Two More Bloggers Deny Politico Report About Reid Disparaging Generals
By Greg Sargent | bio
Okay, we've just spoken to two more bloggers who were on the conference call with Harry Reid.
John Aravosis, who founded and runs the popular AmericaBlog, and Joe Sudbay, a D.C. political strategist who also writes for AmericaBlog, told me in interviews that say they don't remember Reid describing General Pace as incompetent or hear Reid disparaging Petraeus, as The Politico is reporting.
"I don't remember him saying this," Aravosis told us when asked about the assertion that Reid had called Paced "incompetent."
Sudbay, meanwhile, added: "If he had said something really juicy, we would have posted that ourselves."
Both Aravosis and Sudbay remember Reid discussing the two Generals, but said they don't remember him talking about them in the way that the Politico characterized the discussion. The Politico story claimed that Reid had called Pace "incompetent," and added that Reid had made "similar disparaging remarks" about Petraeus. Both Aravosis and Sudbay said they didn't remember Reid making any disparaging remarks about Petraeus.
The Politico story has set off an uproar, with Drudge linking it, John McCain and other leading Republicans attacking Reid over it, and White House press secretary Tony Snow using the story to slam Reid as anti-military at his press briefing today. But as we reported below, three other prominent bloggers on the call -- with Aravosis and Sudbay, that makes five total now -- didn't hear Reid say any such thing.
The Politico reporter who wrote the story is declining to comment on the bloggers' assertion and declining to comment on whether he spoke to anyone who was on the call. All five of these bloggers say they didn't hear from the Politico reporter.
Aravosis, meanwhile, pointed out that it was unlikely that the Politico could have gotten this from anyone on the call.
"Why would somebody on this call, which was on the record, hear something so newsworthy, and instead of posting it, call the Politico and tell them this on background?" Aravosis asked. "We would have written about it ourselves."
Intriguingly, Reid isn't denying directly that he said the remarks attributed to him, but he did say at a press conference today that he held Petraeus in high regard.
To be clear: We don't know what was said on the call, and we're not sure why Reid's office won't say so more directly. We're just trying to find out as much as we can by talking to the people who were on it.
It's possible, for instance, that Reid did mildly criticize Pace, and even conceivably Petraeus, without using the word "incompetent." Of course, without that one-word quote on the front page of the Politico, and then on Drudge, it almost certainly wouldn't have created the explosion that it did.
Meanwhile, AmericaBlog has much more on this in this post, which addresses this and an another important but overlooked aspect of this whole story. Check it out.
http://bobgeiger.blogspot.com/2007/06/politico-fails- journalism-100.html
http://electioncentral.tpmcafe.com/blog/electioncentral/2007/jun/14/two_more_bloggers_deny_politico_report_about_reid_disparaging_generals