This morning The Politico reported that Harry Reid called General Pace “incompetant” during a conference call with lefty bloggers. Lefty bloggers pounced on The Politico after said lefty bloggers denied that it happened, thus according to them that settled it.

Then the tape of the call was produced and Harry Reid indeed called General Pace “incompetent”. What followed was Clintonian Spin. Lefty self-appointed fact checker Bob Gerger:

“It’s because those of us who actually participated in the conference call heard the context in which Senator Reid made his comments. What he said about Pace was not said in the spirit of throwing some rhetorical red meat to a bunch of liberal bloggers by gratuitously bashing General Pace — which is certainly what one could infer from The Politicos “reporting” on this story.

Rather, Reid was talking informally about George W. Bush’s refusal to dump Alberto Gonzales and told us what he said to Pace in a private meeting before Bush tossed aside the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff like a rotting fish.

Here’s exactly what Reid said:

“I guess the president, uh, he’s gotten rid of Pace because he could not get him confirmed here in the Senate‚Ķ Pace is also a yes-man for the president and I told him to his face, I laid it out to him last time he came to see me, I told him what an incompetent man I thought he was.”

So, did Reid utter the word “incompetent” in the same sentence with General Pace’s name on the conference call? Yes, he did.

But in the context in which it was said — and based on Reid’s tendency to speak like the straight-talking, former boxer that he is — it all makes sense. And to those of us not looking for a Matt Drudge-worthy story, it hardly seemed remarkable.”

Ah, yeah, sure…..”Journalism 101 in the 80s” I guess.

For more examples of how they’re trying to cover Reid tookus, check out TPM.

UPDATE: Harry Reid also thinks that General Petraeus as “out of touch”. Yeah, that coming from a hack with a 19 percent approval rating. I think it’s time that Reid resign as the Senate Majority leader. He’s an pimple on America’s ass, a pathetic tired and bitter old man. Yeah, “let’s move on”.