Sunday, May 9, 2010

AP deepwater whitewash

The Associated Press has been working overtime to protect the legacy of President Obama in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon oil disaster.  John Hinderaker at Powerline surgically dissects and discredits a glowing AP report entitled "Obama oil response: aggressive as crisis unfolded."  First, he notes that all the sourcing for the article comes from the administration itself.  Second, he astutely recognizes that the article doesn't cite a single "aggressive" action taken by the administration that did anything to effectively combat the spill.  He then concludes with this:
Actually, if you pay attention to the dates, the AP documents, as many others have, the slow pace of the administration's response to the spill. The Deepwater Horizon blew up on April 20, yet it wasn't until April 28 that Barack Obama told his advisers that he wanted meaningful action taken to counteract the spill. By what standard, one wonders, is this an "aggressive" response?

Moreover, the AP is either ignorant of, or prefers not to mention, the key facts that we and others have publicized about this incident. As we have pointed out, responsible federal officials believed by April 21--the day after the oil rig exploded--that a major oil leak, on the order of 10,000 to 20,000 barrels per day, was likely if not inevitable. This is completely at odds with the AP's comforting assurance that in the early days after the explosion, any resulting oil spill was believed to be minimal.

Further, the AP never mentions the most obvious failing of the federal response to the disaster--the fact that, despite a 1994 plan that said major oil spills in the Gulf would be fought with fire booms, when the Deepwater Horizon blew up the federal government did not have a single fire boom on hand. This is malfeasance of an extraordinary nature, and if a Republican administration were in the White House, every American would know about it by now. Yet the Associated Press and its fellows in the liberal media have successfully kept the lid on what should be a scandal of major proportions. This time it is the AP that says: Barry, you're doing a heck of a job!
AP:  Adulation of the President; Always Posturing; Actively Pernicious; Against the People.

1 comment:

  1. Obama is simply haranguing the oil companies. The administration seems impotent

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