Thursday, February 02, 2017

Getting It Wrong

A couple of nights ago CBS Evening News ran a segment which included a bit about an attack on a Saudi ship by “Iranian-backed rebels” and suggested that it was possible that they thought they were actually attacking an American ship.

The claim of Iranian backing is spurious, since support from Iran for the rebels has never been anything more than minimal, and has consisted entirely of food and medical supplies. The idea that they intended to strike an American ship is even further into fantasyland, since there was no American ship within 500 miles at the time, and there is not a scintilla of evidence to support that claim which was made up out of whole cloth.

Similarly, they ran a piece that told us that the Army Corps of Engineers might be ordered to issue a permit for the final segment of the Dakota pipeline, which they said would go under a reservoir that supplies drinking water for the local tribe.

Actually, the Corps would be ordered to reinstate the permit, which had been issued before construction on the pipeline was begun and after public hearings were held, and then withdrawn by the Obama administration for popularity reasons. The pipeline goes nowhere near the reservation or its drinking water supply. The segment in question crosses under the Missouri River, and the crossing is eight miles downstream from where drinking water is taken for local supply.

The first amendment to our constitution is based on the need for “a well informed public.” It is not serving that purpose.

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