Idiot of the Day

A number of bloggers offer weekly awards to the liberal politician, Hollywood celebrity, or MSM twit who offers the most idiotic or absurd comment during a specified period of time.

Given the hysertia that currently engulfs the American left and its media wing, there is never a shortage of worthy candidates for an idiot award. Indeed, it is tempting to annoint Howard Dean as all-time champ, and simply retire the trophy.

But such action would be premature, and deny recognition to others that should be ridiculed and scorned for making statements that have no basis in fact.

Case-in-point: CNN's Carol Costello, who anchors the early-morning news on that network. If you're among the dozen or so folks still watching CNN, you might have caught today's exchange between Ms. Costello's and Republican Congressman Robin Smith. During an interview on President Bush's speech at Ft Bragg, Ms. Costello managed to regurgitate most of the Democratic talking points, while demonstrating an appalling ignorance of actual events in Iraq. Among her whoppers:

"There is no evidence that Saddam Hussein was connected in any way to Al Qaida."

Have you read the 9-11 Commission Report, Ms. Costello? I'm guessing you haven't (more on that in a bit). The Commission provides extensive detail on Saddam's efforts to contact Al Qaida in the late 1990s. More recently, press reporting indicates that Al Qaida's #2 man journeyed to Iraq for a conference before Saddam's fall from power. In a police state like Saddam's Iraq, it is logical to assume that the Iraqi dictator knew a senior terrorist leader was in his country. Want more evidence? Here's a 2004 article by the NRO's Andrew McCarthy, detailing Iraq's links to Al Qaida.

But it doesn't end there...a few seconds later, Ms. Costello came back with this knee-slapper:

"I know of no evidence connecting Saddam Hussein to Osama bin Laden or Al Qaeda, and also there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq."

We've already discussed the "non-existent" ties between Saddam and Al Qaida. Regarding the WMD issue. True, we found no WMD in the aftermath of Operation Iraqi Freedom--and we probably won't, until there's a regime change in Syria. But Ms. Costello's assertion begs an obvious question: if there were no WMDs in Iraq, what did Saddam use to kill those Iranian soldiers during the Iran-Iraq War, or the thousands of Kurds that were gassed in northern Iraq? How about Saddam's efforts to retain a WMD knowledge base and technical expertise, detailed in the report by former UN arms inspector David Kay? Does Ms. Costello remember the technical drawings and extensive documentation that were ordered hidden by Saddam before the invasion and later discovered by U.S. troops? Or how about Mr. Kay's assertion that Saddam preserved enough of his program to allow a quick reconstitution, once economic and military sanctions were eased?

Sadly, the broadcast news business is filled with empty-headed libs whose job skills consist of little more than an attractive appearence, and an ability to parrrot questions provided through their earpiece. If you have any doubt that Ms. Costello falls
into that category, consider this annecdote, relayed by a former CNN producer. When she filled in on the network's American Morning program, Ms. Costello--and the show's other hosts--received a copy of The New York Times and other morning papers, placed on their anchor desk for review.

According to the producer, Co-host Jack Cafferty--who correctly sized up Ms. Costello as a lightweight-- played a running joke on his fellow anchor, placing quarters inside various sections of the newspapers. Had she actually bothered to pick up a paper and read it, the quarters would have fallen out, alerting everyone on the set that a major CNN anchor had actually decided to look at something besides the teleprompter. The former CNN staffer reports that Cafferty's quarters remained neatly inside Ms. Costello's newspapers; so much for the restless intellect of a self-styled "investigative reporter."

But here at In From the Cold, we think this wholesale lack of intellectual heft and gravitas should not go unrewarded. For confirming our worst suspicions about the MSM and the twinkies behind the anchor desk, we proudly recogize Carol Costello as our first "Idiot of the Day."