Maybe we're old-fashioned, but we always thought that journalists traveled to foreign lands in order to find out what was happening there. But according to Fox News, a contingent of conservative radio talk shows hosts is headed for Iraq to report what they already know to be true: "American troops are winning, despite the headlines to the contary."
Move America Forward and Rightalk.com have put together the junket they're calling the "Truth Tour" of Iraq. "The reason why we are doing it is we are sick and tired of seeing and hearing headlines by the mainstream media about our defeat in Iraq," Move American co-chair Melanie Morgan tells Fox. Morgan, a host at San Francisco's KSFO, says that the press, "determined to shut out" news of success in Iraq, is "imposing a Vietnam template on this war."
Mark Williams, who has a show each night on Sacramento's KFBK, the station that gave birth to Rush Limbaugh, told Fox that he and his fellow travelers will report "what we see and what we are told," but he clearly expects the news to be better than what he's been seeing on TV. "We believe that the emphasis has been placed on the negative and if Americans knew what really was going on over there they would have an entirely different picture," Williams said. "We are Americans first and journalists second, as opposed to the crop of 'pinkos' that tell us on the news every night that America is going to hell in a hand basket."
For the Bush administration, the talkers' trip can't come soon enough. According to the latest polls, only about a third of all Americans think that the U.S. is winning in Iraq. And the news today isn't likey to make them change their minds, no matter what kind of spin a bunch of junior Limabaughs want to put on it. Insurgents, stepping up attacks on foreign diplomats that began with the kidnapping of the Egypt's top diplomat three days ago, opened fire today on convoys carrying the chief envoys of Bahrain and Pakistan. Meanwhile, one U.S. soldier was killed and two more were injured today by a roadside bomb just north of Baghdad.
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