Think Progress Takes On Powerline

Is John Hinderaker Nuts?

Today, Powerline’s John Hinderaker wrote a post entitled “Is Murtha Nuts?” He claims that during an appearance today on Face the Nation “pretty much every ‘fact’ that Murtha hysterically tossed out is wrong.”

Hinderaker then proceeds to “fact check” Murtha’s appearance, which for him seems to mean using words like “absurd” and “unbelievable.” But actually, it’s Hinderaker who, with remarkable consistency, gets it wrong. Here’s Hinderaker vs. the facts —

Sadly, either Judd at Think Progress can't read, or he's more likely intentionally manipulating his source materials in a fairly sad attempt at fisking Powerline. He uses the quote below to suggest the Bush administration claimed Iraq had nuclear weapons, which would make Murtha correct and Powerline wrong.

Vice President Cheney, Meet the Press, 3/16/03:

We know that based on intelligence that he has been very, very good at hiding these kinds of efforts. He’s had years to get good at it and we know he has been absolutely devoted to trying to acquire nuclear weapons. And we believe he has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons.

First, you can't reconstitute nuclear weapons, so Cheney was obviously talking about a program there, not a weapon. But there are several entries in the same transcript linked above which more than clarify the administration's position Judd elected to overlook.

Cheney: he will be back again rebuilding his BW and CW capabilities, and once again reconstituting his nuclear program. ... We know he’s reconstituted these programs since the Gulf War. We know he’s out trying once again to produce nuclear weapons

Those statements and more have now been corroborated by the recent ABC tapes, so it isn't Hindraker who has it wrong there - it's Judd and Murtha. Then there's this:

Hinderaker: “Murtha claims the unemployment rate in Iraq is 60%, which is unbelievable on its face. This is a figure that is sometimes cited on far-left blogs, which I suspect are Murtha’s source.”

Voice of America (federal government news service), 2/8/06:

Although the Iraqi soldiers say they joined the army to fight terrorism and defend Iraq, in a country with an estimated 30 to 60 percent unemployment rate, the contractor says money is also a big incentive.

Perhaps the VOA and Think Progress missed this CNN article from 2005:

While Iraq's unemployment figures were high, the survey found that most eligible workers -- excluding the military -- were able to keep the jobs they had held since before March 2003.

Iraq's unemployment rate was 10.5 percent of a population of 27 million people, the report found. When the figure of workers who had given up looking for a job -- discouraged workers -- was included, the unemployment number increased to 18.4 percent.

Powerline 2 - Judd - 0. Interesting enough, the next report TP links has even another unemployment rate listed in a different section - page 31 - 24% - 40% also making TP and Murtha wrong. But as for water TP and Murtha are way off, again.

Hinderaker: “‘Water production, only 30 percent of the people getting water.’ This seems pretty obviously false; otherwise, 70% of the population would be dead.”

TP - Brookings Institution, Iraq Index, 3/2/06:

Not sure where TP got that above but below is from page 36 of the same report:

PUBLIC SERVICES

Percentage of houses with access to electricity grid  98%

Percentage of homes with access to piped water 78%

Water treatment facilities rehabilitated 22

Capability of serving potable water 3.1 million additional people since fall of

Saddam Hussein

Moving on - more from TP:

Hinderaker: “Murtha says 80% of Iraqis ‘want us out of there.’ This too is silly, if by ‘out of there’ Murtha means that 80% agree with his call for immediate withdrawal.”

Brookings Institution, Iraq Index, 3/2/06:

That data is not from the Brookings survey, it's included but is from a Time/ABC poll from 2005. Perhaps Judd missed that. You can find it on page 44. See page 37 to see that, yes, 87% of Iraqis would like a time-line for withdrawal. And see page 38 - while the overall percentage of Iraqis who somewhat or strongly approve of attacks on US forces, the number is skewed by the Sunni's. For Kurds it's 16% and 41% for Shia. Most amazing of all is also on page 38 64% of Iraqis feel Iraq is headed in the right direction. Again, if not for the Sunni's it would be in the high nineties.

Last bit:

Hinderaker: “Likewise his claim that there is ‘no al Qaeda connection.’ In light of everything we now know, that statement can only be described as ignorant.”

Washington Post, 6/17/04:

The Sept. 11 commission reported yesterday that it has found no “collaborative relationship” between Iraq and al Qaeda, challenging one of the Bush administration’s main justifications for the war in Iraq.

Here TP is obviously playing apples and oranges. What we now know can be summed up in one name - Al Zarqawi, or as Powerline stated:

And, even if we charitably assume that Murtha is behind the curve on this one, how about Zarqawi? How about Ansar al-Islam? How about the terrorist training camps? How about the many connections between Saddam's Iraq and al Qaeda that are documented in the Senate Intelligence Committee's report?

Consequently there are only a few possible conclusions. Judd at Think Progress is either nuts, dumb, intentionally mis-reporting the facts, or all of the above.

Comments

[Douglas Fitzgerald]

In no particular order. -Al Zarqawi is a Jordanian. If connections him justified an invasion, should Jordan be invaded. There is also the mistake of equating location with connection. Al Zarqawi was in U.S. controlled Kurdish territory before the invasion of Iraq where he would have been easy to pick up and W choose not to.
1. “Three former Bush Administration officials who worked on intelligence and national security issues said the prewar evidence tying Al Qaeda was tenuous, exaggerated and often at odds with the conclusions of key intelligence agencies.” [National Journal, 8/9/03]

2. Declassified documents “undercut Bush administration claims before the war that Hussein had links to Al Qaeda.” [LA Times, 7/19/03].

3. “The chairman of the monitoring group appointed by the United Nations Security Council to track Al Qaeda told reporters that his team had found no evidence linking Al Qaeda to Saddam Hussein.” [NY Times, 6/27/03]

page 45 of the Brookings report, Iraqis who believe attacks against British and American troops are justified 45% (65% in Maysan province)
Iraqis “strongly opposed” to presence of Coalition troops 82%
Iraqis who feel less secure because of the occupation 67%
Iraqis who do not have confidence in multi-national forces 72%
Iraqis who rarely have safe, clean, water 71%
Iraqis who never have enough electricity 47%
Iraqis whose sewage system rarely works 70%
Southern Iraqis unemployed 40%
- the unemployment figures are tough to pend down, mark that one up to which source one wants to choose. The administration has been caught fudging those number before. ("This decrease in employment numbers reflects correction of a previous accounting error," said a small-type footnote at the bottom of the unclassified 22 September document.
"The overstating probably fits with the tendency of meeting the master's desire for happy news"
Rick Barton, Centre for Strategic and International Studies
Asked to explain the error, USAID spokesman Jose Fuentes said he was looking into it.01 October 2004)

The administration clearly claimed that Iraq had nukes,CLAIM: “We found the weapons of mass destruction.”– President Bush, 5/29/03
“The regime of Saddam Hussein cultivated ties to terror while it built weapons of mass destruction.” – President Bush’s UN speech, 9/23/03,

Iraq inflation soars to 22%-February 14, 2006 - Iraq inflation shot to 22% in January driven by hikes in essential commodities like food, fuel, transport and rent.

The latest figures by the Central Statistical Bureau show that January’s inflation level was 5.8% higher than the preceding month.

Its estimated that as much as 67% of Iraqi deaths between 2005 and 2005 were caused by Iraqis killing other Iraqis - civil war ? how about a sustained instability ? Maybe its time to change course.
That said, I think Judd could have put up a more thorough rebuttal, just as Hindrocket could have been more factual.

[Dean Moriarity]

Zarqawi was in northern Iraq, in a part we controlled. We had a chance before the war to eliminate him, but Rumsfeld nixed the idea. You've got to be kidding me if you think this actually supports YOUR argument. Idiots.

[sigmund, carl and alfred]

He's been busted as a fraud with little, if any, credibility. That ought to cement his position as a lefty 'wise man.'

[Boronx]

PUBLIC SERVICES

Percentage of houses with access to electricity grid 98%

Percentage of homes with access to piped water 78%

Water treatment facilities rehabilitated 22

Just as "98% connected to grid" tells you nothing about who's receiving power, "78% connected to water" doesn't tell you who's receiving water they can drink. (Nor is it necessarily true that someone who can't get clean water piped to their house is going to die, as Hinderaker insinuates.)

Employment: Hinderaker said Murtha lied about unemployment. We can all agree the voice of America is not an Anti-american institution, so 60% is at least within the upward bound of reasonable discussion.

Hinderaker: “Murtha says 80% of Iraqis ‘want us out of there.’ This too is silly, if by ‘out of there’ Murtha means that 80% agree with his call for immediate withdrawal.”

Here hinderaker is putting words in Murtha's mouth. Indefensible on it's face.

As to Cheney's nuclear remark, which he didn't bother to correct for sometime, and was clearly aimed at someone who pays a bit less attention than you do, if he merely forgot to say "program" at the end, then so did Murtha, and even if Cheney had tacked it on, he still would have been lying.

If you want to take on a bad debunking, you need look no farther than your own post. You could make blog history with the first ever self-referential fisking.

[Dave in NYC]

You're missing the point. Hinderocket asked "Is Murtha Nuts?" and accused him of 9 falsehoods. But there are fairly credible sources that back up most, if not all, of Murtha's claims. At worst, Murtha can be accused of selectively citing data that supports his views - which is what the vast majority of right-wing pundits and blogs, including Powerline, do on a regular basis.

Is Murtha nuts? I don't think so. All of the squabbling between ThinkProgress and various right-wing blogs is besides the point.

[Zwack]

Greetings,

I'm not going to comment on the issue of which sets of figures to believe or not, but if you look at the Brookings Institution Iraq Index on Page 45 you will find a British Ministry of Defence poll from August 2005 which states "Iraqis who rarely have safe, clean, water 71%"

So that is where the figure that you state you are not sure where that came from. Now you know.

Looking at a lot of these figures it is open to debate. My reading of the differing sets of figures is that 78% of homes have water piped into them, but that this water is not necessarily safe. That would reconcile both different sets of figures.

Z.

[thehim]

I guess I'll pile on here with a comment. I find it interesting that we're actually discussing the accuracy of an unemployment rate figure in a country with a security situation so poor that multiple daytime curfews have been necessary in the last several weeks. Hell, 98% of Iraqis could technically have jobs, but the unemployment rate is close to 0% when you can't leave your house.

[thehim]

Ugh, I need a fact-checker. :) Make that:

is close to 100% when you can't leave your house.

[orwell]

I too read the Brookings PDF and commend Doug Fitzgerald and Boronx for both giving a more accurate picture that Murtha, ThinkProgress, Hinderaker and this blog. Too many people are worried about winning their arguments than what the reality of the situation is. All this back and forth between the blogs, spin and distortion should teach you is to go to the source and make your own conclusions.

[Ben Regenspan]

"For Kurds it's 16% and 41% for Shia. Most amazing of all is also on page 38 64% of Iraqis feel Iraq is headed in the right direction. Again, if not for the Sunni's it would be in the high nineties."

This is quite a bizarre argument. Of course the Sunnis "skew" the numbers. This is exactly the problem. The Sunnis live in Iraq, too, and, by definition, you can't expect an end to sectarian conflict without their cooperation.
-----
"Not sure where TP got that above but below is from page 36 of the same report:"

If you search the PDF to which you link, you will find that the information is from a British MoD poll conducted nationwide. It's survey data, and not in direct contradiction to the information you cite ("Percentage of houses with access to electricity grid 98%," etc.) Although most houses have access to the grid, the power is on and off in many areas; the same goes for water and purification facilities.
-----
"That data is not from the Brookings survey, it's included but is from a Time/ABC poll from 2005. Perhaps Judd missed that."

No, he cited Brookings' Iraq Index. The index is a compilation of statistics from various sources, as its introduction makes clear.
----
As for the differing figures, that's par for the course. There are no perfect statistics from Iraq, and we have to go with those that look to be the most accurate. Personally, I would have preferred that Murtha and then Judd had cited a full range of possible figures from credible sources and spoken more judiciously. But I'd also suggest that calling someone "dumb" for selectively citing figures and misinterpreting information in the manner that you just did is throwing stones from a glass house.

[Dan]

Interesting that none of those visiting have addressed the key stat - 68% of Iraqis feel the country is going in the right direction. Any American not there would be a fool to argue with that IMO. Ansd something like 80% want a "timeline" for withdrawal, which could be interpreted to mean that desipte their misgivings they are undetstanding the the realities and willing to stay the course right now.

Fortunately for them, the Bush administration feels the same way and isn't abandoning them as some would seem to prefer.

[John in Chicago]

How sad that even at this point there are those that continue to deny reality. Iraq was an enourmous waste of american resourses, plain and simple.

Arguing over semantics when its obvious that many were deceived into supporting an uneccesary preemptive invasion only makes your reich wingers look even more pathetic than you already do.

20,000 US casualties in Iraq so far. When is it enough? No WMDs, no Qaeda connections, no nuclear program. Whatsoever.

and here is the whole sad lot of you arguing over SEMANTICS. And when you're not busy arguing semantics, you attack the messenger and ignore/distort the message.

I can understand the ones who are paid to do this, but the rest of you? You're either bigots who just want to see Arabs killed and too afraid to admit it, or you're hopelessly ignorant.

Do something good for your country and start calling for our troops to be withdrawn from that hellhole. Or, you can continue to bring more water onto the sinking GOP ship.

But personally, I'm fine if you all choose option B and help the neocon ship sink faster.

[John in Chicago]

"Interesting that none of those visiting have addressed the key stat - 68% of Iraqis feel the country is going in the right direction" - Dan

THAT'S the "key stat"? Boy, that must be some tasty phucking kool aid.

and here was silly old me thinking these stats were a tad bit more "key":

- 20,000 US Casualties

- $200,000,000,000.00 US Taxpayers dollars spent

- ZERO WMD's and/or proof of reconstituted WMD programs found

But hey, none of those are as spinnable as that all-important "68%" stat.

One could easily speculate that out of that 68%, 50% think its "moving in the right direction" because they are the ones planting roadside bombs and they are enjoying watching the results of their work.

Quit being/acting like a phucktard. Its very unbecoming. and detrimental to your country.

[Lily Light]

Percentage of houses with access to electricity grid 98%

As stated by others here, "connection to grid" doesn't indicate availablity of electricity. The table on page 30 is much more illustrative. e.g., average hours of elctricity per day for January 2006: 9.8 hours vs. pre-war 16-24 hours.

Maybe this is considered "enough electricity." But I tend to think Murtha's statements are a bit more accurate than Hinderaker's.

[James]

Dan, this was not one of your better attempts to make Dems look bad.