Great column today from Gene Lyons on Plame and the Repub spin machine!

[flpoljunkie]

http://www.nwanews.com/story.php?paper=adg§ion=Editorial&storyid=122602

For years, the Republican media machine has dominated national politics. Through a combination of ideological certitude, message discipline and bullying, the right often succeeds in defining issues its way. Outfits like FOX News, The Washington Times and The Wall Street Journal editorial page as well as Rush Limbaugh and his cohorts serve as propaganda organs of the Republican National Committee. Democrats have no equivalent apparatus. Indeed, one of the GOP’s most useful fictions is "liberal bias," the idea that bigcity newspapers and TV networks pick on poor, beleaguered Republicans. But nobody touted Iraq’s imaginary weapons of mass destruction harder than The New York Times and The Washington Post. With Republicans controlling the White House and both houses of Congress, GOP agitprop, as Marxists called it, has grown increasingly brazen. As New York Times columnist Paul Krugman puts it, "We’re living in a country in which there is no longer such a thing as nonpolitical truth. ... here are now few, if any, limits to what conservative politicians can get away with: The faithful will follow the twists and turns of the party line with a loyalty that would have pleased the Comintern."

<>It’s this simple: Wilson was right, Bush was wrong. All the rest is rubbish.

GOP robo-pundits were everywhere last week saying that Wilson lied about Cheney authorizing Wilson’s trip—Newt Gingrich, Rush Limbaugh and the allegedly thoughtful New York Times columnist, David Brooks.

But Wilson never said that. Here’s the relevant passage from his original whistle-blowing article: "In February 2002, I was informed by officials at the Central Intelligence Agency that Vice President Dick Cheney’s office had questions about a particular intelligence report.... The agency officials asked if I would travel to Niger to check out the story so they could provide a response to the vice president’s office."

Who sent him?" Agency officials."

Did his wife, the secret agent," authorize" the trip, as Rove sneered to reporters? Not that it matters, but no. Her bosses did. "She was not in a position to send Joe Wilson anywhere except to bed without his supper," Larry Johnson, a former CIA colleague, told the Los Angeles Times. Sometimes even the most brazen agitprop can’t stand against reality. Under Communist rule, Moscow had two newspapers. The standard joke was that "There is no Pravda in Izvestia, and there is no Izvestia in Pravda" (" There is no Truth in News, and there is no News in Truth. ") No, Americans aren’t there yet, but the Wilson/Plame affair is pushing them in that direction.