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| Home Front: Politix |
| A China Story Bob Woodward Chose Not to Tell |
| 2021-09-20 |
| [American Spectator] In a just world, if the reporting of Bob Woodward and Robert Costa in their new book Peril is accurate, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark A. Milley would be sharpening his ceremonial sword and planning seppuku. Woodward and Costa have reported that Milley circumvented the chain of command and made unauthorized calls to CCP Gen. Li Zuocheng. If Woodward and Costa got the story wrong, however, they should be the ones sharpening their swords. Although more reliable than most in Big Media, Woodward has reported many stories of questionable accuracy over the years. There was the dubious "potted plant" signal for the equally dubious "Deep Throat," the imaginative deathbed confession of CIA Director William Casey, and the misinterpreted "slam dunk" quote by former CIA Director George Tenet among others. More troubling than what Woodward may have misreported is what he did not report at all. Like so many of his colleagues, he has repeatedly betrayed the American public by ignoring stories of major consequence. As it happens, his single greatest oversight involves China, specifically its role in the 1996 presidential election. Woodward was not lacking opportunity. He wrote a book about the 1996 election, The Choice, and had better access to key players than any reporter in Washington. Yet somehow he failed to mention that Chinese interests bought and paid for President Bill Clinton’s victory over Bob Dole. To miss the most striking feature of a campaign he covered in depth suggests not incompetence on Woodward’s part, but complicity. There was a lot to miss. In the way of background, the Democrats got drubbed in the 1994 mid-terms and blamed Clinton for the losses. The media were as dismayed as the Democrats. Historians tracing the date of their shift from a tolerable bias to an intolerable corruption should look to this election and the two years that followed. Few reporters wanted to give the scary new House Speaker Newt Gingrich a Republican president, and many did what they had to do to prevent it. Woodward was among them. With an approval rating at a dangerously low 45 percent, Clinton was looking at a one-term presidency. If he were to have any chance in 1996, he would have to raise money, lots of it. With the financially strapped DNC hesitant to pony up, he and Hillary promptly headed to the one place that welcomed his business, the Riady crime family HQ in Indonesia. The ethnically Chinese Riadys, Mochtar and son James, had started investing in Clinton while he was still governor of Arkansas. More than once they bailed him out during the 1992 campaign and not just for the sport of it. In 1994, Clinton paid his Chinese loan sharks some of their vig by getting their "man in America," John Huang, a job in the Commerce Department. In May of that same year, Clinton paid more of it by "delinking" human rights from the renewal of China’s most favored nation status. |
| Posted by:Besoeker |
| #2 Yep. Don't make the story false though. |
| Posted by: Skidmark 2021-09-20 13:40 |
| #1 Woodward is probably as bad or worse of a drooling stupe than Bidet. Washington DC deserves them both, as it has cultivated them. They are also roundly deserved by their fans and admirers. |
| Posted by: M. Murcek 2021-09-20 05:00 |