December 19, 2005 by s.z.

Dick Cheney Serves Hummus to Troops It's dog-and-pony time again, kids.  And in other news, Vice President Cheney made a secret visit to Iraq. Here's the NY Times: Vice President Dick Cheney paid a surprise visit to Iraq on Sunday, the opening move in the White House's extraordinary daylong effort to shore up public support for continued military involvement in the country. The highly scripted day unfolded exclusively behind concrete barriers, barbed wire, armed guards and the other measures to ensure his safety, and came as insurgents broke the relative calm since the national election on Thursday with a string of attacks in central and northern Iraq that left at least nine people dead. But hey, "Iraq's looking good," per Mr. Cheney.  And interestingly enough, it seems that Nedra Pickler was one of the small number of reporters who got to travel with the V.P. (the rest were probably from Fox News).  Here's part of her report, "Cheney Fields Tough Questions From Troops." The daylong tour of Iraq was so shrouded in secrecy that even Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari and President Jalal Talabani were kept in the dark. The prime minister said he was surprised when he showed up for what he thought was a meeting with the U.S. ambassador and saw Cheney. Yeah, things are going great in Iraq, but we'd better keep our Vice President's visit a secret from their Prime Minister and President -- you know, for security reasons. Cheney rode the wave of last week's parliamentary elections during a 10-hour surprise visit to Iraq that aimed to highlight progress at a time when Americans question the mission. Military commanders and top government officials offered glowing reports, but the rank-and-file troops Cheney met did not seem to share their enthusiasm. [...] Shouts of "hooah!" from the audience interrupted Cheney a few times, but mostly the service members listened intently. When he delivered the applause line, "We're in this fight to win. These colors don't run," the only sound was a lone whistle. See what happens when you don't spend the time to rehearse the troops in advance? The skepticism that Cheney faced reflects opinions back home, where most Americans say they do not approve of President Bush's handling of the war. It was unique coming from a military audience, which typically receives administration officials more enthusiastically. I guess the combat-hardened soldiers in Iraq just don't scare the way the ones stateside do. Cheney became the highest-ranking administration official to visit the country since Bush's trip on Thanksgiving Day 2003. It was his first visit to Iraq since March 1991, when he was defense secretary for President George H.W. Bush. And here's a photo from that visit: 3:38:34 AM

Inaccuracy in Media Thanks to Townhall.com: Issues,  I found this troubling Campus Report Online piece, "Coulter 1: UCONN 0." It begins routinely enough: Coulter 1: UCONN 0 by: Deborah Lambert, December 16, 2005 Although media coverage of Ann Coulter’s much ballyhooed speech at U.Conn. was designed to make the public believe that Coulter lost ground to radical students, in fact it was just the opposite, as demonstrated by a report in HumanEventsonline on December 12, 2005. And then Deborah quotes from that piece by Lisa De Pasquale which we commented on last week.  Your task is to determine when you think the quoting from Lisa's work ends. “In reality, Coulter used her wit to disarm the hecklers. She conversed with the audience for more than 30 minutes, more than what was scheduled. One boy obnoxiously asked, ‘What do you think of premarital sex?’ Coulter responded, ‘Honestly, that’s the worst pick-up line I’ve ever heard.’ Despite their attempts and false media accounts of the lecture, it was the hecklers in the audience who were angered, agitated and storming away from the microphone. In How to Talk to a Liberal (If You Must), Coulter wrote, “People don’t get angry when lies are told about them; they get angry when the truth is told about them.” What happened at UConn last week is not a new phenomenon. For years conservatives have battled a repertoire of name-calling, teach-ins, protests and projectiles. Judging from the four or five snot-nosed kids protesting at UConn, their mainstay now is the Hitler mustache. Liberals must wake up every day and thank Hitler’s barber for providing enough material to sustain them for the past 65 years. Conservative speakers such as Ann Coulter, Michelle Malkin, David Horowitz, Bay Buchanan and Ward Connerly continue to put themselves in the lion’s den because of the support they receive from thousands of college students and in spite of the cowardly loudmouths in the back of the room. Many of them travel with close protection bodyguards because they want to continue speaking out in support of conservative principles and the War on Terrorism. Conservative students are desperate for intellectual diversity, so they stand up to the administration, their liberal professors and fellow students with a rebellious spirit, creativity and a sense of humor. Liberals’ rants are no match for affirmative-action bake sales at numerous colleges, Clothe-A-Feminist Day (in response to a protest led by naked feminists) at the University of North Texas and Coming Out [as a conservative] Week at Drake University. Repartee with Ann Coulter is just kicking them when their down. It’s really not a fair fight. Conservative students are winning on college campuses. In addition to their efforts, they have a number of outstanding organizations such as Young America’s Foundation, the Leadership Institute, the Clare Boothe Luce Policy Institute, Students for Academic Freedom and the Intercollegiate Studies Institute to encourage them along the way. Liberal students have the Hitler mustache and their poorly drawn swastikas. UConn liberals made a spectacle of themselves…though their tactics were ineffective in getting Ann Coulter to leave the stage, they deprived their fellow students from hearing the end of an interesting and thought-provoking speech. Instead, the majority of the students laughed along with Coulter at their fellow students. It was similar to the “worst auditions” episode of "American Idol." Those at the microphones were emotional, pitiful and angry -- and also oblivious to the laughing observers. Miss Lambert writes the Squeaky Chalk column for Accuracy in Academia’s monthly Campus Report newsletter. You'll note that the first paragraph after the mention of the Human Events Online piece begins with double quotation marks.  There are single quotation marks for direct quotes from the original article.  Then, in the next paragraph, it's back to double quotation marks for the line from Ann's book.  So, when do you think that Deborah stopped quoting Lisa's piece?  If you said after that first paragraph, the one that began with the quotation mark (even though it lacked a double quotation mark at the end), you're wrong.  In truth, everything after Deborah's introductory paragraph (right until we hit bio line) is lifted directly from Lisa's piece.  (I know that Deborah didn't give you any clues to indicate that this was the case, but we talking about conservatives here, so you should have guessed.)  Yes, Deborah provided just one original paragraph (which is itself a paraphrased version of Lisa's opening paragraph), and copied everything else from Lisa's Human Events Online piece -- and then had it published as a "Perspectives" column at Campus Report Online, which is Accuracy in Media's "online news service."  That's accuracy for you! Okay, your next challenge: give your best guess as to Deborah's background.  Is she another Nicole Krogman, a Campus Republican who never got around to completing that course on journalistic ethics, and so can't be expected to know how about plagiarism?  Or is she instead a Lisa De Pasquale, a middle-aged woman working as a conservative "mentor" to college students whose writing resembles that of an inept college student? You can find the answer here:  Deborah Lambert, Director of Special Projects, oversees the area of fundraising and donor relations for AIM. She is also a board member of Accuracy In Academia and writes a column for AIA's monthly publication, Campus Report. A former antique dealer and freelance writer, she has served as AIM's Public Relations Director and producer of AIM's weekly TV show, The Other Side of the Story. Ms. Lambert was born and raised in Connecticut, and holds a B.A. in English from Columbia University I hope the members of the English Department at Columbia are properly ashamed of themselves. BTW -- As you read Deborah's piece, you might have thought that she made at least one change in Lisa's text, since the last line no longer contains the information that the angry UConn students were "in some cases, homosexual (or they appeared that way to me, but they could have just been college liberals)".  However, it seems that somebody at Human Events Online must have had second thoughts about that childish and hateful remark, because when we now check Lisa's column, we see that it's been excised from her piece.  You know, if this had happened to Ann Coulter, she'd be calling some editors girly-boys right now ... 2:10:03 AM