Think Progress

within his divided government as two senior Sunni politicians joined prominent Shiite lawmakers and Cabinet members in criticizing his policies,” the AP reports. “Vice President Tariq al-Hashemi said he wanted to see al-Maliki’s government gone and another ‘understanding’ for a new coalition put in place with guarantees that ensure collective decision making.”

URL: Think Progress

Think Progress

The Washington Post reports, “The bipartisan Iraq Study Group plans to recommend withdrawing nearly all U.S. combat units from Iraq by early 2008 while leaving behind troops to train, advise and support the Iraqis, setting the first goal for a major drawdown of U.S. forces, sources familiar with the proposal said yesterday.”

URL: Think Progress

Think Progress

Media Matters: “On the same day that President Bush said, ‘We’re going to stay in Iraq to get the job done,’ MSNBC correspondent Jeannie Ohm described the reported forthcoming recommendation by the Iraq Study Group for a phased withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq as ‘similar to what the president has been saying.’”

URL: Think Progress

Media Matters for America

On the November 29 edition of CNN's The Situation Room, Rep. Charles B. Rangel (D-NY) said of former Secretary of State Colin Powell's February 5, 2003, speech to the United Nations Security Council, in which Powell alleged that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and was involved in terrorism: "[T]he suspicion is that he and others may have known that the facts were not true." Host Wolf Blitzer replied: "You're not accusing Colin Powell of deliberately lying to the American people." Blitzer added, "I assume, knowing him as I do for so many years, that ...   more »

Media Matters for America

During a discussion with Fox News military analyst Lt. Col. Ralph Peters (ret.) on the November 28 edition of his nationally syndicated radio show, Bill O'Reilly falsely claimed that, "on the night" Saddam Hussein's "statue fell" in Baghdad at the beginning of the war in Iraq, he publicly criticized the Bush administration for not having a postwar reconstruction plan for Iraq. O'Reilly stated: "I hate to blow my own horn, Colonel, but ... on the night that Saddam's statue fell ... I said on the air [on Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor], 'Hey, look at ...   more »

News Hounds

Howard Dean poked a little fun at Fox News while giving a speech in Canada recently, but Fox News' Martha MacCallum used her report on it to suggest that conservatives attack the mainstream media for being too liberal. After a couple high-profile -- and long overdue -- critiques of Fox News by liberals, could Fox News be trying to foment a counterattack by conservatives against other media in order to take some of the heat off itself?

It certainly looked that way on the "Live Desk" on Thursday (November 30, 2006) MacCallum showed a short clip of Dean, ...   more »