Saving Silberman

If MSNBC replaced correspondent David Shuster with New York Times columnist Frank Rich, the tone of his video segments would not significantly change. Over the past few weeks, Shuster has provided Hardball with several nearly-identical packaged reports purporting to examine pre-war intelligence claims. Each segment manipulates information to imply that the administration deliberately misled the nation about Saddam Hussein’s WMDs and ties to al-Qaeda.

Last night was no different. In a segment about President Bush’s Veterans Day speech, Shuster demonstrated the kind of sloppiness that has characterized his approach. In the report, he attributed the following statement to the Robb-Silberman report on pre-war intelligence:

Our executive order did not direct us to deal with the use of intelligence by policymakers, and all of us agreed that this was not part of our inquiry.

But that statement does not appear in the report itself. It was made by Lawrence Silberman at a press conference announcing the release of the report. As George at Seixon.com reported in a thorough take-down of Shuster’s last piece, this kind of carelessness with quotes is nothing new for Shuster. For good measure, Shuster’s producers misspell “Silberman” as “Silverman.”

Then, Shuster uses a trick to make it look like Bush and Cheney deliberately lied to the American people. He played two pre-war statements about Iraqi WMD from Cheney and Bush respectively, and then said,