But stations follow the ratings, and the ratings indicate, sadly, that the wild exaggerations and inventions of Rhodes attract more listeners than does the thoughtful analysis of serious people like Cuomo and Hart.

The right gets away with outright lies ( specialty of Rush and BillO)

The right gets away with outright lies ( specialty of Rush and BillO)

Name one lie for either person provide link.

Records and interviews show how the Bush administration has used its control over access and information in an effort to transform the analysts into a kind of media Trojan horse — an instrument intended to shape terrorism coverage from inside the major TV and radio networks.

Analysts have been wooed in hundreds of private briefings with senior military leaders, including officials with significant influence over contracting and budget matters, records show. They have been taken on tours of Iraq and given access to classified intelligence. They have been briefed by officials from the White House, State Department and Justice Department, including Mr. Cheney, Alberto R. Gonzales and Stephen J. Hadley.

In turn, members of this group have echoed administration talking points, sometimes even when they suspected the information was false or inflated. Some analysts acknowledge they suppressed doubts because they feared jeopardizing their access.

A few expressed regret for participating in what they regarded as an effort to dupe the American public with propaganda dressed as independent military analysis.

“It was them saying, ‘We need to stick our hands up your back and move your mouth for you,’ ” Robert S. Bevelacqua, a retired Green Beret and former Fox News analyst, said.

The challenge was made and repeated to point out one lie Rush has told. I linked to six quick ones out of hundreds. Show me that all six contain misquotes or other fabrications and I promise never to link to Media Matters again on this site. Otherwise, the evidence for Rush's lying stands for itself.

The challenge was made and repeated to point out one lie Rush has told. I linked to six quick ones out of hundreds.

Okay -- perhaps they don't outright lie. I'll buy that one.

"I want to say one thing to the American people. I want you to listen to me. I’m going to say this again. I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky. I never told anybody to lie, not a single time — never. These allegations are false."

"What, you mean retired generals have a relationship with the military?

Heavens."

"I find it astonishing and disturbing that you find it even faintly surprising that retired generals are repeating things they hear from the government..."

... or that the DoD has an interest in seeing that these generals have current information, or that the DoD tells them this information, or that when they do, it's the story as DoD sees it."

"Your assertion that these "talking points" are, ipso facto, "lies" says more about your intellectual capabilities and personal biases than about the generals.

“It was them saying, ‘We need to stick our hands up your back and move your mouth for you,’ ” Robert S. Bevelacqua, a retired Green Beret and former Fox News analyst, said.

Kenneth Allard, a former NBC military analyst who has taught information warfare at the National Defense University, said the campaign amounted to a sophisticated information operation. “This was a coherent, active policy,” he said.

As conditions in Iraq deteriorated, Mr. Allard recalled, he saw a yawning gap between what analysts were told in private briefings and what subsequent inquiries and books later revealed.

“Night and day,” Mr. Allard said, “I felt we’d been hosed.”

One trip participant, General Nash of ABC, said some briefings were so clearly “artificial” that he joked to another group member that they were on “the George Romney memorial trip to Iraq,” a reference to Mr. Romney’s infamous claim that American officials had “brainwashed” him into supporting the Vietnam War during a tour there in 1965, while he was governor of Michigan.

Re the situation in Iraq: “I saw immediately in 2003 that things were going south,” General Vallely, one of the Fox analysts on the trip, recalled in an interview with The Times.

The Pentagon, though, need not have worried.

“You can’t believe the progress,” General Vallely told Alan Colmes of Fox News upon his return. He predicted the insurgency would be “down to a few numbers” within months.

“We could not be more excited, more pleased,” Mr. Cowan told Greta Van Susteren of Fox News. There was barely a word about armor shortages or corrupt Iraqi security forces. And on the key strategic question of the moment — whether to send more troops — the analysts were unanimous.

“I am so much against adding more troops,” General Shepperd said on CNN.

"Tell me, can you bathe and dress yourself, or do you have assistance, or are you living in a group home?"

None of the Media Matters breathless articles is reporting what could credibly be called a 'lie.' They are opinions.

From the June 17 broadcast of The Rush Limbaugh Show:

LIMBAUGH: The [9-11 Commission] report said that Mohamed Atta did meet with an Iraqi Intelligence Agency, or agent, in Prague on April 9th of 2001. We've known this for a long time.

From the 9-11 Commission "Staff Statement 16":

We have examined the allegation that Atta met with an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague on April 9. Based on the evidence available -- including investigation by Czech and U.S. authorities plus detainee reporting -- we do not believe that such a meeting occurred.

Tell me, can you make an argument without resorting to ad hominems?

You people probably think those swift boat guys were brave truth-tellers, eh?

"It's simply stupid to think that the Pentagon doesn't try to get its version out, and even more stupid to think they wouldn't do so through retired military members known to be in contact with the news people and known to be sympathetic."

Before he was a prestigious military policy writer, Boot was simply a generic rightwing hack at The Wall Street Journal's hack-laden editorial page. While there he, among other things, wrote an editorial attacking public health officials that was edited by tobacco lobbyist Steven Milloy.

The only reason we know anything about this is that it happens to have come up in tobacco-related litigation. It's possible, in principle, that when Boot was writing rightwing regulatory policy journalism for the Journal he just so happened to let one of his pieces be edited by a lobbyist and that that piece just so happened to have come up in a lawsuit. Much more likely, however, is that he did this on various occasions and there just so happens to have been a lawsuit that uncovered this.

(And whenever I hear the name Randi Rhodes, I think Ozzy Osborne's original guitarist.)

After Kerry released his naval records to them, they confirmed the records corroborated his story.

Extra-Credit: I thought I knew. But I looed on Wikipedia and I was wrong.