thursday...
...The Supreme Court, Judge Richard Casey explained, had left him little latitude to decide otherwise...
...Also, Brinkley cohosted a fundraiser for Kerry in February 2003...
...Iraqi Sheikh Mahdi Saleh Al-Sum-ide'i, identified as a participant in the Battle of Falluja, was interviewed by Syrian television on August 23, as follows: SUMIDE'I: [W]e believe that Allah protects the believers, and indeed, Allah stood beside Falluja, and I'd like to mention some miracles Allah performed in Falluja...
...Plus which, he spoke at a rally for Kerry in New Orleans this past March...
...There have been many— not few—with less experience than Mr...
...INTERVIEWER: Sheik, what do the Americans do with all these casualties...
...But then they go and spoil everything by retracting it...
...In other words, both parties find his work useful...
...the following correction that the Times snuck into last Friday's late final edition: "An article on July 28 about the ascent of Senator John Edwards of North Carolina compared his political experience incorrectly with that of other candidates for national office in American history...
...It is possible that the media does not know about them...
...And, okay, Brinkley's "angry" about "false accusations made against Kerry's military record...
...Some say that there are special mass graves for the mercenary forces the Americans brought to Iraq and no one is allowed to photograph them...
...Sure, he says, "I'm sympathetic to Kerry in his 20s...
...Arachno-terrorism With a nod of thanks to the always invaluable Middle East Media Research Institute and its team of translators, The Scrapbook hereby calls your attention to yet another news story the corporate-controlled establishment media proved too timid to report: the one about how an army of giant, hairy, Islamic spiders has descended on Iraq and is currently slaughtering U.S...
...Who will pay for policing our streets & maintaining the prisons needed to contain them when you, their parents & the system fail them...
...We too followed this issue...
...And "I find it disgusting that people are discussing whether he earned his first Purple Heart____This is a right-wing August takedown on John Kerry, and rumors, accusations, innuendos [are] flying...
...On the other hand, the sycophantic parts of the book are just as frequently cited by Kerry's friends...
...All that money has been earmarked to pay off the Bush deficit...
...For instance: "The New York Times coverage has been superb...
...Scrapbook Douglas Brinkley Reports for Duty Here's how "presidential historian" Douglas Brinkley figures it: Various factual inaccuracies and contradictions in Tour of Duty, his famously sycophantic biography of John Kerry, are frequently cited by opponents of Kerry's presidential campaign...
...Edwards, who is completing his first term in the Senate...
Vol. 9 • September 2004 • No. 48
