NOMINATION THREAD FOR THE FREE REPUBLIC GAROFALO AWARDS

Thursday, April 17, 2003 | Kristinn

[kristinn]

Nominations for Free Republic's Garofalo Awards are being accepted on this thread.

The Garofalo--ready-to-eat stuffed crows on a platter--will be awarded to prominent individuals in the media and elsewhere whose histrionic predictions of doom and gloom before and/or during Operation Iraqi Freedom stand head and shoulders above all others for their shrillness, certainty, and apocalyptic ravings.

To be nominated, the person must meet the criteria. Documentation will be needed (not necessarily provided by the nominator) to provide specific reasons when announcing the winners as to why they were singled out for special recognition.

Ten Garofolos will be awarded. We will do our best to present them to any winners who attend the White House Correspondents Association dinner April 26 when the D.C. Chapter holds its 5th annual freep there of liberal bias in the media.

Janeane Garofalo, whom the award is named for, is eligible to win.

Nominations close Sunday, April 20 at 3 p.m. EDT. Voting will commence on a new thread soon thereafter.

[Tolerance Sucks Rocks]

She also said bringing down the statue of Saddam in Firdos Square was a desecration. Even Brokaw was disgusted by her comment.

Well, well, I think we just might have us a communist here, ol hoss! Maybe we should press for this particular propagandist to be fired (and I don't say that lightly--I'm not sure Petroskey should've canceled the Bull Durham re-run, for example).

[Tolerance Sucks Rocks]

One morning during the questions section of the CENTCOM briefing by Gen Brooks, Tim Clancy broke in and casually said "Now we need to get a reality check from our embedded correspondents." I practically lost it, I blew up! "a reality check"?, excuse me! I bet they heard me all over that Coral Princess Ship. How dare that puke insult our brave service people, inclulding our service leaders. It was like Clancy saying that Brooks was lying or at least shading the truth!!!

I can understand your wrath; that was not a nice way to voice a reasonable suspicion. However, Brooks does represent government, and w.r.t. government, perhaps "trust no one" applies...

[freedumb2003]

Katie Couric from the NBC Today Show ....."hopefully" he (Saddam Hussien) made it to Syria.

She SAID that???

Ya know, I am not a KC fan at all -- in fact I can't stand her and have NO idea why she rates 3 mill. BUT in this case I think she got her tang tungled up. I don't think she was hoping that he escaped (unless someone has a more comprehensive quote to suggest that). I think she meant that would be HIS hope.

We need to be intellectually honest about this kind of thing, or we end up behaving like the loons at DU.

[T Minus Four]

wonder what my uber-liberal grandparents and aunt think of all this?

Now's a great time to ask! :-)

[GOPcapitalist]

I heard Shucksmaster got first dips on him

It's funny you mention that, considering ole Bob's speeches more closely resemble the letter that Lincoln sent to those troops after Fredericksburg. It reminds me of the scene from Gods and Generals after it was read, informing the men who had just fought that their casualties had been minimal. An Irish soldier then turns to the guy next to him and says "minimal compared to what? Napoleon at Waterloo?"

[DaughterOfAnIwoJimaVet]

Hmmmm. Did you see this post?

(I DO agree that we need to be fair and accurate, even when we're talking about someone we strongly dislike. I'm not sure anyone is being unfair to her here - just couldn't know unless I saw the clips myself.)

[Redbob]

No No No No No No!
Bagdad Bob isn't eligible!

He provided much-needed comic relief, high comedy that was otherwise only unintentionally provided by the likes of Peter Jennings and Judy Woodruff...

How about a secondary "Bagdad Bob" award, for those in our media who were similarly transparently deceitful?

[hoosiermama]

CNN should get some recognition for putting themselves (money or ratings) before the lives of the Iraqi people.

Others spoke out of turn; although stupid, they caused no actual pain. CNN lack of action caused unnecessary suffering/deaths; CNN is abominable.

[nicmarlo]

I think you're mistakenly nominating the Joseph Goebbels/Pravda award nominee...

Heh heh....ooops.....you're right. : )

[L_Von_Mises]

He has jumped off the reservation lately. He was one of the people questioning our tactics and saying how we had blown it when we were waiting to get re-supplied just prior to going into Baghdad. Lately, I think he just likes to be contrary so he'll get TV time but some of his comments were pretty much out there.

Some of his recent comments:

While Saddam was watching videotapes of “Apocalypse Now” and “Black Hawk Down” and taking notes, Donald Rumsfeld and Gen. Richard Myers – badly misjudging Iraq's determination – chose to refight Desert Storm.

The Dream Team made three classic mistakes:
* Not understanding the enemy or the nature of the war.
* Thinking smart bombs would do the job.
* Underestimating the patriotism of the average Saddam-hating Iraqi and how fiercely he'd fight for his country.

...George W. Bush needs to immediately reassess his war plan, bring in more combat troops, heed the advice of his fighting generals on the ground rather than his team of mainly chicken-hawk advisers and immediately readjust his tactics. He needs to get real and apply the lessons learned from the Russians in Chechnya and the Israelis in Lebanon – and to understand what went wrong in Vietnam.

Hopefully then, he won't make the mistake of another Texas president who didn't sack his SecDef and Joint Chiefs chairman straight away for their screw-ups – an error so egregious it cost our country almost 60,000 American lives and LBJ his presidency.

[Tolerance Sucks Rocks]

Heck, why not make a special award for the most biased journalist and name it after Baghdad Bob

I nominate Peter Jennings...

[beckett]

George Galloway, a British Labour Party MP, who, in an April 1st interview for Abu Dhabi TV, urged British soldiers not to follow "illegal orders" to fight in Iraq. He also charged that Bush and Blair were "wolves" who "lied" when they said the war in Iraq would be "quick and easy."

"They attacked Iraq like wolves," he said. "They attacked civilians." He called on Arab countries to stop supplying coalition countries with oil.

Remember, he's saying all this while troops from his own country are on the battlefield, and he's making these comments on Arab TV, channeling them right into the barracks of enemy troops during wartime.

Galloway, some may recall, is the MP whom John Malkovich said he'd like to shoot in May 2002. He's a socialist who believes the greatest catastrophe of his life was the fall of the Soviet Union. He calls John Lennon's Imagine the socialist anthem.

I mention all this because his remarks weren't reported on too much over here, but I recently read they caused quite a sensation in Britain, apparently boomeranging on him and shoring up support for the troops. There is a movement afoot to oust him from Parliament.

He certainly qualifies for the Garofalo Award.

[Henchman]

Hanoi Jane Fonda. She went to Canada and gave support to the enemy again. Why doesn't she just go to Seweristan where no one would care if she kept her mouth open?

[StopThePress]

CROW Awards (Been posting on Yahoo all over the place - you guys missed quite a few)

"I bet you in the Pentagon the military planning assumes 5,000 to 10,000 American casualties and at least 100,000 to 250,000 civilian casualties in downtown Baghdad. All on CNN." - Gary Hart, Denver Post, March 30, 2001.

http://www.newschoice.com/ads/dca.html

[StopThePress]

"Iraqis, very clearly, do not want to be 'liberated,' even many who had long opposed Saddam's brutal regime. To the contrary, the US-British invasion appears to have ignited genuine national resistance among 17 million Arab Iraqis, just as the 1941 German invasion of the USSR rallied Russians and Ukrainians behind Stalin's hated regime. ... The nasty, bloody urban warfare the Americans and Brits sought to avoid at all costs is now confronting them."

- Eric Margolis,

http://www.foreigncorrespondent.com/archive/bush_parade.html

[StopThePress]

"Though Operation Iraqi Freedom has been underway for only two weeks, Rumsfeld's "shock and awe" strategy was a flop. Pentagon strategists expected to have taken Baghdad by Mar. 27. Best-laid plans and all that: U.S. generals, worried that they don't have enough men on the front lines, are considering whether to lay siege to Baghdad, bomb it to ruins or take it one block at a time. Basra hasn't fallen. Suicide bombers are on the loose, we're offing civilians and the Iraqi army has gone guerilla. And we hold a mere 4,000 Iraqi POWs. Only 45 Americans and Britons have died so far--compared to 112 total combat deaths in 1991--but allied casualties will soar if and when ground troops are ordered to take Baghdad... In this respect, Iraqis are no different than we are. Millions of Americans consider Bush to be a hateful, extremist dimwit who seized power twice, once in an unconstitutional judicial coup d'état and again by using the Sept. 11 attacks as a pretext to expand his personal power and gut the Bill of Rights. They call him names, like the Resident and Commander-in-Thief. But even the most passionately anti-Bush Americans would eagerly join their W-loving compatriots to fight any army that invaded the United States in the name of some theoretical 'liberation.' I know I would."

- Ted Rall, April 2, 2003

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&cid=127&ncid=742&e=14&u=/ucru/20030403/cm_ucru/ignoramuses_abroad

[StopThePress]

Conventional Wisdom Watch, by Newsweek. A down-arrow for Dick Cheney: "Tells 'Meet the Press' just before war, 'We will be greeted as liberators.' An arrogant blunder for the ages."

Nope, Newsweek. Your article was the “arrogant blunder for the ages”....lol!!!

http://www.msnbc.com/news/893298.asp#cw

[StopThePress]

"In Baghdad the coalition forces confront a city apparently determined on resistance. They should remember Napoleon in Moscow, Hitler in Stalingrad, the Americans in Mogadishu and the Russians at Grozny. Hostile cities have ways of making life ghastly for aggressors. They are not like countryside. They seldom capitulate, least of all when their backs are to the wall. It took two years after the American withdrawal from Vietnam for Saigon to fall to the Vietcong. Kabul was ceded to the warlords only when the Taleban drove out of town. In the desert, armies fight armies. In cities, armies fight cities. The Iraqis were not stupid. They listened to Western strategists musing about how a desert battle would be a pushover. Things would get 'difficult' only if Saddam played the cad and drew the Americans into Baghdad. Why should he do otherwise?"

Simon Jenkins, the Times of London, in an article called - yes! - "Baghdad Will Be Near Impossible to Conquer," March 28, 2003

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,482-626095,00.html

[StopThePress]

"[Al-Jazeera has shown] the resistance and anger of the Iraqi population, dismissed by Western propaganda as a sullen bunch waiting to throw flowers at Clint Eastwood lookalikes ... The idea that Iraq's population would have welcomed American forces entering the country after a terrifying aerial bombardment was always utterly implausible ... One can only wince at the way weak-minded policy hacks in the Pentagon and White House have spun out the 'ideas' of Lewis and Ajami into the scenario for a quick romp in a friendly Iraq ... pity the Iraqi civilians who must still suffer a great deal more before they are finally 'liberated'."

- Edward Said, London Review of Books, April 17, 2003

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v25/n08/said01_.html

[StopThePress]

"Is Wolfowitz really so ignorant of history as to believe the Iraqis would welcome us as 'their hoped-for liberators'?"

Eric Alterman, The Nation.

http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20030421&s=alterman