L. Ian MacDonald – Montreal Gazette, on Martin’s upcoming visit to the White House;

What Bush doesn’t need to hear from Martin is a lecture on why Canada stayed out of the war or hectoring over weapons of mass destruction that have never been found. If there’s one thing that drives Americans to distraction, it’s the insufferable Canadian sense of moral superiority. Nor does Bush need an offer of Canadian troops to help with the occupation in a time of murderous insurgency. Not that we have any soldiers to spare.

The insufferable Canadian press, reporting directly from BBC and CNN headlines and Ted Kennedy quotes, doesn’t help our credibility either.

What Bush could use is help from Canada in institution building, assuming the U.S. ever gets the insurrection under control and truepolitical and economic reconstruction underway. Martin will apparently offer such assistance, as did his predecessor, Jean Chretien, at last fall’s Madrid Donors’ Conference on Iraq.

Uh, yeah. Like the institutions Canada has built in other modern war-torn former dictatorships, liberated at the cost of American blood …. eh …. where was that again?

The Canadians talk about a smart border. They want trade crossing it. The Americans talk about a secure border. They don’t want terrorists crossing it.

The problem is that the Liberals keep forgetting where the smart border problems exist – at the shoreline of the Pacific, Atlantic and Arctic oceans. Fix that, Mr Martin, and the one to the south will take care of itself.

Both men face elections this year. Both are in more trouble than they expected to be a year ago when Bush landed on an aircraft carrier and announced the end of military engagement in Iraq. In this cruel month of April alone, more American soldiers have been killed there than during the war itself.

Hmmmm…

Both men face elections this year. Both are in more trouble than they expected to be a year ago when Martin was quietly serving as a regular MP, the Liberal party in a peaceful transition period, and before the auditor-general revealed explosive details of Liberal corruption with the “Adscam” Scandal, with tentacles reaching into his very office during his tenure as Finance Minister.

There, that’s better. And so much more Canadian content than MacDonald’s version.

What it does involve is land-based systems with a command at NORAD, North American Air Defence, in which Canada has been the junior partner since 1958. Since we’re already at this table, all Martin has to do is announce we’re staying there. And since the U.S. is going to build NMD with or without us, it’s in our national interest to be there

reading on….

But Martin really shouldn’t worry about being seen with Bush. The Oval Office visit, a day after Bush’s secret testimony to the 9/11 commission, will feature waves of photographers and reporters wanting to know what the president said there. The other guy in the shot will be lucky to get a question, unless it’s about the Khadrs, Canada’s first family of terror.

And, the headline for this piece?
“Martin can help Bush and defend Canada’s aovereignty”

And while the local and national news affiliates were giving us items on the new Kentucky Fried Chicken menu, another investigation into the world’s best known case of Death By Rich Playboy and the disappearance of world champion mule deer antlers….

SUDAN ORDERS SYRIAN WMD OUT OF COUNTRY
LONDON [MENL] — Sudan has ordered the removal of Syrian missiles and weapons of mass destruction out of the African country. Arab diplomatic and Sudanese government sources said the regime of Sudanese President Omar Bashir has ordered that Syria remove its Scud C and
Scud D medium-range ballistic missiles as well as components for chemical weapons stored in warehouses in Khartoum. The sources said the Sudanese demand was issued after the Defense Ministry and Interior Ministry confirmed a report published earlier this month that Syria has been secretly flying Scud-class missiles and WMD components to Khartoum. The sources said the Bashir regime has been alarmed over the prospect that the United States would discover the Syrian arsenal and conclude that Damascus and Khartoum were cooperating in the area of missiles and WMD. They said this would have delayed or dashed U.S. plans to lift sanctions from Sudan. A U.S. official confirmed the Syrian missile shipments to Sudan, saying they were meant for use against rebels in the south. But the official said the U.S. intelligence community has not determined that Syria sent WMD systems to Khartoum.

hat tip Instapundit
And, via Dr. Joyner this related article, on the ongoing and unreported discoveries of prohibited WMD and precursor weaponry in Iraq.
(Cross-posted at the Shotgun.)

Sarah Mills, 650 CKOM radio news announcer, earlier today [paraphrasing]:

“Organizers say up to 750 thousand are expected to march in Washington in support of abortion rights today!”

Just now, and with the same breathless emphasis:

“Tens of thousands rallied in Washington in support of abortion rights today!”

Via Instapundit – a very good article on the media disconnect with the public they serve, and how the Bush administration has capitalized on that weakness.

As a first step out of this trap, journalists need to ask themselves: how did we become so predictable? Is it possisble to go back, and pull the wire that made this so? The game of Gotcha does exist. Auletta, a liberal journalist, can recognize it as easily as Karl Rove. Knock him off stride. Get him off the talking points.
But instead of rolling our eyes, we ought to realize that Gotcha has been incorporated into a new thesis, now in power in the White House. Behold the basics of President Bush’s press think. You don’t represent the public. You’re not a part of the checks and balances. I don’t have to answer your questions. And you don’t have that kind of muscle anymore.

Read the whole thing.The comment section is as good as the article.

Ted Koppel just stumbled upon something that Arthur Kent was warning about ten years ago when he left – then successfully sued – NBC;

His relationship with NBC began on a freelance basis, as Kent spent much of the ’80s covering the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
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After covering the Tiananmen Square uprising in May 1989, the network made Kent its Rome correspondent, dispatching him to cover the fall of East Germany and, in the assignment that would result in the moniker “Scud Stud,” the Persian Gulf War.
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A bitter contract dispute in 1992 resulted in Kent suing the company for $25 million for breach of contract, fraud and defamation.
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At the heart of Kent’s dispute with NBC, and its parent company General Electric, was the shift in management’s concept of the news.
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In addition to cutting budgets drastically, international hard news was both losing airtime to magazine-style programs like Dateline NBC and being “crafted” to fit the more entertainment-oriented style.
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“It was a clash and a confrontation that was totally unnecessary, because once I had been convinced to join Dateline, I warned them in writing that the editorial direction of the program was dangerous and that the manipulation and re-editing of stories was going to cause trouble.”
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A climate was being created in which corruption was imminent, Kent said.
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“You could see that something like the exploding truck fiasco (a Dateline story about unsafe GM trucks in which toy rockets were used in test crashes to ensure fiery explosions and which caused a number of NBC resignations) would happen eventually.”
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Kent offered to resign, but NBC dug in for battle, assigning him to cover the war in Bosnia without the proper equipment or preparation. When he refused, the network publicly called him a coward.

With the millions he was rumoured to have recieved in settlement, Kent established an independant production company.

In 2001 while much of the network news industry was focusing on shark attacks and the Chandra Levy mystery, Arthur Kent’s production company, Fast Forward Films, was warning Americans about the dangers posed by the Taliban regime’s reign of terror and repression. Kent’s hour-long documentary Afghanistan: Captives of the Warlords, was broadcast nationally by PBS in June of 2001, and was extensively rebroadcast post-September 11. The program has won the Gold WorldMedal at the New York Festivals and a Golden Eagle award from the CINE organization.

Kent’s 1997 book, Risk And Redemption is a worthwhile read, and unsurprisingly prescient about the blurring of the line between news and entertainment that continues today.