Here's what I thought you'd like to hear about today:

1. The Exit Strategy Bingo Game
2. Who is Barack Obama?

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The Exit Strategy Bingo Game

Here's a fun game for you to play over the next few months. Every time someone in the media uses the terms "Exit Strategy", "Civil War", "Manage the Defeat", or "the End Game", shout "Bingo!" at the top of your lungs, especially if you are in a crowded place. Do it even if you are listening with headphones. That will keep them guessing. I'm going to play several examples from the last week to show how quickly you could fill up your card with defeatist language references. Why so many lately? I can only surmise that the media wants to stampede us out of Iraq at the fastest possible pace to live up to the media's achievement in Viet Nam.

First up is Jenifer Logan from 60 Minutes last Sunday. She is a very attractive reporter, so I was watching 60 Minutes while doing the dishes and immediately listened closer to her than I might to Ed Bradley or Andy Rooney. I'll listen to Jenifer bash Bush, Rumsfeld, Abizaid, or Mother Teresa for an hour before I'd watch any other 60 Minutes reporter.

But I digress. This intro sets up the piece. Listen closely to her claim that this is some kind of exclusive interview. Abizaid has been giving interviews more than anyone at the Pentagon since Rumsfeld's resignation. That is hardly exclusive, if you ask me. Here's her piece. I love that voice. Thanks to Newsbusters for the pointer. Here's the setup, combined with the ending of her piece.

Play clip from the Logan Interview.

Anyone with "Manage the Defeat" on their card has a point now. Abizaid describes victory. Note the backtrack from "We hear very little about victory in Iraq these days, we hear a lot about how to manage the defeat" to "Increasingly in this country, people are talking about how to manage defeat in Iraq." Such weasel words! "We hear" instead of the more accurate "I claim" and "People are talking about" instead of admitting that "I think that...". The media has it in for this administration and plan to lose the Iraq war regardless of the facts, despite the impact, and in direct support of those who are trying to kill our soldiers in Iraq. Let's play some more Bingo.

John Roberts was on Reliable Sources, one of my favorite Sunday morning talk shows, not the least because they have a podcast version with no ads, and excellent video quality. Lead the way, Howard! Kurtz had Roberts on to talk about his experience as an embed in Iraq. He has been in the field talking to soldiers as part of his "This Week At War" segments for CNN. His credibility is powerful because he is clearly not one of the reporters stuck in a hotel room in the green zone. He is risking his life on a daily basis to get the story, and it's a good one. But his angle on every story is one of defeat and exit strategies. Listen to this clip from his chat with Howard Kurtz last weekend. He pays lip service to the good news, then immediately moves to the overwhelming bad news. Howard asks the question that every reporter needs to be asked. "Has the coverage helped to turn the country against the war?" Good heavens. Of course it has!

Play clip of John Roberts and Howard Kurtz.

Did you notice his deflection of the issue of how coverage has turned the American population against the war? He immediately moves to the Ramadan death toll numbers, and then, their point: "What is the end game?". Exit strategy Bingo. He even identifies the complicity of the media with the enemy. He talks about President Bush's claim that the insurgency is trying to duplicate the Viet Nam Tet Offensive, but completely misses the media role. His comment: "If that's what they're doing, it's working." Why can't he just acknowledge his contribution to the enemy efforts. And his heartfelt closing: "If there's no way of knowing when people are coming home, why are we there." If that is the standard, then what would America have done after the first 10 minutes of any confrontation with the enemies? Did we know within ten minutes of D-Day when our soldiers would return? Or Midway? Or Guadalcanal? Of course not. It's a war. Get over your reflexive Vietnam analogies and stop calling for an "exit strategy". How about a "Victory Strategy"?

Powerline Blog caught NBC manufacturing the "news" that they were going to call Iraq a "Civil War" because they thought they could get more people to watch that way.

Play clip of Matt Lauer declaring.

Commenting on this at Powerline, John Hinderaker had this to say:

I don't think that traditionally, a country would be said to be in a state of civil war if, outside of a single city, the level of violence could fairly be characterized as a high crime rate.

So, for those reasons, I would not call what is going on in Iraq a civil war. It seems pretty clear, though, that the present controversy is not the result of any good-faith effort to apply historical norms to the conflict in Iraq, but rather is part of the effort to stampede this country into defeat for partisan political purposes.

So let's see where we are in our game of Bingo. We have "Manage the Defeat", check. We have "Exit Strategy", check. I know, how about "we need a draft"? That worked in Viet Nam. Remember all those TV clips of young men burning their draft cards in defiance of "the man"? Where can we find someone foolish enough to think that we would be better off with a weaker military, populated by people who don't want to be there, so that the U.S. would no longer be a powerful force for democracy around the world? How about "Fox News Sunday"? Here's a set of clips with Chris Wallace as host. He had the presumptive Democratic incoming chairmen of critical Congressional committees in to talk about their agendas. His approach was confrontational. He asked all of them about their most outlandish positions they had taken. What was their plan to move those issues forward now that they were in charge of congress? Chickens coming home to roost, or what?

Play clip of Rangel, Frank, Dingel with Chris Wallace.

Frank really objected to the idea that Chris Wallace would ask what he would do now that he was in charge. Goodness knows, that's what I'd like to know. Back to Bad News Bingo, we have our call for the draft, check.

Next up, I'm going to leave the news division of the media world and move to the entertainment division. Cable TV network TNT has reruns of Law and Order on at least a dozen times a night. On the train down to Salem, OR this week, I watched a TiVo'ed version of an episode based on Geraldo Rivera's experience in Iraq. Remember when he not so subtly disclosed positions and troop movements on his segment during his embed with the troops? In this episode, the Geraldo character is shot by an angry soldier on leave back home. These clips are from several different sections of the show, including the embed segment, the accused soldier on the stand, Geraldo's character on the stand, and that Law & Order sound. I can't get enough of it.

Play clip of Law & Order.

Those still with their Bingo cards get one for "Fictitious War". Also note the reference to the Viet Nam war. Double points for Law & Order.

Who is Barack Obama?

Byron York, author of The Vast Left Wing Conspiracy, has a great post on the Corner on National Review Online about Barack Obama, the wonder child of the media lately.

Maureen Dowd is worried that the Republican smear machine is at it again, attacking Barack Obama by using...his middle name. It seems Ed Rogers referred to Obama by his full name on "Hardball" a while back, setting off indignation among some on the left. I don't know why it came to Rogers' mind, but it is true I included Obama's middle name in an NR story (not available on the web) in early November:

Obama has joked that he worried his political career was over after 9/11 because his name sounded too much like Osama. In fact, it's better than that: Named after his father, his full name is Barack Hussein Obama Jr.

Whatever the source, Rogers' comment caused MSNBC's Keith Olbermann some distress. "We have this right-wing implication that you must have the right name or the right God to be American," Olbermann said. "This fellow Ed Rogers, among others, has taken to calling Senator Obama, Barack Hussein Obama." Olbermann wondered what the proper response should be: "Is it to point out the racial element to this, or the religious element to this? Or is it just to say, this is beneath contempt and not worthy of any response?"

You also can find his middle name in the Wiki entry for Obama. It will probably be forgotten in the media rush to anoint a fresh face to be the Democratic nominee for president in 2008. But even without having "Hussein" as a middle name, he is going to have a rough 24 months ahead. Most people still don't know who he is. And those who think they do, don't. Thanks to my wide and broad podcast sources, I heard the following clip on my walk yesterday. I can't figure out how it ended up on my player, but Wonkette posted a link to it last week. A reporter for WBAL in Baltimore asked people on the streets what they thought of him. The results were surprising.

Play clip of WBAL

I love the lady who says that she is educated, and has a doctorate. In basket weaving, perhaps?

That's it for now podcatchers. I'm Charlie Quidnunc reporting from the PassatStudio today.