despite facts to the contrary. Here's a good summary in this Huffpo post:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-fiderer/the-nobel-prize-and-russe_b_9307.htmlHis technique was to use lists of false assertions to buttress his position before questioning guests on his show to sell his arguments or help them sell their spin. He also used the technique to make it impossible for an opponent to refute all the lies and answer his question in a reasonable amount of time. It drove me crazy, that's why I didn't care to watch his show.
From the link above:
"Russert took it to the next level, prefacing his bogus question with five specific falsehoods. This put the respondent, in this case former Congressman Tom Andrews, at a disadvantage. With cameras rolling, Andrews couldn’t easily backtrack and identify those falsehoods, one by one. Read the following passage, and decide if you think Russert intended to deceive. (The numbered falsehoods have an answer key below. )
After the Persian Gulf War, the inspectors went in and for several years could not find any remnants of a nuclear program (1). They concluded that there probably wasn't one (2) until Saddam's son-in-law defected (3). He then was enticed to come back to Iraq when he was shot. David Kay, the chief weapons inspector at that time (4), has sat at that table six weeks ago and said but for that defector, Saddam would have 20 nuclear bombs today (5). How do you know that over the last four years when there have been no inspectors in Iraq that Saddam has not built up his weapons of mass destruction, put them on mobile carts, as the administration has suggested, and you'll never find him through the inspection process (6)?
Correction Key:
1. Inspectors discovered and destroyed remnants of Iraq’s nuclear programs in the months subsequent to the Persian Gulf War.
2. Inspectors never concluded “there probably wasn’t” a program.
3. Since inspectors never made such a conclusion, their minds wouldn’t be changed by a defection in 1995.
4. David Kay was never a weapons inspector after the end of 1991.
5. To reiterate, Kay’s (debatable) point on the December 8, 2002 Meet the Press was that but for the inspectors’ discovery and destruction of the nuclear program in 1991, Iraq would have 20 nuclear weapons.
6. The dissembling question. Russert’s question about moving WMD on mobile carts reflects an ignorance of the current technology, which makes inspections far more reliable than they were in when the inspectors left 1998. It’s like saying, “How do you know Saddam’s agents won’t move around in darkness of night, when no one can see them?” A small sample of articles on the subject mentioned, among other tools, the following:
∑ Radiation monitoring devices examine the flow of materials between locations.
∑ Radar systems that can penetrate the ground to scan for signs of tunnels and underground bunkers.
∑ Miniature sensors that can constantly monitor the air, water and soil for radioactive materials or other signs of WMD.
∑ Environmental swipe sampling, where dust around any building is analyzed by electron microscope or mass spectrometry to determine the exact nature of any type of an enrichment process.
∑ A portable scope that can detect several different isotopes of radioactive material and display on a screen exactly what fissile material is present."
He was also expert at using straw man arguments. Boring and uninformative. He relied on the intellectual laziness of his audience to sell his message. I can't believe any informed Dem placed much value in his opinions.
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