Cursor's Media Patrol - April 8, 2005

Iraq's new president names a prime minister, after momentarily forgetting his name, and offers amnesty to insurgents, as 'Thorny Issues Loom' and 'Iraq may still break apart.'

"This is the future of Iraq," Marine Lt. Gen. John Satler is quoted as saying to local leaders in Fallujah. To which the deputy chief of mission from the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad reportedly added, "Let's face it: We're winning. It needs to be said that we are winning. This is a very, very, very difficult thing we’re undertaking, but we're winning."

Arriving on Defense Secretary Rumsfeld's desk "several months later than expected," a Pentagon draft of an "overarching doctrine" for "wartime prison operations" would, according to Human Rights Watch, allow the military to hold prisoners as "ghost detainees" and subject their right "to be treated humanely" to "military necessity."

The Village Voice's Ward Harkavy explains why employees of the "top campaign contributor among defense aerospace firms" are "whooping it up" -- and why, if Secretary of State Rice "isn't careful, she's going to wind up on Lockheed's board even before she leaves her government job." Plus: 'For Whatever It's (Fort) Worth.'

Alex Knott of The Center for Public Integrity explains why Washington lobbyists, many of whom "fail to file necessary disclosure forms," are known as 'The "Fourth Branch" of Government.'

As White House spokesman Scott McClellan and the Washington Times tout Bush's un-Clintonesque 'low profile' in Rome, the AP reports that "when Bush's face appeared on giant screen TVs showing the ceremony, many in the crowds outside St. Peter's Square booed and whistled."

With a new Gallup poll showing 'Bush Approval Rating Lowest Ever for 2nd-Term Prez at this Point,' Helen Thomas writes that "you had to be there" at a press conference on intelligence failures which demonstrated that "the buck never stops at this White House."

The Stuntenator Reuters reports that a new poll shows that California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's approval rating dropped to 43% from 59% in January, with 49% viewing him as too interested in "gimmicks, public relations and image."

Asked to step down by the White House, the director of the Transportation Security Administration becomes the third top administrator in three years to leave what he calls "the toughest job in federal government."

'The genie in the ballot box' Uri Avnery argues that if truly democratic elections were held in Arab countries where "the present dictatorships ... present themselves as bulwarks against fanatical Islamic forces," the winners would be "forces that completely reject the vision of a secular, democratic and liberal state that Bush talks so much about."

Dana Milbank reports on a House Armed Services Committee hearing where "For more than three hours, [Wesley] Clark and [Richard] Perle reprised their confrontation before the committee in September 2002 ... But this time lawmakers on both sides hectored Perle, while Clark didn't bother to suppress an 'I told you so.'" Scroll down for PDFs of their testimony.

Former UPI and now Salon correspondent, Mark Benjamin, tells "On the Media" -- which just won a Peabody Award -- that in lowballing casualty counts for Iraq and Afghanistan, the Pentagon is disregarding its own definition of "casualty." He also discusses his article on how wounded soldiers arrive in the U.S. only at night. His latest is 'Tough on terror; weak on guns.'

Following last month's Los Angeles Times article about how U.S. 'Spy agencies fear some applicants are terrorists,' the Christian Science Monitor reports that "Because the U.S. has reached such lone, superpower status, government officials say, at least 90 countries -- in addition to Al Qaeda --are attempting to steal some of the nation's most sacred secrets."

Before Mexico City's mayor was stripped of immunity from prosecution, he reportedly told a crowd of supporters -- totaling an estimated 300,000 throughout the day -- that "whatever Congress' decision, he would run for president next year, even if he had to do so from jail." Plus: 'Saving Mexico by ruining it.'

Media Matters produces a comprehensive timeline to illustrate 'How conservatives used trumped-up evidence to blame Democrats' for the Schiavo memo, and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee provides other examples of Sen. Mel Martinez pleading "ignorance" to something his staff did -- during his 2004 campaign. And, it's Tom DeLay Day at Salon!

'It Was Only a Matter of Time for DeLay,' says Jonathan Chait, while The Hill reports that the GOP is "circling the wagons" as media scrutiny produces "ripples of speculation about his future."

"The United States of America cannot have one of its top congressional leaders taking money from people advocating for Russian military-intelligence and defense interests as part of a lobbying deal. It simply cannot," argues Tapped's Garance Franke-Ruta.

'Un-Embed the Media' "If we had state-run media in the United States, how would it be any different?" ask Amy Goodman and David Goodman, as editorial writers "profess to being shocked -- shocked! -- by the government's covert propaganda campaign."