Blowhard News Report for Wednesday.

McCain Adviser Absurdly Claims President Bush Opposed The Surge Appearing on MSNBC, Nancy Pfotenhauer, senior adviser to Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), touted McCain’s national security credentials, citing his support of increasing troops in Iraq while the war was unpopular. Pfotenhauer claimed that even President Bush did not support the idea:

When Senator McCain challenged the current strategy on the ground in Iraq, and was pushing for the surge, alongside Gen. Petraeus, this was incredibly unpopular here in Washington. It was particularly unpopular with President Bush. And he did it because that’s what he felt was right on the ground and he put the interests of the country first.

Fox News Guest: Gitmo Is ‘Really More Like A Boy Scout Camp Than It Is A Prison Camp’
On his “Hannity’s America” show on Sunday, Fox News host Sean Hannity brought on former Judge Advocate General (JAG) Kyndra Miller Rotunda, who has publicly blasted the Supreme Court’s recent ruling on Guantanamo as one that “puts soldiers at great risk.” Rotunda and Hannity attempted to repaint Guantanamo Bay as a picturesque retreat akin to a Boy Scout camp:

ROTUNDA: [T]he truth is, it’s really more like a Boy Scout camp than it is a prison camp. […]
They get up to 12-hours of exercise time a day and they have all kinds of activities. They can play ping-pong, basketball, soccer. They have their own garden. They can check out library books. They have 5,000 titles. Their favorite is the Harry Potter series. […]

HANNITY: So in other words for the — there wasn’t constant waterboarding going on, there wasn’t torture going on, there wasn’t endless interrogation going on, that they have a lot of free time. They were relatively carefree. … Is that a fair assessment?

ROTUNDA: That is absolutely right.
When asked by Hannity if she had ever “witness[ed] any torture,” Rotunda replied, “None at all, no.”

John Stossel: ‘These oil companies are heroes.’
Last night, CNN’s Larry King Live stacked its show with oil, coal, and nuclear apologists. One of the show’s guests — prominent libertarian pundit John Stossel — said of Big Oil: “I think these oil companies are heroes.”

Hersh: Cheney ‘Privately’ Says He Prefers U.S. — Not Israel — Strike Iran Because ‘We’ll Get Blamed Anyway’
Earlier this week, in an article called “Preparing the Battlefield,” the New Yorker’s Seymour Hersh reported that late last year, “Congress agreed to a request from President Bush to fund a major escalation of covert operations against Iran.” On MSNBC today, Andrea Mitchell asked Hersh if the U.S. was “planning military action” against Iran or “planning to support Israeli military action?”
“Oh, you know, how the hell do I know,” replied Hersh. “What I can tell you is we’re loaded for bear. And we’ve been looking at it for three years.” He then said that Vice President Dick Cheney “privately” is against an Israeli attack because the U.S. will “be blamed anyway”:

HERSH: If Israel goes — I’ll tell you what Cheney’s says privately, and whether or not you, how I know this is, — what he says privately is, “we can’t let Israel go because, first of all, they don’t have the firepower, we do. We have much more firepower. And secondly, if they go, we’ll be blamed anyway.”