Obama’s Iran ‘Echo Chamber’ Just Can’t Stop
By Seth Mandel
The New York Post
May 18, 2016
You’d be wrong.
Instead, the president’s allies in Congress and in the press unwittingly confirmed the accusations that they can’t think for themselves.
House Republicans called a hearing Tuesday on Rhodes’ admission that President Obama’s foreign-policy team lied their way to the Iran deal — specifically, that the negotiations were predicated on the rise of a “moderate” Iranian president, which opened a window for rapprochement.
In fact, Team Obama didn’t believe the moderates were actually in charge — it’s not clear they thought such moderates even existed — and the talks began under the previous leadership of the lunatic Mahmoud Ahmadinejad anyway.
Since they made the whole thing up, Obama and his advisers needed willing propagandists or foolish dupes to sell the story. That’s when Rhodes created an “echo chamber.”
Rhodes refused to show up to the hearing Tuesday. But in his place, both Oversight Committee’s Democratic minority and Obama’s supporters in the media took turns parroting the same, specific talking points intended to discredit one of the witnesses.
They created an echo chamber to deflect attention from the fact that they were an echo chamber, made all the more clumsy and obvious by the oddly specific talking point they all settled on.
The witness in question is John Hannah, a former aide to Vice President Dick Cheney during the lead-up to the Iraq war.
Aha!
“I find it incredibly hypocritical to invite Mr. Hannah, who worked for Dick Cheney and helped market the Iraq war based on false pretenses, to come now before us as an expert witness on an alleged false White House narrative,” sneered Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY).
“If our goal is to hear from an expert who actually promoted false White House narratives, then I think you picked the right person,” sniffed Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), referring to Hannah.
Cummings said he found it “ironic.” So did Rep. William Lacy Clay (D-Mo.): “Mr. Hannah, you worked for Dick Cheney, you actively participated in the preparation of Secretary Powell’s infamous speech to the United Nations about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction. I find it incredibly ironic that the chairman invited you here to testify about false White House narratives given your involvement in that debacle.”
The most amusing was Rep. Matt Cartwright (D-Pa.): “It is with great regret that I see it has turned into a political football the way it has,” Cartwright lamented about the Iran deal, before offering a vivid illustration of his lack of self-awareness. “Mr. Hannah, let me get this straight: You drew up the false talking points for Colin Powell when he spoke in front of the UN . . . And you’re here today to question somebody else’s credibility and somebody else’s professionalism.”
It wouldn’t be a real echo party without the media, of course. And liberal writers, too, seemed to somehow, magically, coincidentally seize on Hannah.
The day before the hearing, Mother Jones’ David Corn wrote that the decision to invite Hannah was “awkward” because “Hannah was one of the architects of the speech then-Secretary of State Colin Powell gave to the United Nations in February 2003 that was designed to pave the way to war.”
The next day, Corn’s colleague at Mother Jones, Max Rosenthal, wrote a follow-up whose sole purpose seemed to be to echo . . . er, quote Corn’s report.
Over at the Forward, J.J. Goldberg pronounced that the inclusion of Hannah was “where our tale enters the Twilight Zone.” Why? Well, you can probably guess: “Hannah should know a thing or two about fabricating narratives to justify Middle East policy initiatives. In 2002, while serving in Cheney’s office in the Bush White House, he played a key role in assembling the false intelligence that helped build the case for the American invasion of Iraq in 2003.”
At Lobelog.com, former ThinkProgress reporter Ali Gharib slammed the panel’s “war hawks,” focusing most of his attention on the “irony of John Hannah’s participation.”
As Hannah pointed out to his inquisitors, George W. Bush didn’t actually lie about WMDs, he simply believed bad intelligence. Team Obama, however, did lie about Iran. And Obama’s defenders are using a supposed case of lying as a defense against their actual lying while echoing each other and feigning outrage at being accused of acting as an echo chamber.
Now that’s ironic.
The New York Post
May 18, 2016
After top Obama adviser Ben Rhodes made waves by admitting the administration manipulated an “echo chamber” of allies to sell the Iran nuclear deal, you might have expected the echoes to die down for a while.
You’d be wrong.
Instead, the president’s allies in Congress and in the press unwittingly confirmed the accusations that they can’t think for themselves.
House Republicans called a hearing Tuesday on Rhodes’ admission that President Obama’s foreign-policy team lied their way to the Iran deal — specifically, that the negotiations were predicated on the rise of a “moderate” Iranian president, which opened a window for rapprochement.
In fact, Team Obama didn’t believe the moderates were actually in charge — it’s not clear they thought such moderates even existed — and the talks began under the previous leadership of the lunatic Mahmoud Ahmadinejad anyway.
Since they made the whole thing up, Obama and his advisers needed willing propagandists or foolish dupes to sell the story. That’s when Rhodes created an “echo chamber.”
Rhodes refused to show up to the hearing Tuesday. But in his place, both Oversight Committee’s Democratic minority and Obama’s supporters in the media took turns parroting the same, specific talking points intended to discredit one of the witnesses.
They created an echo chamber to deflect attention from the fact that they were an echo chamber, made all the more clumsy and obvious by the oddly specific talking point they all settled on.
The witness in question is John Hannah, a former aide to Vice President Dick Cheney during the lead-up to the Iraq war.
Aha!
“I find it incredibly hypocritical to invite Mr. Hannah, who worked for Dick Cheney and helped market the Iraq war based on false pretenses, to come now before us as an expert witness on an alleged false White House narrative,” sneered Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY).
“If our goal is to hear from an expert who actually promoted false White House narratives, then I think you picked the right person,” sniffed Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), referring to Hannah.
Cummings said he found it “ironic.” So did Rep. William Lacy Clay (D-Mo.): “Mr. Hannah, you worked for Dick Cheney, you actively participated in the preparation of Secretary Powell’s infamous speech to the United Nations about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction. I find it incredibly ironic that the chairman invited you here to testify about false White House narratives given your involvement in that debacle.”
The most amusing was Rep. Matt Cartwright (D-Pa.): “It is with great regret that I see it has turned into a political football the way it has,” Cartwright lamented about the Iran deal, before offering a vivid illustration of his lack of self-awareness. “Mr. Hannah, let me get this straight: You drew up the false talking points for Colin Powell when he spoke in front of the UN . . . And you’re here today to question somebody else’s credibility and somebody else’s professionalism.”
It wouldn’t be a real echo party without the media, of course. And liberal writers, too, seemed to somehow, magically, coincidentally seize on Hannah.
The day before the hearing, Mother Jones’ David Corn wrote that the decision to invite Hannah was “awkward” because “Hannah was one of the architects of the speech then-Secretary of State Colin Powell gave to the United Nations in February 2003 that was designed to pave the way to war.”
The next day, Corn’s colleague at Mother Jones, Max Rosenthal, wrote a follow-up whose sole purpose seemed to be to echo . . . er, quote Corn’s report.
Over at the Forward, J.J. Goldberg pronounced that the inclusion of Hannah was “where our tale enters the Twilight Zone.” Why? Well, you can probably guess: “Hannah should know a thing or two about fabricating narratives to justify Middle East policy initiatives. In 2002, while serving in Cheney’s office in the Bush White House, he played a key role in assembling the false intelligence that helped build the case for the American invasion of Iraq in 2003.”
At Lobelog.com, former ThinkProgress reporter Ali Gharib slammed the panel’s “war hawks,” focusing most of his attention on the “irony of John Hannah’s participation.”
As Hannah pointed out to his inquisitors, George W. Bush didn’t actually lie about WMDs, he simply believed bad intelligence. Team Obama, however, did lie about Iran. And Obama’s defenders are using a supposed case of lying as a defense against their actual lying while echoing each other and feigning outrage at being accused of acting as an echo chamber.
Now that’s ironic.
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