Bush is back

He hasn't gone away just yet

The Huffington Post reports that

The George W. Bush Institute -- the "action- oriented think tank" that is part of Bush's Presidential Center -- will co-produce a public television show hosted by its executive director, Ambassador James Glassman, in a rare convergence of public broadcasting and a partisan research organization.

The show will b braodcast on America's PBS and two episodes of the show have already been filmed

It was 5 years ago today

Greg Mitchell writing on Editor and Publisher reminds us of a 5 year anniversary.

Five years ago tonight, on March 6, 2003, President Bush conducted a televised press conference – less than two weeks before he would order the U.S. invasion of Iraq -- stating in his intro, “We will not wait to see what terrorists or terrorist states could do with weapons of mass destruction.”

It was a time as Greg reminds us that journalism failed in its role as the 4th estate,something that some organisations have yet to get over.

As Greg describes

It was the mood of the affair that was most noteworthy. Bush smiled and made his usual quips, and many of the reporters played the game and did not press him hard. This was how these press gatherings had gone throughout the run-up to war. But this meeting was heavily scripted with Bush looking at a slip of paper and calling on reporters in a pre-arranged order. No one challenged him on this.

To make up for it,he lists the qusetions that should have been asked including

If our allies have the same information on WMD -- and the Iraqi threat is so real -- why do some of our friends refuse to take part in your coalition?

Views or news?

I do have concerns from time to time about the direction of the Independenr.Editor Simon Kelner's strategy that it shoud be a viewspaper and not a newspaper has led to the publication drifting towards the personal agenda's of its correspondents.

Last week as the other papers were focusing on the US primaries,the paper used its front page to attack George Bush over his Middle East policy.


Today it returns to the same subject,in an article by Claire Soares

President George Bush is under pressure from human rights groups to use his visit to Saudi Arabia today to seek the release of the pioneering blogger Fouad al-Farhan, who has been jailed without charge for more than a month.
The human rights groups, including Amnesty International and the Committee to Protect Journalists, are urging the president to raise Mr Farhan's case with King Abdullah today. They also want him to appeal for the release of an Egyptian blogger, Abdel Karim Suleiman, the first to be jailed in Egypt, when he meets President Hosni Mubarak at Sharm-el-She-ikh on Wednesday. The Egyptian blogger is serving a four-year sentence for insulting President Mubarak.

Yes it's an important issue to report,but on the front page? with so much other news around.It is not going to sell newspapers to the floating buyer.Those intersted will surely read it on line.

A bit of humour for the weekend

This from today's New Statesman where former ambassador to Uzbekistan,Craig Murray who muses on the anti alcohol lobby

I am thoroughly fed up with the anti-alcohol propaganda on every broadcast news programme at this time of year. Look at George W Bush. As a wealthy alcoholic, he was a relatively harmless parasite on society. Then he sobered up, found God, and killed millions. Leave alcohol alone - it does much less harm than religion