Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!Nancy Pelosi, speaker of the house, and a harsh critic of the Bush administration, especially (at least lately) its use of "enhanced" interegation techniques on some terror suspects has been stung recently by accusations that she knew about the waterboarding since at least 2002 and said and did nothing. So now she claims that the CIA lied to her about the use of enhanced techniques in questioning prisoners and that the CIA misleads congress "all the time". Leon Pinneta, chief of the CIA, jumped to his agencie's defense saying: "It is not our policy or practice to mislead Congress . . . CIA officers briefed truthfully on the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah, describing 'the enhanced techniques that had been employed.' " Pelosi has really backed herself into a corner here. The evidence seems to show that, like pretty much everyone else back in 2002, Pelosi was more concerned with protecting the country than the civil rights of terror suspects. Chuck Schumer (of all people) said it best: "I think there are probably very few people in this room or in America who would say that torture should never, ever be used, particularly if thousands of lives are at stake." "It's easy to sit back in the armchair and say that torture can never be used," he added. "But when you're in the foxhole, it's a very different deal." But now Pelosi wants any member of the Bush administration who ever even heard the term "waterboarding" thrown in prison. But how can she go after them when questions remain about what she knew and what she did or didn't do?. So now she's turning into Sgt Schultz screaming: Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! http://www.nypost.com/seven/05162009/postopinion/editorials/pelosi_in_a_pickle_169535.htm http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090514/ap_on_go_co/us_pelosi_torture
I think it is pretty clearly Pelosi who figured that her own political triangulation on the issue would be overlooked by the press.
At the moment, favor is Pelosi's Hmmm .... On one side, we have our natural distrust of politicians, plus a Republican's open hatred of Democrats, plus an especial hatred for Nancy Pelosi. On the other side, we have a secret intelligence organization that is known to lie, has botched intelligence badly enough to start a war over it, and has even, in this very scandal, managed to assert incorrect information. Or we have our natural distrust of politicians mitigated by political sympathies. And on the other side, we have a secret intelligence organization that is known to lie, has botched intelligence badly enough to start a war over it, and has even, in this very scandal, managed to assert incorrect information. Right now, with the information we have, favor is Pelosi's. ____________________ Notes: "Florida's Graham Backs Pelosi On CIA Briefings". All Things Considered. May 15, 2009. NPR.org. Accessed May 17, 2009. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=104196363
That's why we have laws, moral rules, religious strictures, etc. People panic, or are presented with sudden opportunity, or get caught in a personal bind somehow, and they do wrong. The key,of course, is a general assumption of exposure and public accountability. We can forgive, but not accept. Meanwhile, we can assume that the CIA has various leverage on various members of the US Congress, and that some Democrats have or have had hidden pressures on them in this issue -or, as in the case of Diane Feinstein, the political circumstances of the media blitz after 9/11, etc, not so hidden. Possibly Pelosi, a Beltway Dem who has been often and comfortably cooperative (and even more often oddly inept in opposition) with W&Co and their agenda over the years, is one of them. We can also assume that the CIA has no particular allegiance to telling the truth, and is accustomed to employing deliberate deceptions and use the media to spread them. We have many years of evidence for that in the past, and no reason to believe any different of them now. When we get an accurate and complete accounting of the events, Pelosi's role will become clear. We have not yet even put the likes of Richard Cheney under oath, not yet even obtained sworn and verifiable testimony from the central figures involved, or even begun an official investigation. So far, the CIA has been far more of an obstacle than an aid in that effort.
Democrats, used to a cooperative media, often get tripped up that way. Because, while the media clearly sympathizes with the left, it just can't resist a juicy story
Dems cooperative media? Well since you have clearly figured out how to traverse from reality to reality could you tell the rest of us.
Wow. I would never have believed it possible, but it appears that a thorough soaking in the media effluvia of the first three years of W's administration would actually be a cleansing experience for some folks.
The CIA lost whatever credibility people thought it had; if not, people are stupid The same sympathetic media that tried to bring down a Democratic president over a blowjob, who aided and abetted a Republican president's fraudulent call to war, who harassed a black presidential candidate who happened to be a Democrat about what an angry preacher said, who didn't feel the need to dig deeply into what the preachers for two white presidential candidates who happen to be Republicans said .... Democrats were used to a liberal press maybe twenty years ago. However, once society threw out integrity in favor of economic growth, decency in favor of profit, juicy tidbits became the staple of the press. I find it interesting, our topic poster's uncanny ability to sabotage himself by making everything about politics instead of reality. At this point, were I president, I would turn to Leon Panetta (or whoever I put in that job) and say, "The Agency is no longer reliable. Given their expected role in our national security, your job, Mr. Director, is to oversee the disassembly of this organization. It's done. We'll build a new one, get new leadership, and be very meticulous in farming actual talent from the former." The CIA is done. It should be shut down, retasked, and reopened under a new name with new management. That's how badly it's damaged.
Interestingly enough, I have to agree. From what I've learned over the past few years (and the issues you mentioned aside), the CIA is too glued to its old Cold War mentality to be as effective as it needs to be in the world we live in today. It seems to wallow in its past "victories" against the Reds rather than adjust to the needs of today (i.e. it still struggles to attract strong talent to gather effective intelligence from the two main areas it should be: China and the Mideast). It'll never happen though... well, at least I think it'll never happen. Who knows. Maybe it will fuck-up even worse in the years to come and be dismantled altogether. ~String
You guys really must live on another planet. Evidence? Well, you might consider Obama's recent little joke at while speaking to a large gathering of prominent members of the media. Looking out at the adoring crowd, Obama declared: "Most of you covered me (pause)... All of you voted for me."He then offered his apologies to the Fox table. http://www.politico.com/blogs/dinnerdish/0509/All_of_you_voted_for_me.html Here's the video: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0509/22320.html And here's some info on media coverage of Dem v Reps: Barack Obama had a crucial advantage over his rivals this year: the support of the national media, especially the three broadcast networks. At every step of his national political career, network reporters showered the Illinois Senator with glowing media coverage, building him up as a political celebrity and exhibiting little interest in investigating his past associations or exploring the controversies that could have threatened his campaign. * The three broadcast networks treated Obama to nearly seven times more good press than bad — 462 positive stories (34% of the total), compared with only 70 stories (just 5%) that were critical. * NBC Nightly News was the most lopsided, with 179 pro-Obama reports (37%), more than ten times the number of anti-Obama stories (17, or 3%). The CBS Evening News was nearly as skewed, with 156 stories spun in favor of Obama (38%), compared to a mere 21 anti-Obama reports (5%). ABC’s World News was the least slanted, but still tilted roughly four-to-one in Obama’s favor (127 stories to 32, or 27% to 7%). # Barack Obama received his best press when it mattered most, as he debuted on the national scene. All of the networks lavished him with praise when he was keynote speaker at the 2004 Democratic Convention, and did not produce a single negative story about Obama (out of 81 total reports) prior to the start of his presidential campaign in early 2007. *The networks downplayed or ignored major Obama gaffes and scandals. Obama’s relationship with convicted influence peddler Tony Rezko was the subject of only two full reports (one each on ABC and NBC) and mentioned in just 15 other stories. CBS and NBC also initially downplayed controversial statements from Obama’s longtime pastor Jeremiah Wright, but heavily praised Obama’s March 18 speech on race relations. * While Obama’s worst media coverage came during the weeks leading up to the Pennsylvania primary on April 22, even then the networks offered two positive stories for every one that carried a negative spin (21% to 9%). Obama’s best press of the year came after he won the North Carolina primary on May 6 — after that, 43 percent of stories were favorable to Obama, compared to just one percent that were critical. * The networks minimized Obama’s liberal ideology, only referring to him as a "liberal" 14 times in four years. In contrast, reporters found twice as many occasions (29) to refer to Obama as either a "rock star," "rising star" or "superstar" during the same period. * In covering the campaign, network reporters highlighted voters who offered favorable opinions about Obama. Of 147 average citizens who expressed an on-camera opinion about Obama, 114 (78%) were pro-Obama, compared to just 28 (19%) that had a negative view, with the remaining five offering a mixed opinion. http://www.mrc.org/SpecialReports/2008/obama/obamaExecSum.aspLast year, Harvard and PEJ studied presidential campaign stories from January through May in print, TV, radio and Internet outlets. Surprise, surprise, it turns out Democrats got more stories (49 percent) than Republicans (31 percent). Also, the tone of the coverage was more positive for Democrats (35 percent) than for Republicans (26 percent). "Not only did the Republicans receive less coverage overall," the Harvard study authors say, "the attention they did get tended to be more negative than that of Democrats. And in some specific media genres, the difference is particularly striking." For example, 59 percent of front-page stories about Democrats in 11 newspapers had a "clear, positive message vs. 11 percent that carried a negative tone." Obama's coverage was 70 percent positive and 9 percent negative. Hillary Clinton's was 61 percent positive and 13 percent negative. Yet only 26 percent of the stories on Republican candidates were positive, and 40 percent were negative. On TV, evening network newscasts gave Democrats 49 percent of their campaign coverage and Republicans 28 percent. As for tone, 39.5 percent of the Democratic coverage was positive and 17.1 percent negative, while 18.6 percent of the Republican coverage was positive versus 37.2 percent negative. http://www.creators.com/opinion/larry-elder/major-media-decide-vote-obama.htmlPlease provide some similiar documentation of the conservative bias, other than at Fox. I'll readily admit that they'll throw anyone under the bus if the story is juicy enough (ie Clinton, although you'll note that Drudge broke that story), but the general tone clearly has a leftwing bias.
Must be bias; can't possibly reflect reality Please provide some evidence that what you assert is actually bias. As in, please provide some evidence that covering the facts honestly wouldn't result in similar numbers. You know, something that doesn't come from a conservative propaganda house or a regular opinion contributor to WorldNetDaily? See, the thing is that this is symptomatic of a general complaint I've been hearing from conservatives for years. Their arguments, at their best, are shallow and statistically-oriented. And then they exaggerate the significance of the statistics. In the 2008 election, for instance, the press didn't officially turn on McCain/Palin until the polling trends were obvious, the campaign was in disarray, and Palin demonstrated herself repeatedly unable to cope with even the silliest, most lightweight of scandals. I love the notion that a story against a liberal is just a juicy tidbit, but a story against a conservative is liberal bias. And I adore the insistence that the media's bias is liberal. It does very poorly for the party that tries to appeal to capitalism to have to admit that the problem with the press is that the capitalists got their way. The media isn't about truth, it's about money. And the disaster that news media has become ought to be an embarrassment to the capitalists, especially those who complain about its content and coverage. And, apparently, it is. Conservatives have gotten their way for a long, long time. That's just the way it goes when a staple of your party is to exploit ignorance. Look at what happens to Democrats when they play the same stupid game: they get more and more conservative. Among Americans, it is still observable that the well-founded rational argument faces an uphill battle against basic ignorant superstition. Civil rights, torture, war, law-and-order? The gays will steal your children, the terrorists will kill your children, Saddam Hussein will kill your children, the crackheads will kill your children! And if that doesn't work, make it about money: The liberals will steal your money! This is all old bullshit. Where we are at in the process is that people are growing more and more fatigued with it. Yet conservatives keep on coming with the same old crap. Their best hope, then, seems to be to bludgeon people into submission, create a sense of hopelessness that nothing will ever get better, and then maybe folks will readjust to the new reality and somehow validate all of this vicious, juvenile, hateful excrement flung about by a bunch of angry conservatives. Really, when that's the best conservatives have to offer, it's time to reconsider their definition of conservatism. Oh, right. I forgot, that would violate conservatives' rights. So everyone else should reconsider reality and tailor it to suit the needs of conservatives.
A great amount of writing but not a lot of substances. Number of positive to negative stories is a completely bullshit way of looking at. A left wing fuck up is treated more harshly than right wing( unless its a sex scandel) Number of stories per a positive or negative event is a better way to look. and having the more interesting race more covered isn't bias
Really String? Hmm? and the Agency which is noted for it's record keeping, you don't think that they don't have a verbatim record of the briefing and who was there and what was presented. Yes, lets declassify those records, and see who is lying, just as we should declassify the redacted sections of the released AI's that show just exactly what information was recovered, and how it affect the progress of attacks on this country and other countries around the world, we have several CIA Director, from both parties who have said the enhanced interogations did give actionable intelligence, at a rate greater than any other interrogations method used against high value terrorist leaders.
It's hard to know who is lying about what, and whether they are deliberately lying or if they are merely repeating miscalculated information. I can only hope that the country is being run by people with hearts in their chests and at least a little bit of selflessness.
Yeah why don't they just declassify these records? If they aren't lying what are they afraid of. If I could easily prove what someone is saying is wrong I would do it, so what they waiting around for? Prove who is right and who is wrong and lets move on with our lives.
It isn't the CIA who gets to declassify the records, it is Congress, at the request of the CIA or the President. Now why didn't the President declassify the whole AI, files? instead of releasing heavily redacted excerpts? What was under all those blacked out redaction? Remember it is the Democrats who are now the ones in charge of Congress, and the committees, and the CIA. Hmmm?
The lefties have been trying to do that for a long time. No luck so far. A lot of the records have been destroyed, lost, etc. A lot were never kept, apparently. The rest have been stonewalled for years.
(Insert title here) Even this isn't as reliable as we need it to be. As Madanthonywayne mentioned, there are "juicy tidbits". Trying to determine the genuine scale of a given news item can be tricky. For instance, the Harvard and PEJ studies discussed above cover January-May, 2008, a period when the GOP campaigns underwent a transformation from serious disarray to grudging nomination to muddling around with unspectacular politicking. The Media Research Center report restricts itself to three broadcast networks, whose presentation of the news is exceptionally limited by format constraints. In the case of the former, pointing out the truth, that the GOP was in serious disarray, would be considered "negative" press. Covering criticism of a presidential candidate (Tom Tancredo) calling for nuclear strikes against Saudi Arabia would be considered "negative" press. Figuring what portion of the negative press reflects bias (and then what kind of bias) and what portion simply reflects reality? Imagine that I am a news editor who quashes yet another story about some truly screwed-up thing a Republican said: that equals one less story in the press. The complaint about raw numbers suggests that instead of simply quashing the negative press, I should make an extraordinary effort to provide some good press instead. In other words, in order to not appear biased, I should behave in a specifically biased manner. Even Larry Elder concedes the business aspect ... sort of: Washington Post ombudsperson Deborah Howell wrote a column in her own newspaper comparing the paper's front-page coverage of Democratic nominee Barack Obama with that of Republican nominee John McCain. Her findings? Examining stories from June 4, when Obama became the presumptive nominee, until Aug. 15, the Post ran 142 political stories about Obama, compared with 96 about McCain. As to front-page stories, Obama was 35 to McCain's 13. What about photographs? The Post ran, during this time, 143 pics of Obama versus 100 of McCain. The paper's assistant managing editor for politics explained the discrepancy this way: "We make our own decisions about what we consider newsworthy. We are not garment workers measuring our product every day to fulfill somebody's quota." In other words, Obama makes good copy, and this is, after all, a business. Fair enough. (But what's he got against garment workers?) But then Elders works to mitigate this point: But why, then — when the Post's Howell pointed out the discrepancy in photographs — did the disparity disappear over the next two weeks? Howell writes that since she first pointed out the lopsided nature of the photo coverage: "Editors have run almost the same number of photos — 21 of Obama and 22 of McCain — since they realized the disparity. McCain is almost even with Obama in Page 1 photos — 10 to 9." Elders presumes causation, but there is one critical difference between the samples: • Sample 1 (asserting bias): ±72 days • Sample 2 (mitigating business considerations): <13 days Furthermore, John McCain formally clinched the GOP nomination in March, 2008. Barack Obama effectively clinched in June, at the beginning of the longer sample, and Hillary Clinton refused to concede. There was a big fight taking place in the Democratic Party, and plenty of commentary going around suggesting its weakness because of infighting. Hell, I could even hear that on the "liberal" NPR. Furthermore, if Elder's suggestion is to be taken seriously, it would imply that the Washington Post showed a concerted conservative bias during the second period, as McCain got a greater share of front page space during a period that coincided with the Democratic National Convention and preceded his announcement of Gov. Palin as his vice-presidential nominee. In other words, while all eyes were on the Democrats, the Post apparently went out of its way to boost McCain's coverage. So, yes, I can understand if a news organization decides that the question of whether or not the first serious black presidential contender defeating the first serious female presidential contender might tear the Democratic Party apart is a newsworthy issue. And, in retrospect, given the decline in the health of the Republican Party over the last couple years, one would not be too far off base to wonder if maybe the whole question of whether the Democrats would fracture over the Obama-Clinton split was just a bit overplayed in order to accommodate this need for statistical, rather than substantive, fairness. 2008 was an extraordinary cycle. We saw the nation's first serious black and female contenders for the presidential ticket slug it out in one of the most contentious primary races in recent memory. Right there are three newsworthy items: black, female, and intensity of campaign. Yes, there will be increased coverage of these aspects. We also saw one of the most irresponsible vice-presidential candidate selections in history, with Sarah Palin all but sealing a Democratic victory even while the press tried to make excuses for John McCain. Yes, Sarah Palin was exceptionally newsworthy, and it's nobody's fault but her own if a journalist cannot muster enough deliberate bias to spin the spectacle of her ignorance, vice, and hypocrisy into something positive. In part because he is the first black president, and also because he succeeds one of the most disastrous presidential administrations in history, Barack Obama is subject to the kind of scrutiny we could only wish the white guy from Texas who succeeded one of our better presidents faced. Even Glenn Greenwald, widely viewed among conservatives as harshly partisan, is going after Obama on a regular basis for the same things he criticized Bush for, namely human rights and civil liberties. He even recently accepted the Wall Street Journal editorial assertion that the resuming military tribunals for terror suspects will be identical to the Bush administration's. While that might be a fair worry despite claims that there will be changes to the process, it reminds of two things: Greenwald will pursue his own outlook, and Obama is not exempt from his criticism. And this hints toward something obvious: What conservatives call "liberal" media bias isn't liberal at all. Genuine liberals are gnashing their teeth and wringing their hands as the Obama administration hands them one disappointment after another. The only ones among us who are left on Obama's bandwagon are those who accepted that they were signing on for four years. He has about three and a half years left to make good among that crowd. In the meantime, the "liberal" media bent over backwards to present Bush-administration Pentagon mouthpieces as genuine commentary, and the oh-so-reviled NBC news division? Well, Brian Williams has basically run screaming from that one, stopping occasionally to throw a stone at critics who charge that propaganda parrots should be labeled as such. The "liberal" media tried to tack Obama to the shed over Rev. Wright's disaffection toward what the nation has become without ever exploring the deeper themes of that story—e.g., How did a faithful Marine who was once directly entrusted with the life of a President of the United States come to be so damn angry at America?—while overlooking condemning statements from a white preacher (Sarah Palin's) or the genocidal lunacy of a white preacher signed on as the spiritual advisor to the McCain campaign (Rod Parsley). The "liberal" media chose specifically to focus on petty issues like flag pins; and apparently a black man is held to a higher standard while saluting the flag than a white man. Yeah, that from the "liberal" press. Oh, and by the way, you know when Sarah Palin gave a shout-out and expressed her love for that Alaskan political party? Yeah, a candidate giving props to a political party backed by the Iranians? That's not something the "liberal" media needs to worry about, is it? Oh, yeah ... back to the beginning here. Yes, there are far better ways to look at media coverage than raw statistics based on a subjective notion of positive and negative. And, indeed, per issue coverage, while not perfect, is among those methods. As to the rest, I suppose I'm just not sure what to think of the fact that conservatives are still pushing this theory. If a genuine and deliberate liberal media bias was present, one would think the conservatives would have scored a substantial hit by now. Either they're making it all up, or they're simply incompetent. I can't figure which is the kinder indictment. ____________________ Notes: Elder, Larry. "Major Media Decide -- Vote Obama". August 28, 2008. Creators.com. Accessed May 17, 2009. http://www.creators.com/opinion/larry-elder/major-media-decide-vote-obama.html Greenwald, Glenn. "The NYT sums up Obama's civil liberties record in one paragraph". Unclaimed Territory. May 16, 2009. Salon.com. Accessed May 17, 2009. http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/05/16/obama/index.html
Buffalo, did you read my post? I never said anything about the Pelosi issue, did I? I was talking exclusively about intelligence gathering. Please re-read my post as a reference to the point I was making. Note: I'm also for declassifying the information gathered. If I have a right to know what was done and what tools were used, then I should have the right to know what came from such actions. ~String
And were did I mention Nancy, (like a deer caught in the head lights) Pelosi? and you don't have any Idea of just what or what not the CIA has been effective on, and I have a bare inkling from my service time and things that I came to barely know about, just how effective the CIA really is, 99.5% of what they do never comes to light, it is classified and stays classified, what you hear about are the major screw ups, or the political posturing of the liberals, not the sucess's of the CIA. Again, the Constitution is not a suicde pact;
