James P Rubin, Liar
Here’s what Rubin had to say:
If the recent exchanges between President Bush, Barack Obama and John McCain on Hamas and terrorism are a preview of the general election, we are in for an ugly six months. Despite his reputation in the media as a charming maverick, McCain has shown that he is also happy to use Nixon-style dirty campaign tactics. By charging recently that Hamas is rooting for an Obama victory, McCain tried to use guilt by association to suggest that Obama is weak on national security and won’t stand up to terrorist organizations, or that, as Richard Nixon might have put it, Obama is soft on Israel.
…But given his own position on Hamas, McCain is the last politician who should be attacking Obama. Two years ago, just after Hamas won the Palestinian parliamentary elections, I interviewed McCain for the British network Sky News’s “World News Tonight” program. Here is the crucial part of our exchange:
I asked: “Do you think that American diplomats should be operating the way they have in the past, working with the Palestinian government if Hamas is now in charge?”
McCain answered: “They’re the government; sooner or later we are going to have to deal with them, one way or another, and I understand why this administration and previous administrations had such antipathy towards Hamas because of their dedication to violence and the things that they not only espouse but practice, so . . . but it’s a new reality in the Middle East. I think the lesson is people want security and a decent life and decent future, that they want democracy. Fatah was not giving them that.”
And here’s what really happened:
CNN’s “Lou Dobbs Tonight”
May 16, 2008CNN’S DANA BASH: “You remember these interviews were done shortly after Hamas won the Palestinian elections. Lou, the McCain campaign just in the past couple of hours, found a link to more of Jamie Rubin’s interview from back then. In it, I’ll read you a quote from the rest of or at least more of the interview, In that quote Sen. McCain says, ‘I think part of the relationship will be dictated by how Hamas acts, not how the United States acts.’ Now the McCain campaign, as you can image, says that this is proof that Senator McCain has been consistent all along, and I should tell you that CNN asked Jamie Rubin earlier today for the rest of the interview or at least for a transcript and he said he didn’t have it. He said he only had this particular quote he said that was e-mailed to him.”
CNN’S LOU DOBBS: “Well that seems, certainly to, as you report, to substantiate precisely what Senator McCain is saying.”
BASH: “That’s what the McCain campaign is insisting and that’s why they were, as you can imagine, very eager to send out this e-mail. And I can tell you at the top of the e-mail the subject header said ‘Jamie Rubin Lied.’ Inside the McCain campaign, they are accusing Jamie Rubin of lying tonight. We’re going wait to hear back from Jamie Rubin about that charge. As you can imagine, that’s quite a charge to say somebody lied.”
DOBBS: “It is quite a charge. It is also quite something for someone from another campaign to conflate both the role of journalism and of course political activism. Let me ask you this. If we may, I’d like to provide the viewers of this broadcast a link, as you referred to it, that would give them the entire context of that interview. So if we may, I’d like to put that up on LouDobbs.com for our viewers’ benefits if they’d like to use it.”
BASH: “I’ll get it to you.”
DOBBS: “Great reporting and thank you very much.”
Here is is over at Lou Dobbs’ website.
What is really nauseating about Rubin’s comments is that if you read his whole piece, you’ll see that its littered with accusations that the GOP is the side that engages in the “politics of personal destruction” and how shocked, shocked he is that a President of the United States (Bush in Israel) could say something overtly political in a foreign land…you know, like Gore, Bill Clinton, Nancy Pelosi and a huge number of other Democrats have done all along (apparantly, making disparaging remarks directly about a US President and his policies while over seas is something reserved only for Democrats…making allusions to poor policy choices which get incompetant, empty-suit Democratic Presidential candidates in a snit is forbidden). The projection in Rubin’s piece is stunning - but its also par for the course for people on the left these days, who have spent so long lying about President Bush and the War on Terrorism that they seem incapable of even attempting the truth these days.
13 comments May 17th, 2008
