"Antiwar" Pat Buchanan (who told O'Reilly last November he favored the sacking of Fallujah) was on Fox Tuesday Night after Reason's "Fonz" Gillespie. (Quite a night.) Below is the exchange on Newsweek. Buchanan even surprised Sean Hannity.
[Verbatim from tape.]
COLMES: Alright, let's talk about Newsweek. Is Newsweek being used as a whipping---whipping boy, whipping person, in a politically correct---whipping tool for those who hate America or those who just want to blame the media in America?
BUCHANAN: What Newsweek did was shameful and stupid. I don't care if the item was true or false. It doesn't make any difference. You don't do something like this which damages a cause for which your countrymen are dying. It puts at risk the boys and men we sent over there. This was an explosive item. It was an inflammatory item. Anyone could see that just looking at it. Why would you stick that in print? What I'm asking about--these fellows--not their journalistic judgment, their common sense!
COLMES: I want to point out in the next segment that other media outlets have indeed said the same thing over the last couple of years, this is not the first time such an incident has been reported. In that case, why Newsweek and why now?
BUCHANAN: Alan, look. Remember when the president used the term crusade right after 9/11? And he backed off because we found out it was explosive. A couple of evangelical Christians talked about Islam and what the Koran taught and they backed off because they had a reaction there. We all know the sensitivity of that. What would a sophisticated magazine like Newsweek put out an inflammatory, damaging thing like that which has really jeopardized our position in Afghanistan, jeopardized that for which Americans are fighting and dying.
HANNITY: Pat, they also abandoned all journalistic standards. They had one source, unidentifiable, and they couldn't corroborate the story but yet I think in an effort to get the president and hurt the Republicans, I think they were just all too giddy to find the next Abu Ghraib story, which is part of a problem we have, an ongoing problem with the liberal media.
BUCHANAN: Well there's no doubt about it they're trying to rush something into print that makes us--that makes our guys look terrible. And I don't think they could have realized--if they weren't they were foolish if they didn't realize the impact an item like that would have on the Islamic world, when we've seen all these explosions. Salman Rusdie almost blew up the entire Islamic world. They had to know the consequences.
HANNITY [surprised]: But even if it was true--you say--they shouldn't have printed it?
BUCHANAN: No, they shouldn't have printed it! I wouldn't have printed it!
HANNITY: Alright, let me go back to the argument, the discussion we were having in the last segment...[Question about why Buchanan didn't garner more votes in 1996.]
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What Newsweek did was shameful and stupid. I don't care if the item was true or false. It doesn't make any difference. You don't do something like this which damages a cause for which your countrymen are dying.
Maybe the cause, empire, is the problem, Pat. Oh, yeah, that's right, you're supposed to be against that...or not?
