So, this happened today.
Washington Post reporter Chris Cillizza said that the “Axis of Evil” address was among the most important State of the Union addresses delivered in recent memory. “That speech, arguably, turned this country in a direction on foreign policy,” Mitchell concurred. “Those words, Axis of Evil, I was standing there in Congress and called the control room, I said ‘This is a big deal.’”
“State Department, with all due respect, Colin Powell did not focus enough on those words and get them taken out of the State of the Union,” she continued. “Up until that moment, Iran was cooperating with the United States on the border of Afghanistan, it was post 9/11, Iran was more or less an American ally.”
“But being included in the Axis of Evil, it turned the Iranian government in a completely different direction,” she concluded. “And it was a turning point in American politics and foreign policy.”
Try “less,” Andrea Mitchell. The Washington Post’s Chris Cillizza proceeds to agree with Mitchell, that Iran was “more or less an American ally” until the “axis of evil” speech.
It’s just not true. Iran had been an enemy of the United States since the Islamic Revolution in 1979. What part of “Death to America!” and “Death to the Great Satan!” do Mitchell and Cillizza not understand?
Update: Roll the video tape.
These people are the leading lights of political journalism? Seriously, MSNBC and Washington Post, you can’t do better?
Join the conversation as a VIP Member