"Unfortunately my defense is I'm too stupid to know it was sweeps..."
- Leroy Sievers, "Nightline" executive producer

Is ABC News political grandstanding on the graves of America's fallen soldiers in Iraq to boost ratings for the May sweeps?

Richard Clarke is a paid consultant for ABC News. On episode after episode of Ted Koppel's Nightline he has been given a global platform to air his views assailing the Bush Administration and the war in Iraq. After repeated requests, Nightline has failed to offer the same global forum to Dr. Laurie Mylroie, who is Clarke's arch rival as exemplified by the back cover of Clarke's book.

Now Nightline is planning to have a "Tribute" episode in which Ted Koppel will read the names of those who have given their lives in the Iraq war while displaying their photos. If such a program were truly a tribute to American fighting men and women, then it would be welcome. But ABC News and Ted Koppel's Nightline has long since established its agenda concerning the Bush Administration and the war being waged. The political slant of ABC News is so apparent that a major television chain, the Sinclair Broadcast Group, will bar its ABC-affiliated stations from airing the planned "Nightline" tribute to fallen U.S. troops in Iraq, saying the program is a political statement disguised as news.

What I'd like to know is what will ABC do if families of fallen soldiers contact Nightline to not air their son or daughter's/husband or wife's name and photograph out of protest against the network's bias and unsympathetic political posturing? When I called Nightline tonight at 202-222-7000, the person who answered didn't have an answer.

The fighting men and women who have given their lives for this nation deserve to be memorialized and much, much more. But they certainly don't deserve to be used as political pawns and a ratings boost for ABC News. This is shameful and sad. Indeed, if Nightline wanted to air such a tribute, wouldn't it be more appropriate around Memorial Day? Apparently that won't work since it's when the May sweeps are over.

"In this man's heart (Osama bin Laden) you'll find an insistence,
a strange determination that he will reach one day the tunnels of the White House
and will bomb it with everything that is in it.....with the seriousness of the Bedouin
of the desert about the way he will try to bomb the Pentagon after he destroys the White House.
...the revolutionary bin Laden is insisting very convincingly that he will strike America on the arm that is already hurting.
That the man....will curse the memory of Frank Sinatra every time he hears his songs."
(A reference to Sinatra's "New York, New York"?)

- From the Iraqi publication Al-Nasiriya: July 21, 2001
(Also noted in the Wall Street Journal, "Saddam and the Next 9/11", 2/14/03)

"At this stage it is possible to turn to biological attack, where a small can,
not bigger than the size of the hand, can be used to release viruses that affect everything....
The viruses easily spread by air, and people are affected without feeling it."

- Uday Hussein, 9/20/01 (NOTE: The first Anthrax-laced letters were mailed on 9/18/01)
(That means Hussein's son wrote this before any news had come out about the Anthrax mailings in the U.S.)
(Noted in the Wall Street Journal, "Saddam and the Next 9/11", 2/14/03)

"I didn't think it possible that Osama sitting up there
in the mountains could do it....those who executed it were much more modern.
They knew the U.S., they knew aviation. I don't think he
has the intelligence or the minute planning. The planner was someone else."

"If Saddam's operatives manipulated simple-minded Islamic zealots to bomb the World Trade Center,
it is only prudent to assume his agents are capable of striking again."

"From inside America, how five planes flew.
Such a mishap never happened in the past!
And nothing similar will happen.
Six thousand infidels died.
Bin Ladin did not do it;
the luck of the president [Saddam] did it."

(Text of poem recited in the presence of President Saddam Hussein by
Shaykh Ali Bin Shallal, head of the al-Sharji tribes, at a meeting with
tribal chieftains from Basra and Maysan Governates on 12/3/01.
Was the 5th plane the crash of AA Flight 587 into Queens, NYC on November 12, 2001?)

"Hear this, O foolish and senseless people, who have eyes, but see not, who have ears, but hear not. Do you not fear me? says the LORD; Do you not tremble before me? I placed the sand as the bound for the sea, a perpetual barrier which it cannot pass; though the waves toss, they cannot prevail, though they roar, they cannot pass over it. But this people has a stubborn and rebellious heart; they have turned aside and gone away. They do not say in their hearts, `Let us fear the LORD our God, who gives the rain in its season, the autumn rain and the spring rain, and keeps for us the weeks appointed for the harvest.' Your iniquities have turned these away, and your sins have kept good from you. For wicked men are found among my people; they lurk like fowlers lying in wait. They set a trap; they catch men. Like a basket full of birds, their houses are full of treachery; therefore they have become great and rich, they have grown fat and sleek. They know no bounds in deeds of wickedness; they judge not with justice the cause of the fatherless, to make it prosper, and they do not defend the rights of the needy. Shall I not punish them for these things? says the LORD, and shall I not avenge myself on a nation such as this?" Jeremiah 5:21-29

BUSH VS. THE BELTWAY:
How the CIA and the State Department Tried to Stop the War on Terror

By Laurie Mylroie
COAUTHOR OF THE #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
Saddam Hussein and the Crisis in the Gulf

A Washington Post Expert's Pick on Terrorism and the Middle East

THE WAR AGAINST AMERICA

Saddam Hussein and the World Trade Center Attacks:
A Study of Revenge

(Previously Published as Study of Revenge)

By Laurie Mylroie
COAUTHOR OF THE #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
Saddam Hussein and the Crisis in the Gulf

With a foreword by former CIA Director R. James Woolsey,
and newly revised introduction and conclusion by the author.

A Washington Post Expert's Pick on Terrorism and the Middle East

THE WAR AGAINST AMERICA

Saddam Hussein and the World Trade Center Attacks: A Study of Revenge

(Previously Published as Study of Revenge)

Saddam Hussein and the World Trade Center Attacks:
A Study of Revenge