[techweenie]

As happily and thoughtlessly cut and pasted here by the uncritical, the RNC anti-Wilson talking points have driven discussion for the past week (soon to be upstaged by discussions of Roberts...).

In the RNC e-mail in the Rove slime wars last week, there were four big lies at the heart of the RNC positions. Yet nobody challenged the lies (repeated by Ken Mehlman) on any of the shows I listened to.

Lie #1: Wilson siad Cheney sent him to Niger.

(Wilson never said that.)

Lie #2: Wilson said he had definitive proof Saddam wasn’t trying to buy uranium from Niger.

(Wilson never said that, although there’s still no evidence Saddam was doing so.)

Lie #3: Rove never said her (Plame’s) name, so he did nothing wrong.

(The *identity* of a CIA operative isn’t just that person’s name, but a specific description, i.e., “Joe Wilson’s wife” or "Laura' Bush's husband." It might skirt illegality by a whisker, but it’s unethical in the extreme.)

Lie #4: Rove claimed he ‘didn’t even know her name.’

(Wrong. If he didn’t know long before that, he was told her name by Novak three days before his conversation with Cooper.)

Fox, for one, just repeated RNC talking points uncriticaly in their “news.” But that’s hardly a surprise. After all, the Chairman, CEO and President of Fox News, Roger Ailes, held these three jobs before: 1967-68 media adviser to Richard M. Nixon Presidential Campaign. 1984 consultant to Ronald Reagan; 1988 George H. W. Bush's Presidential campaign. To say Fox News is the propaganda arm of the RNC isn't much of an exaggeration.