-By Warner Todd Huston
A recent Politico story did double duty by misleading readers and attempting to make Texas Senator Ted Cruz look bad with a headline and first paragraph that simply aren’t really true.
The September 28 story was misleadingly headlined, “Ted Cruz praises President Obama on Iran,” leaving readers with the impression that Senator Cruz was happy with Obama’s Iran policy.
The first paragraph continued the subterfuge, but went even further to mislead.
“Ted Cruz spent all week trying to dismantle President Barack Obama’s signature health care law, then turned around on Saturday to praise Obama’s foreign policy work on Iran.,” Burgess Everett wrote for Politico.
But neither the headline nor that first paragraph is true.
Ted Cruz did not “praise Obama’s foreign policy work on Iran.”
What the senator praised was a single act, that Obama asked Iran’s new president, Hassan Rouhani, about the status of persecuted Christian Pastor Saeed Abedini–a man who has been in jail for over a year in Iran, arrested solely because he is a Christian.
“He did the right thing,” Politico helpfully quotes Cruz saying of Obama’s raising of the Abedini issue.
Indeed that is praise to a small degree, but not of Obama’s Iran policy. It is praise only of a single action by the President not that President’s entire Iran policy.
Further that first paragraph is written as if to say that Cruz is somewhat hypocritical to be attempting on one hand to “dismantle President Barack Obama’s signature health care law” yet on the other hand “turning around” and “praising” his “foreign policy work on Iran.”
This makes Cruz seem either disingenuous or schizophrenic on his opposition to Obama and sets the reader to question Cruz’ integrity.
Of course, the truth is Cruz likes neither Obama’s healthcare debacle nor his foreign policy on Iran.
As to the Senator’s ideas on Iran, he is urging Congress and the President not to engage with Iran further until that “committed state-sponsor of terrorist groups” meets a series of pre-conditions like releasing prisoners such as Pastor Abedini and recognizing Israel’s right to exist, among others.
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“The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”
–Samuel Johnson
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Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer. He has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and before that he wrote articles on U.S. history for several small American magazines. His political columns are featured on many websites such as Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com, BigHollywood.com, and BigJournalism.com, as well as RightWingNews.com, MrConservative.com, CanadaFreePress.com, StoptheACLU.com, Wizbang.com, among many, many others. Mr. Huston is also endlessly amused that one of his articles formed the basis of an article in Germany’s Der Spiegel Magazine in 2008.
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