Reply #6: OK, I turned on C-SPAN after her interview was in progress so

[DemBones DemBones]

maybe I missed something but I wasn't hearing her the same way you were. After I read your post, I replayed her interview (the wonders of TiVo!)

The first observation I'd make is that she was nervous and that seemed to cause her to smile inappropriately (inappropriately because she did it while talking about serious matters.) She also "talks with her hands" much too much for "serious television news" (though that in itself is an oxymoron, isn't it?) and she touches her air (big no-no on camera.) However, she is a correspondent for UPI, not trained to appear on television to read the news. TiVo can only replay the portion I watched, not go to the beginning of the program when my tv wasn't on, but I'm sitting here rewatching all I did see and transcribing her exact words in parts of the segment.

The first call I heard was a man saying "You're sitting there all happy and bouncy and smiling, where the hell is your outrage?" She replied, quite correctly in my opinion, "It's not my job to get outraged." She went on to say that her job was like that of the reporter for Stars & Stripes who covered the story about them (obviously wounded GIs) having to pay for their hospital meals, meaning her job is to report the story, and "It's your job to get outraged." I agree with her, she's a reporter, not a commentator, not an editorialist.

On the issue of WMD in Iraq, she asserted that we (reporters) at the Pentagon (which is where I was) "were pinning those officials down on 'Where's the imminent threat? What has changed in the last six months that all of a sudden is under a much greater threat from Saddam Hussein? And Rumsfeld eventually in each of these briefings would get around to saying 'There is no smoking gun. Nothing has really changed except for our sense of vulnerability.' So as far as that's concerned, I don't think that anyone should necessarily be surprised that we're finding out now that there wasn't an imminent threat because I don't think there was. I think that if anybody, if anybody failed, if anyone failed, it was Congress for not questioning that more, because they're the only ones that have any, any sort of power to do that on the White House."

I read the first reply to your thread, and your reply to that -- both of you angry at Ms. Hess's statement about Congress. But is she wrong? If her recollection of "Rumsfeld eventually in each of these briefings would get around to saying 'There is no smoking gun. Nothing has really changed except for our sense of vulnerability" is accurate -- and if she reported it that way for UPI at the time -- is she wrong to say Congress should have questioned it more? The administration used a lot of exaggeration and scare tactics ("What if we do nothing until the smoking gun is a mushroom cloud?") and got that message out a lot on news talk shows, etc., but were the wire services accurately reporting that Rumsfeld said only our sense of vulnerability was changed and there was no smoking gun? Shouldn't Congress look more critically at news, look for actual reporting without editorializing?

Next, Brian Lamb asked her if the Iraqi situation will ever be solved and she thinks it will, despite any bad or good done by the US, if security can be improved. She spoke of the Iraqi people being intelligent and well-educated. Then a guy called in from Harleysville, PA, said "Good morning to everyone there at C-SPAN." Brian said "Go ahead," and this class act said, "Miss Hess, fuckin' ho." Brian apologized and from what he said, it seemed this was not the first call of that sort during the interview, which would tend to make her nervous if she wasn't to begin with.

Next, she answered questions from Brian and talked well about troops relating better to Iraqis in the smaller towns, where security is better, and about the curfew and its impact on people's lives. Normally, because of the great heat most of the year, Iraqi people stay inside most of the day and go out at night, eating dinner between 11 p.m. and 4 a.m., but now there's an 11 p.m. curfew so restaurants have suffered, etc.

Ms. Hess was very emotional about the August 7 shooting of the Iraqi family at a checkpoint but she smiled while she was first talking about it, apparently smiling to try to keep her composure, because her voice was breaking and she seemed about to burst into tears. Later, when Brian brought her back to the topic and she was discussing the surviving family suing the US, she was more in control and talked without inappropriate smiling or seeming to be on the verge of losing control. In her first telling of the story, though, she explained that soldiers would set up temporary checkpoints that were unlighted (no electricity) and in Baghdad it's common to see men standing around with guns so at night Iraqis couldn't be sure who the armed troops were. Also in Baghdad there are many carjackings, so Iraqis are very wary. That explains a lot about the misunderstandings behind many incidents -- why Iraqis would drive through checkpoints. What I got from her was that she understood the viewpoints of the troops and the Iraqis.

The call from the woman who said "liberals who'd been calling" were "slaves to the mainstream media" and "weren't hearing the propaganda they wanted to hear" from Ms. Hess ("but I love my soldiers") was strange. I guess she thought Ms. Hess was on her side. I didn't think that Pamela Hess was taking sides -- and loved it when she said it didn't have anything to do with liberals, etc.

So, what did I miss? I realize she works for UPI, which is owned by Moon, but what she said didn't seem slanted to me. And Helen Thomas continued working for UPI for years after Moon bought it and she's never been one not to tell it like it is.