So, it may have happened that NBC's amusing and serious main news-reader made the mistake of thinking he was onboard a helicopter that took a hit of enemy fire.
The actual story is something...less.
“The story actually started with a terrible moment a dozen years back during the invasion of Iraq when the helicopter we were traveling in was forced down after being hit by an RPG,” Williams said on the broadcast. “Our traveling NBC News team was rescued, surrounded and kept alive by an armor mechanized platoon from the U.S. Army 3rd Infantry.”
Williams and his camera crew were actually aboard a Chinook in a formation that was about an hour behind the three helicopters that came under fire, according to crew member interviews.
That Chinook took no fire and landed later beside the damaged helicopter due to an impending sandstorm from the Iraqi desert, according to Sgt. 1st Class Joseph Miller, who was the flight engineer on the aircraft that carried the journalists.
“No, we never came under direct enemy fire to the aircraft,” he said Wednesday.
So, it was more like he was danger-adjacent. Still could have been him if things were different. He isn't any worse than he was yesterday, and there are lies about the Iraq War that came from news readers we respected at his level and so on for a little over a decade.. That's a real concern I have, and one I still want the news to report on.
Should he get sacked for being this close and not more to danger?
I'm a blogger. It's always 2004 in my mind. Was he in any jeopardy ever? Tell me where on the G.I. Bear the enemy hurt you. Was it like Hillary Clinton in Bosnia or what?
I'm sorry, turns out, I am the kind of blogger who always is hating. But I am still so much more about the aluminum tubes and the yellowcake story-fail and all those things--lying about Iraq is like a national pastime, isn't it? If Brian Williams went to a danger zone he was probably plenty-freaked-out. Maybe he saw a little flack.
I don't know how he misremembers. He just isn't the worst of the lot. (The very worst got medals.)
3 comments:
Crap. More than one thing can be true. Brian Williams pumping his career with a story is bad. Claiming he 'got confused' is unacceptable. You don't 'get confused' about being, or NOT being, forced down by RPG fire in a combat zone. He made career hay - much, as you rightly point out, as Hilary did - out of making a dishonest claim that did nothing but make him seem braver and more dashing than he was. Sorry Brian, BZZZZZT, thanks for playing, we have some lovely parting gifts for you, but you need to go away now.
The fact that what this careerist, grasping stenographer and hagiographer did something that destroys for all time whatever 'credibility' he inexplicably had has NO bearing whatsoever on the foul lies and manipulations used to sell a pointless, aggressive, criminal war of choice.
One was an economic crime, one of felony dishonesty that should cost him his teevee career (he'll do fine with his books and his speaking career) while the others were crimes against humanity that cost a million lives and ruined ten million more and should be tried in The Hague, but both are crimes, and both should have consequences...
I don't even think he did it for any benefit other than it was a good story--and in some cases, proximity to hazard has a funny way of playing on a person's mind. But one thing I know for sure is, if Williams has to go for this, then I do not want to see Rumsfeld, Rice, Cheney, Wolfowitz, or any of their asses on my television for lies far graver and more destructive, unless they are getting the perp-walk.
Brian Williams is at least as worthless as any other media toady, V.S.
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