Philip V. Brennan
Wednesday, March 8, 2006

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In case you haven't noticed, President Bush's poll ratings are hovering not far above basement level, and that's no accident. When you consider the kind of unremitting media assault that is being waged against him by the media, it's a wonder that the American people haven't risen up and run him out of office.

Look at it this way. If you lived in a small community where a small group of neighborhood gossips spent night and day without let up telling lies about you to all of your neighbors, no matter how much you tried to set the record straight, after a while you would be all but powerless to defend yourself. It's what Nazi propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels described as the "big lie" technique: Tell it often enough and a majority of people will begin to believe it.

In recent weeks the media's big-lie operation has increased in intensity. For a long time most of the attacks on President Bush and his administration were based on distortions of the truth; lately they've been based on outright lies.

Let's start with the civil war in Iraq that always seems to be just around the corner. One can almost picture the people at the New York Times laying out their prayer rugs and begging whatever bizarre deity they worship to please get that internecine bloodletting going now.

Needless to say, the overwhelming majority of these people and their brethren in the mainstream media have never ventured into Iraq to see for themselves what's going on there. The closest any of them ever get to the military is when they protest the presence of U.S. armed forces recruiters on college and law school campuses because the military is not gay-friendly.

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It's instructive, therefore, to pay heed to those who have actually been in Iraq. People such as the New York Post's Ralph Peters, who just came back. Here's some of what he has written about that impending civil war, where Sunnis and Shiites are supposed to be at each other's throats and getting ready to tear the nation asunder any day now:

Among many positive stories you aren't being told about Iraq, the media ignored another big one last week: In the wake of the terrorist bombing of the Golden Mosque in Samara, it was the Iraqi army that kept the peace in the streets.

It's routinely declared a failure by those who yearn for the new Iraq to fail. But an increasingly capable Iraqi military has been developing while reporters (who never really investigated the issue) wrote it off as hopeless.

What actually happened last week, as the prophets of doom in the media prematurely declared civil war?

The Iraqi army deployed over 100,000 soldiers to maintain public order. U.S. forces remained available as a backup, but Iraqi soldiers controlled the streets.

Iraqi forces behaved with discipline and restraint – as the local sectarian outbreaks fizzled, not one civilian had been killed by an Iraqi soldier.

Time and again, Iraqi military officers were able to defuse potential confrontations and frustrate terrorist hopes of igniting a religious war.

Forty-seven battalions drawn from all 10 of Iraq's army divisions took part in an operation that, above all, aimed at reassuring the public. The effort worked – from the luxury districts to the slums, the Iraqis were proud of their army.

Then we have the Dubai Ports deal. No matter what you think about the wisdom of having a company owned by a Middle Eastern potentate who once played footsie with our Islamofascist foes, it would be helpful to have some understanding of what is at stake here. But if you want to get the real facts, you'll have to look elsewhere than the mainstream media.

Just how often have you heard somebody from the media or some Democratic demagogue complain that Dubai "is taking over" ports owned either by the cities where they are located or some quasi-official body such as the Port of New York Authority. Nobody is taking the ports from them. What the Dubai Ports outfit is doing is buying the business of operating nine of the 300 terminals located in the six ports from P&O, the British firm now running the mundane stevedore operations (loading and unloading cargo), assigning dock space and bringing ships into port and out again.

The people doing the work are the same people who have been doing it all along. The stevedores and other port workers are all Americans and will continue to be so. It suits the media's purpose, however, to convince the American people that President Bush is endangering national security by selling six of our ports to a foreign country despite the fact that the country is one of our strongest allies in the war on terrorism and their deal merely gives them concessions in the ports to run the cargo operations.

Then there is the matter of Hurricane Katrina and whoever besides Mother Nature was responsible for the havoc that devastated 90,000 square miles of Gulf. Tina Easton, the Boston Globe's Washington correspondent, called the hurricane the "gift that keeps on giving." Although she didn't say who was getting the gift, it's obvious that the beneficiaries are the Democrats and their ever reliable media allies.

We've been talking about lies, and in the last few days we've seen two major media outlets, The Associated Press and Mrs. Easton's Boston Globe, tell a couple of whoppers, all of which is not only permissible but also praiseworthy if the lies hurt President Bush.

Look at what the AP reported: "In dramatic and sometimes agonizing terms, federal disaster officials warned President Bush and his homeland security chief before Hurricane Katrina struck that the storm could breach levees, put lives at risk in New Orleans' Superdome and overwhelm rescuers, according to confidential video footage."

And here's the Boston Globe: "Federal disaster officials warned President Bush and his homeland security chief before Hurricane Katrina struck that the storm could breach levees, put lives at risk in the Superdome in New Orleans, and overwhelm rescuers, according to confidential video footage."

Lies. And both defended them.

"I don't think any model can tell you with any confidence right now whether the levees will be topped or not, but that is obviously a very, very grave concern," National Hurricane Center's Max Mayfield warned the day Katrina lashed the Gulf Coast.

The man the AP cited to show that Bush allegedly lied when he denied he had been warned about breached levees said nothing about "breached levees." He said "topped," a very big difference. "Topped" means water pouring over the tops of the levees, while "breached" means the water crashing through the levees.

But breached sounds better when you are trying to hurt the president of the United States and drive his popularity ratings into the ground.

Finally, there is the CBS poll that has the rest of the liberal media swooning in ecstasy. It shows President Bush's popularity rating as 54 percent unfavorable and just 34 percent favorable.

Here's what the Media Research Council had to say about the poll in which it notes CBS "weighted" its sample to reflect an ideal cross-section of American adults, adjusting the number of self-described Republicans up to 28 percent and Democrats down to 37 percent, and independents with the rest. That's hardly the exit-poll breakdown the networks found on Election Day 2004 (37 percent GOP, 37 percent Democrat, 26 percent independent):

"A glance at a roundup of presidential approval rating polls shows that the grand canyon between Bush's approval and disapproval ratings of 25 percent (34 to 59) is far outside the usual margin. An early February Fox News-Opinion Dynamics poll had a gap of only three percent (44 percent approve, 47 percent disapprove). No one noticed. The other media-elite polls placed the gap in the mid-teens: ABC (14), NBC (15), CNN (17), AP (17), and Time (14). FNC's brand-new poll has the gap up to 15 points, 39 to 54.

Wrote MRC: "Pollster Bob Moran wondered on 'The Corner' blog of National Review Online: 'Why is the sample so Democrat? One reason may be because almost every question bangs the President and I would guess that the hang-ups they get are vastly more Republican than Democrat. Think about it. Why would a Republican sit on the phone and answer loaded anti-Bush questions for 15 minutes?' "

Why, indeed?

Phil Brennan is a veteran journalist who writes for NewsMax.com. He is editor & publisher of Wednesday on the Web (http://www.pvbr.com) and was Washington columnist for National Review magazine in the 1960s. He also served as a staff aide for the House Republican Policy Committee and helped handle the Washington public relations operation for the Alaska Statehood Committee which won statehood for Alaska. He is also a trustee of the Lincoln Heritage Institute and a member of the Association of Former Intelligence Officers.

E-mail Phil.

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