CNN's expert analysis: Sheer demagoguery

The terrorist bombs were still exploding in Boston Monday when CNN national security analyst Peter Bergen made the case that right-wing extremism could not be ruled out.

This is, of course, called wishful thinking in the media world – the world that dares not utter the word "Islamist."

But this particular report is so misguided, so misinformed, so ignorant that it's time CNN sent Peter Bergen packing as a national security analyst.

Here's his keen insight: "We've seen a number of failed bombing attempts by al-Qaida, but we've also seen other extremist groups. Right-wing groups trying to attack, for instance – trying to attack the Martin Luther King parade in Oregon in 2010."

Now, as someone who formerly lived in Oregon and still have quite a few employees there, I couldn't remember any attack attempted at a Martin Luther King parade in Oregon in 2010 or any other year. I vaguely recalled a minor incident in Spokane, Wash., around that time.

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Here's the story behind it.

In 2011, a backpack bomb was found along the parade route of the Martin Luther King Day "unity march." The FBI posted a $20,000 reward for the person or persons responsible. None was ever found – no right-wingers, no left-wingers, no wingers of any kind.

In other words, not only did Bergen get the year wrong, the state wrong, but also lied about the motivation for the assembling of a backpack bomb that never went off.

No corrections were issued by CNN.

Bergen was very concerned that "we shouldn't leap to conclusion about where it's coming from." However, he was perfectly willing to do so himself.

At least when ABC’s Brian Ross did the same thing immediately after the Aurora, Colo., theater massacre – suggesting the perpetrator was from the political right because there was a "James Holmes" in that state's tea party – both Ross and ABC later apologized for such nonsense.

It seems this "national security expert" has been reading too much propaganda from the Southern Poverty Law Center, which also quickly jumped to the conclusion that the backpack bomb in Spokane was the responsibility of right-wing extremists. There was never any evidence to draw any such conclusion. No suspects were ever arrested. No evidence was ever offered to suggest motivation.

Nevertheless, this was the nonsensical, politically motivated, jaundiced viewpoint being offered on CNN within minutes of the bombs going off tragically at the Boston Marathon.

It never fails that the media eagerly look everywhere for responsibility for terrorism than the obvious places. They desperately want to deny that Islamic terrorism, which is on display around the world on a daily basis, is the most likely place to look.

Instead, their experts are willing to make up out of whole cloth examples of "right-wing terrorism" that simply never happened.

That is not news, it's propaganda – just as surely as the Southern Poverty Law Center's original report in January of 2011.

It's a danger to our republic when we have a desire to accept the unlikely over the likely source of such attacks.

It's widespread through the media. It's widespread through our government institutions – including the Department of Homeland Security, which sees phantom "right-wing terrorists" under every bed. It's widespread in all political correct cultural circles.

Not only should Peter Bergen be looking for a new line of work, but CNN owes the American public an apology for airing this kind of ill-informed "analysis."

Indeed, we don't have to jump to conclusions about who was responsible for this tragic attack. Time will tell. In all likelihood, before this column is even published, some group will claim responsibility for this Boston massacre.

But that's just what Bergen and CNN did when they aired this premature "analysis" while the smoke was still clearing from the first two bomb attacks and a third was still waiting to detonate.