AP's Ron Fournier To Karl Rove: "Keep Up The Fight"

Via Talking Points Memo: the House Oversight Committee has unearthed a key quote from the 50-page report on Pat Tillman - the former Arizona Cardinals star killed in the line of duty in Afghanistan under circumstances that the military labored to conceal from Tillman's family - and Jessica Lynch, who was caught up in some Iraq War mythmaking of her own.

On page 21 of the report, the committee reprints an email exchange between Ron Fournier - then a reporter for the Associated Press, now the head of the AP's Washington bureau - and Bush's chief adviser Karl Rove:

Rove exchanged e-mails about Pat Tillman with Associated Press reporter Ron Fournier, under the subject line "H-E-R-O." In response to Mr. Fournier's e-mail, Mr. Rove asked, "How does our country continue to produce men and women like this," to which Mr. Fournier replied, "The Lord creates men and women like this all over the world. But only the great and free countries allow them to flourish. Keep up the fight."

An email to Fournier, seeking clarification on what "fight" he thought Rove was engaged in at the time, was not returned.

***UPDATE 8:24pm ET, July 14, 2008***

In a story that crossed on the AP wires, Fournier is quoted as saying he was simply interacting with a source in the course of his duties as a political reporter, and regrets the "breezy nature of the correspondence."

From the AP story:

The committee cited one exchange between White House political chief Karl Rove and Ron Fournier, then a political reporter for The Associated Press.

In a chain under the subject line "H-E-R-O," Rove replied to an e-mail from Fournier by saying, "How does our country continue to produce men and women like this?"

Fournier replied, "The Lord creates men and women like this all over the world. But only the great and free countries allow them to flourish. Keep up the fight."

Fournier, now the AP's acting Washington bureau chief, said Monday: "I was an AP political reporter at the time of the 2004 e-mail exchange, and was interacting with a source, a top aide to the president, in the course of following an important and compelling story. I regret the breezy nature of the correspondence."

Comments

[KillgoreTrout43]

I know Ron, sort of. I used to comment on his political discussion forum, HotSoup. Ron is a genuine decent guy, and this story is just ludicrous in it's blatant implications. Sounds to me like Ron was saying something very wise. We do need people in this nation that aren't afraid to sacrifice, for the children, Mothers and grandmothers of this great and beautiful country. I see no constructive point to this story AT ALL.

[Probus]

Fournier can no longer effective do his job and thus should resign. There can be no expectation that he can remain an impartial reporter. He's a Rove ditto head.

[KillgoreTrout43]

And just how is saying we need more "heros," being impartial? Ron is a decent guy, who was on an assignment. It does no good for a reporter to insult or denegrate his subject during an interview. Grow up.

[Godfearing]

Voters should read "The K Street Gang - The Rise and Fall of the Republican Machine!" by Matthew Continetti. This book details how the many lobbyists, including Jack Abramoff, bought off the Republican party. For a glance at this excellent book's contents, go to:

http://www.nationalreview.com/interrogatory/qa200604180713.asp

Every connected Republican from President Bush, Newt Gingrich, Dick Cheney, Tom DeLay, Bob Ney, Dennis Hastert, Ralph Reed, Grover Norquist, John McCain, Charlie Black, Roy Blount, Karl Rove and many, many more, took money from Jack Abramoff.

This information is very important during this election season!

[RedEyes]

What's your point? All the Democrat senators took money from Abramoff as well...Obama, Clinton, Boxer, Biden, Dodd, Durbin, Feinstein, Feingold, Harry Reid....and the list goes on.

Practically every politician is corrupt. Yes, even Democrats. Don't look at politics with rose-colored glasses...it clouds judgement.

[Binx101]

Light and Breezy ?

Is that the buzz term for ideological theocrat and goose-stepping wannabe

We'll get to Fournier soon enough - in the mean time we've been feasting on Bush

Binx101
The Almost Daily Binx
http://binx101.wordpress.com

[HHarvey]

And the Huffpo should be linking to AP reports why? It's obvious they are mostly partisan and cannot be a serious bipartisan account for news.

[MikePatronSaintofTruth]

Is this Fournier guy a Jewish neo-con??

[thewildlunch]

More on Fournier and Rove:

See this:
Fournier's column: "Obama walks arrogance line"
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap_campaignplus/20080317/ap_ca/on_deadline_arrogance_2

Karl Rove quoted on Fox News: "Rove, critics try to pin 'arrogant' label on Obama"
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/06/26/obama.rove/

It is obvious from this that Fournier in a very definite way works consciously for a neo-con Rove agenda. Don't know how much complicity there may be, but these two seem tight.

Here's a nice response to Rove published in the HuffPost by John Ridley.

"When Rove Calls Obama Arrogant, He Means "Uppity""
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-ridley/when-rove-calls-obama-arr_b_109639.html

Want to bet that this word won't be used again and again to describe Obama in the future, both as candidate and US President? The above column by Fournier, who is currently the AP's political editor and has been its chief political correspondent, indicates where this "arrogant" label originated.

[poppyseed]

Thanks for the links.

There are a lot of reporters clearly in the thrall of Karl Rove and John McCain, despite the overwhelming tidal wave of facts of incompetence, malfeasance, prevarication, and manipulation on the part of those two. One suspects that the "HERO" Fournier refers to is not the late Pat Tillman, but his "hero" Karl Rove.

Fournier is not the only biased "reporter" who should be on the radar, Mark Halperin is another. He repeated crosses the line to promote delusional views that promote McCain (the only "professional" reporter who thought McCain had a GOOD week last week), and regularly "reports" facts that turn out to be in error. He's not just biased at his job, he's bad at it, but like Fournier, the rest of the media are as blind to the conservative biases of their colleagues as they were wrong about the lead up the Bush's and the Media's War in Iraq.

[Ivar]

How can Karl Rove "flip off" congress and continue to walk free? I thought congress was the highest court in the land. Guess I am naive.

[TheImpaler]

Maybe, just maybe! He said it so that people like us have news to read and people like him have jobs to go to?

[telebob59]

OMG! The AP!! Guess being out of the "news" biz for a couple of years has left me all too unaware of Mr. Fournier. Not that I'm at all surprised that his sort are doing their own sort of fist-bumping and ass-sniffing at The Associated Press. Mark Halperin's tenure at ABC is another all-too recent and commonly cited example of what the Fourth Estate is up against.
Just say "hero", "9/11", "military", "Democrat party","tirrrorrist" and the like enough times and you're OK. And even if you should spend some time in the military, don't think that exempts you from the sort of character crucifixion doled out to Pat Tillman and his family, John Kerry, Max Cleland, Scott Ritter, etc. simply because they were at odds with the sort of "policy" and "ideology" put forth by the likes of Rove, Bill Kristol, David Addington, et.al.
What's left other than the AP? Reuters? The BBC? The American Family Network?

[Counterglow]

CBC's news is excellent, whether radio or television. Their features are usually far left, but they do their straight news the old fashioned way: as unbiased and purely factual as they can make it. BBC can be better, but it's not as easy for Americans to access without cable (at least the television part).

[demigod]

There's Air America, the only radio I can stand to listen to.

[scouserinlondon]

Online.Talksport 1089am.G eorge G alloway .Fri.sat sun nights.
Got interesting discussions on ME wars.BIG obama supporter and has been for a long time.Hates B ush.He was the guy that had uproar with your congress.

All the BBc radio prog.online.

[FrictionSoul]

Answer: Democracy Now!
http://www.democracynow.org/

[oregonrain]

Naomi nails it !

[SILVANUS]

Where's the g-d guillotine?

[Aslanspal]

What did this "Puke" get in return....He looks like a Jeff Gannon wannabe.

this guy should step down what a stinking mess.

[Richard729]

By all accounts and given the state of our economy, Iraq and Afghanistan wars, mortgage foreclosures, job losses, soaring gasoline and oil prices, Barack Obama should be leading in the polls by a solid 30%. But he's not. As a matter of fact, according to the latest Newsweek poll the race is statistically tied between Obama and McCain.

Consider the above article which shows a strong Republican bent by the Associated Press reporter Ron Fournier, who exhorts Karl Rove to "keep up the fight." Rove is also a regular columnist and contributor to Newsweek. The "gray lady" New York Times has also added as a regular columnist arch Democrat-hater Bill Kristol who once recommended that the editorial staff of that paper should be arrested and tried for treason when they spilled the beans over the CIA torture techniques.

Pile on one more so-called liberal publication, The New Yorker, whose editors recently featured on their cover a cartoon caricature of Michelle Obama with an AK-47 strapped on her back, Angela Davis-like Afro hairdo, and Barack Obama with a Muslim turban giving the "terrorist fist bump" with his wife and an American flag burning in the fireplace below a picture of Osama bin Laden.

This is the same tune that the Screech Radio hatemongers have been singing for months. What it says clearly to me is that the Republicans are getting their ducks in a row while Democrats are squeezed in corners trying to define "refine."

[andyboy]

So you believe Newsweek polls eh? Newsweek doesn't even make a good tp.

[liz]

I cancelled my 40+ year subscription to Newsweek (and my father's annual gift subscription) when they hired Rove. Every couple of months, they have a telemarketer call to ask me to renew my subscription. Every time, I explain why I cancelled and what it would take to have me renew, and the voice on the phone agrees with me!
Of course nothing changes.

[Richard729]

If Bush came out today and said 9/11 was caused by Iraqis and that's the reason he got to bomb, invade and occupy that country, the mainstream media would accept that as gospel as well as over two-thirds of the American people. Such is the power of manipulation of the press at all levels.

Now, we have seen the likes of Karl Rove and Bill Kristol worm their way onto the editorial staffs of these publications with the sole purpose of spreading their propaganda far beyond their right wing mouthpieces and shills of the Religious Right like James Dobson and Tony Perkins, Fox News and their sleaze commentators like Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly, almost all of Screech Radio hatemongers like Limbaugh who have taken over completely our media outlets.

Put simply, as the British philosopher George Berkeley stated, esse est percipi, to be is to be perceived. Creating the perception, whether true or false, has huge advantages in a population immersed in a 10-second MTV attention span where anything can change in a heartbeat. And, it's the timing of that perception that will win or lose elections.

The Democratic Party has a ways to go to catch up with the Joseph Goebbels- propaganda perfected by the Republican smear and hate machine. Unless Americans start doing some serious reading of the facts, we will be stuck with four more years of Bush-McCain policies that have taken us to the limits of tyranny and treachery.

[buzzygirl]

Is this the same guy that called Barack Obama, Osama, and claimed it was a slip during a press event at the National Press Corp. not so long ago?

These people are shameless. It is no wonder Obama gets a beating in the press and John McCain, keep throwing down whoppers and gets away with them.

[neiltheblaze]

What he should be concerned about isn't the "breezy" nature of the e-mails, but the "cozy" nature of them.

Now I know why the AP has been seeming in the tank for McCain for the past few months.

The Media in this country are no better than Tass.

[MikeDu]

Its glimpses like this that amply illustrates why the WH has made an effort to systematically destroy all the email correspondence it could get its paws on. If the exchange of messages of the last 8 years came to light they'd show just how corrupt, incestuous, rotten from top to bottom the whole Beltway establishment is.

[TRex86]

Another worthless suckup in the MSM. I'm shocked!