Dan Froomkin: Fool Me Over and Over and Over Again

by Dan Froomkin, Niemanwatchdog.org

Our elite media has been repeatedly suckered into trumpeting glaringly unsupported assertions about the number of Guantanamo detainees that have “returned” to the battlefield. This was quite a week for it.

The most blatant and distressing previous object lesson came early last summer, when New York Times Public Editor Clark Hoyt appropriately spanked reporter Elisabeth Bumiller and her editors for a top-of-the-front-page story in late May that was “seriously flawed and greatly overplayed.” Hoyt wrote that the story, which appeared under the headline 1 in 7 Detainees Rejoined Jihad, Pentagon Finds “demonstrated again the dangers when editors run with exclusive leaked material in politically charged circumstances and fail to push back skeptically.”

Entirely by coincidence, of course, Bumiller’s article, based on a secret Pentagon report, provided a handy talking point for former vice president Cheney later that day, when he snarlingly attempted to rebut President Obama’s major address on national security speech later.

Bumiller’s reporting failure also earned her an editor’s note appended to her story, and a scolding op-ed.

And yet, amazingly enough, eight months later – now in the midst of attempts by Gitmo dead-enders to turn the aborted Exploding Christmas Underpants plot into a political cudgel – Bumiller is at it again, though this time chasing Bloomberg, et al., rather than leading the pack.

This time it’s one in five former detainees who have “engaged in, or is suspected of engaging in, terrorism or militant activity.” And here’s the sum total of what Bumiller learned from her previous experience:

Civil liberties and human rights groups sharply criticized the May 2009 report and earlier Pentagon reports during the Bush administration concluding that substantial numbers of former Guantánamo detainees had engaged in terrorism or militant activity. The groups said that the information was too vague to be credible and amounted to propaganda in favor of keeping the prison open.

But it’s not just that the Pentagon’s assertions are suspicious on their face. As it happens, a series of studies directed by Seton Hall Law Professor Mark Denbeaux has been effectively picking them apart for years. (A response to the latest spate of stories will be coming out on Monday.)

Among the other (little, inconsequential) things the Seton Hall reports have pointed out is that the Pentagon, in all the times it has leaked on the topic, has nevertheless consistently refused to provide names that would allow anyone to actually verify most of its claims. There’s the issue of how they define “returning to the fight” – it apparently includes detainees speaking out publicly against their incarceration. There’s the fact that officials, if you press them, acknowledge they don’t really track former detainees – so this is largely speculative. And there’s the specious use of the term “return” – given that most of the detainees who were released weren’t found on the battlefield in the first place and were never formally charged with anything.

From Denbeaux’s December 2007 report:

The Department of Defense has publicly insisted that “just short of 30” former Guantánamo detainees have “returned” to the battlefield… but to date the Department has described at most 15 possible recidivists, and has identified only seven of these individuals by name. According to the data provided by the Department of Defense.. at least eight of the 15 individuals alleged by the Government to have “returned to the fight” are accused of nothing more than speaking critically of the Government’s detention policies.

From his January 2009 report:

The Department of Defense does not keep track of released detainees nor does it follow their post release conduct.

Denbeaux calls this week’s outrageous Pentagon assertions the latest example of what he calls “numbers without names and trends without numbers.” He told me he’s outraged it’s been so widely picked up — including by the Times.

“I don’t see what the point is of a public editor criticizing a story for the New York Times if they’re going to republish it a year later,” he told me.

Gullible, amnesiac journalists are a dangerous thing. Is our profession really incapable of learning anything from its mistakes?

Pulsating diversity of views on the Post Op-Ed page

One of the leaders of The Liberal Media is a leading outlet for right-wing advocacy.
By Glenn Greenwald, salon.com, November 9, 2009

"I know many readers, particularly liberals, feel we have too many conservative voices on the page. On the other hand, I hear from a lot of conservative readers who think we have too many people they consider too liberal (Dionne, Robinson, Meyerson, Marcus, et al.). We try to provide a range of views--no matter who is in power" - Fred Hiatt, Washington Post Editorial Page Editor, October 14, 2009.

The Washington Post published a total of 8 Op-Eds and opinion columns today, from these individuals:

* Former Bush Attorney General Michael Mukasey (bashing Obama for wanting to try 9/11 defendants in an actual court)

* Neocon Charles Krauthammer (heralding the resurgent GOP fueled by "Obama's hubristic expansion of government, taxation, spending and debt")

* Newt Gingrich and GOP Texas Gov. Rick Perry (Obama's health care plan would destroy America)

* Former Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson (Obama has lost the American center and his health care plan will destroy Democrats)

* Conservative economist Martin Feldstein, former chief economic adviser to Reagan ("Obamacare" will raise premiums and increase the number of uninsured)

* Honduran coup defender Edward Schumacher-Matos (blaming Honduras' democratically elected President for "instigating mob rule" and criticizing both the American Right and Left for "extremism," while defending the administration-backed compromise)

* CEO of BP (British Petroluem) Tony Hayward (dismissing efforts to reduce fossil fuel consumption as "simplistic" and advocating changes to cap-and-trade bill that would benefit BP)

* Liberal Eugene Robinson (warning of the takeover of the GOP by the intolerant, ideological Right)

So, to re-cap: The Post today has two former Bush officials, one former Reagan official, two right-wing politicians, a Fox News neocon, the CEO of America's largest oil and gas producer, a defender of the right-wing Honduran military coup leaders, and one liberal columnist. That overwhelming right-wing presence on the Post Op-Ed page is anything but unusual (the day after it fired Dan Froomkin, The Post published Paul Wolfowitz, Michael Hayden, Charles Krauthammer and an Iran-hawkish screed from David Ignatnius, preceded by Glenn Beck, Bill Kristol, Robert Kagan, and Ramesh Ponnuru). And that's to say nothing of the always-pro-war Editorial Page itself, which typically advocates for those same positions.

The Post is obviously free to publish whatever it wants, but, wth some very rare exceptions, its Op-Ed page under Fred Hiatt now really is the leading outlet for neoconservatve and related right-wing advocacy. It is one of those outlets typically counted as part of the "Liberal Media" by right-wing self-victimizers and their media amplifiers, yet The Post's claimed devotion to airing a "wide range of views" is scarcely more credible than Fox News' "fair and balanced" slogan.

"America's Priorities," by the Beltway elite

Endless war in Afghanistan is an absolute necessity. Health care for Americans is a luxury that can wait.

Glenn Greenwald, Salon.com

Oct. 24, 2009

Something very unusual happened on The Washington Post Editorial Page today: they deigned to address a response from one of their readers, who "challenged [them] to explain what he sees as a contradiction in [their] editorial positions": namely, the Post demands that Obama's health care plan not be paid for with borrowed money, yet the very same Post Editors vocally support escalation in Afghanistan without specifying how it should be paid for. "Why is it okay to finance wars with debt, asks our reader, but not to pay for health care that way?"

The Post editors give two answers. They first claim that Obama will save substantial money by reducing defense spending -- by which they mean that he is merely decreasing the rate at which defense spending increases ("from 2008 to 2019, defense spending would increase only 17 percent") -- as well as withdrawing from Iraq. But so what? Even if those things really happen, we're still paying for our glorious, endless war in Afghanistan by borrowing the money from China and Japan, all of which continues to explode our crippling national debt. We have absolutely no ability to pay for our Afghan adventure other than by expanding our ignominious status as the largest and most insatiable debtor nation which history has ever known. That debt gravely bothers Beltway elites like the Post editors when it comes to providing ordinary Americans with basic services (which Post editors already enjoy), but it's totally irrelevant to them when it comes to re-fueling the vicarious joys of endless war.

The Post attempts to justify that disparity with their second answer, which perfectly captures the prevailing, and deeply warped, Beltway thinking: namely, escalating in Afghanistan is an absolute national necessity, while providing Americans with health care coverage is just a luxury that can wait:

All this assumes that defense and health care should be treated equally in the national budget. We would argue that they should not be . . . Universal health care, however desirable, is not "fundamental to the defense of our people." Nor is it a "necessity" that it be adopted this year: Mr. Obama chose to propose a massive new entitlement at a time of historic budget deficits. In contrast, Gen. McChrystal believes that if reinforcements are not sent to Afghanistan in the next year, the war may be lost, with catastrophic consequences for U.S. interests in South Asia. U.S. soldiers would continue to die, without the prospect of defeating the Taliban. And, as Mr. Obama put it, "if left unchecked, the Taliban insurgency will mean an even larger safe haven from which al-Qaeda would plot to kill more Americans."

Actually, a recent study from the Harvard Medical School and Cambridge Health Alliance documented that "nearly 45,000 annual deaths are associated with lack of health insurance" in America. Whatever the exact number, nobody doubts that lack of health insurance causes thousands of Americans to die every year. If you're Fred Hiatt and you already have health insurance, it's easy to dismiss those deaths as unimportant, "not fundamental," not a "necessity" to tend to any time soon. No matter your views on Obama's health care reform plan, does it really take any effort to see how warped that dismissive mentality is?

But it becomes so much worse when one considers what we're ostensibly going to do in Afghanistan as part of our venerated "counter-insurgency" mission. In an amazingly enlightening interview with Frontline, military expert Andrew Bacevich explains what that supposedly entails:

I think the best way to understand the term "counterinsurgency" is to understand what the U.S. Army and the Marine Corps today mean by that term. What they mean is an approach to warfare in which success is to be gained not by destroying the enemy but by securing the population.

The term "securing" here means not simply keeping the people safe, but providing for the people a series of services -- effective governance, economic development, education, the elimination of corruption, the protection of women's rights. That translates into an enormously ambitious project of nation building. . . .

John Nagl says that in effect we are engaged in a global counterinsurgency campaign. That's his description of the long war.

Now, think about it. If counterinsurgency, according to current doctrine, is all about securing the population, if securing the population implies not simply keeping them safe but providing people with good governance and economic development and education and so on, what then is the requirement of a global counterinsurgency campaign?

Are we called upon to keep ourselves safe? To prevent another 9/11? Are we called upon to secure the population of the entire globe? Given the success we've had thus far in securing the population in Iraq and in Afghanistan, does this idea make any sense whatsoever?

Can anybody possibly believe that the United States of America, ... facing a federal budget deficit of $1.8 trillion ... has the resources necessary to conduct a global counterinsurgency campaign? Over what? The next 20, 50, 80 years? I think [there] is something so preposterous about such proposals. I just find it baffling that they are treated with seriousness by supposedly serious people.

So according to The Washington Post, dropping bombs on, controlling and occupying Afghanistan -- all while simultaneously ensuring "effective governance, economic development, education, the elimination of corruption, the protection of women's rights" to Afghan citizens in Afghanistan -- is an absolutely vital necessity that must be done no matter the cost. But providing basic services (such as health care) to American citizens, in the U.S., is a secondary priority at best, something totally unnecessary that should wait for a few years or a couple decades until we can afford it and until our various wars are finished, if that ever happens. "U.S. interests in South Asia" are paramount; U.S. interests in the welfare of those in American cities, suburbs and rural areas are an afterthought.

As demented as that sounds, isn't that exactly the priority scheme we've adopted as a country? We're a nation that couldn't even manage to get clean drinking water to our own citizens who were dying in the middle of New Orleans. We have tens of thousands of people dying every year because they lack basic health care coverage. The rich-poor gap continues to expand to third-world levels. And The Post claims that war and "nation-building" in Afghanistan are crucial while health care for Americans is not because "wars, unlike entitlement programs, eventually come to an end." Except, as Bacevich points out, that's false:

Post-Vietnam, the officer corps was committed to the proposition that wars should be infrequent, that they should be fought only for the most vital interests, and that they should be fought in a way that would produce a quick and decisive outcome.

What we have today in my judgment is just the inverse of that. War has become a permanent condition.

Beltway elites have health insurance and thus the costs and suffering for those who don't are abstract, distant and irrelevant. Identically, with very rare exception, they and their families don't fight the wars they cheer on -- and don't even pay for them -- and thus get to enjoy all the pulsating benefits without any costs whatsoever. Adam Smith, all the way back in 1776, in An Inquiry into the Nature And Causes of the Wealth of Nations, described this Beltway attitude exactly:

In great empires the people who live in the capital, and in the provinces remote from the scene of action, feel, many of them, scarce any inconveniency from the war; but enjoy, at their ease, the amusement of reading in the newspapers the exploits of their own fleets and armies . . .

Lounging around in the editorial offices in the capital of a rapidly decaying empire, urging that more Americans be sent into endless war paid for with endless debt, while yawning and lazily waving away with boredom the hordes outside dying for lack of health care coverage, is one of the most repugnant images one can imagine. It's exactly what Adam Smith denounced. And it's exactly what our political and media elite are.

-- Glenn Greenwald

Don't be surprised the media elite sided with Fox

Washington reporters know that Democrats complain, but Republicans get even

By Gene Lyons

Oct. 29, 2009

Nobody should be surprised to see the nation's esteemed celebrity news media align with Fox News against the White House, although even a cynical observer like me found the unanimity mildly shocking. Don't they remember what journalism is supposed to be?

Supposedly, the press regulates its own behavior; in reality, that's been a joke for two decades. "Claiming the moral authority of a code of professional ethics it idealizes in the abstract but repudiates in practice," I wrote in 2003, "today's Washington press corps has grown as decadent and self-protective as any politician or interest group whose behavior it purports to monitor."

Today, even the fig leaf has been removed. A "journalist," so-called, is anybody paid by a media organization to enact the role on television.

Otherwise, anything goes.

The Obama administration's basic charge against Fox News is undeniably true: The network functions as the propaganda wing of the Republican Party. Fox openly organizes and promotes partisan political events such as April's "Fox News Tea Party." Its coverage of congressional "Town Hall" meetings reflected not a single individual supporting healthcare reform, as documented by Media Matters for America. Not one. Fox portrays every perceived setback for the Obama White House as a "victory" for "Fox Nation."

As necessary, Fox resorts to sheer fiction: Reporting that Glenn Beck's ballyhooed October Tea Party event drew upward of 2 million protesters to Washington. In reality, considerably more fans (102,941) attended the Auburn-Tennessee football game. (Political tip: If you hope to draw big crowds of Southern white men, avoid Saturdays in October.)

The point's neither complex nor subtle. In this country, journalists don't sponsor or participate in partisan political events. Maybe in Venezuela or China, but in the United States, no. Explaining to the New York Times, deputy White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer said, "We simply decided to stop abiding by the fiction, which is aided and abetted by the mainstream press, that Fox is a traditional news organization."

Yet neither the Times nor most "mainstream" pundits evaluated the claim on its merits. Most pretended not to grasp the White House's point, and then went straight to the aiding and abetting. Many invoked the ghost of Richard Nixon. Why, to criticize Fox, claimed the Washington Post's Ruth Marcus and Charles Krauthammer, was downright "Nixonian."

NPR's Ken Rudin recalled "what Nixon and Agnew did with their enemies list." So did CNN's Anderson Cooper. Rudin subsequently apologized for the "boneheaded" comparison; Cooper didn't.

Excuse me, but Nixon's enemies list was secret. Journalists and others got subjected to illegal FBI wiretaps, "black bag" break-ins and IRS audits. White House officials even discussed murdering columnist Jack Anderson.

Meanwhile, Nixon's Oval Office tapes are the gift that keeps giving to historians like "Nixonland's" Rick Perlstein. "Bob, PLEASE get me the names of the Jews, you know the big Jewish contributors of the Democrats," Nixon begged aide H.R. Haldeman. "Could we please investigate some of the (bleepbleepers)?"

Now that's what I call an enemies list.

Meanwhile, poor little Fox got criticized publicly. Oh, the horror!

Look, here's the deal. Where Democrats are concerned, journalism's vaunted ethical code quit functioning as anything but camouflage during President Clinton's first term. Out of scores of examples Joe Conason and I documented in "The Hunting of the President," the easiest to explain briefly may be a 1995 ABC "Nightline" broadcast in which a creatively edited video clip was used to insinuate that Hillary Clinton lied about "Whitewater" legal work.

After excising the words "I was what we called the billing attorney" from the first lady's remarks, ABC's Jeff Greenfield suggested that concealing that very fact explained "why the White House was so worried about what was in Vince Foster's office when he killed himself."

The phony quote then showed up everywhere: on CNN, in New York Times editorials, Maureen Dowd's column, etc. William Safire used it to predict Mrs. Clinton's indictment. After all, as Newsweek's Michael Isikoff wrote, "It is Foster's suicide that lends Whitewater its aura of menace."

Ancient history? Maybe so. But there was Jeff Greenfield on CBS News last week (he's worked for everybody), making the obligatory Nixon comparison and assuring Katie Couric that "if Fox is feeling any pain from the White House's stance, it's crying all the way to the bank."

As do they all.

See, while Fox News acolytes remain convinced of "liberal media bias," the reality is that celebrity journalists rarely, if ever, get hurt for abusing Democrats. Mistreat a name-brand Republican, however, and ...

Well, remember "60 Minutes'" Dan Rather?

Democrats complain; Republicans get even.

Hence "mainstream" political journalists, who cower like beaten dogs for fear of ending up on Fox boss (and Nixon alumnus) Roger Ailes' own enemies list, haven't had to fear the Obama White House. Last week's collective cringe makes it abundantly clear how badly they'd like to keep it that way.

© 2009 by Gene Lyons. Distributed by Newspaper Enterprise Assn.

-- By Gene Lyons

Will the Washington Press Corps(e) Learn From Its Mistakes of the Past 8 years?

WEDNESDAY NOV. 26, 2008 07:44 EST
Joe Klein's extreme revisionism
by Glenn Greenwald, Salon.com
(updated below)
Joe Klein, this week's Time Magazine, on George Bush's legacy:

Bush has that forlorn what-the-hell-happened? expression on his face, the one that has marked his presidency at difficult times. You never want to see the President of the United States looking like that.

So I've been searching for valedictory encomiums. . . . I'd add the bracing moment of Bush with the bullhorn in the ruins of the World Trade Center, but that was neutered in my memory by his ridiculous, preening appearance in a flight suit on the deck of the aircraft carrier beneath the "Mission Accomplished" sign. The flight-suit image is one of the two defining moments of the Bush failure.

Joe Klein, Face the Nation, May 4, 2003, with Bob Schieffer -- 3 days after Bush's Mission Accomplished speech:

BOB SCHIEFFER: How does [the Democratic presidential primary debate] play off against the pictures we saw this week of President Bush landing on the aircraft -- aircraft carrier and appearing before these screaming, adoring groups of military people? As far as I'm concerned, that was one of the great pictures of all time. And if you're a political consultant, you can just see campaign commercial written all over the pictures of George Bush.

JOE KLEIN: Well, that was probably the coolest presidential image since Bill Pullman played the jet fighter pilot in the movie Independence Day. That was the first thing that came to mind for me. And it just shows you how high a mountain these Democrats are going to have to climb. You compare that image, which everybody across the world saw, with this debate last night where you have nine people on a stage and it doesn't air until 11:30 at night, up against Saturday Night Live, and you see what a major, major struggle the Democrats are going to have to try and beat a popular incumbent president.

I'm glad that many people, including some journalists, seem to have learned some lessons from the Bush era now that he's almost certainly the single most unpopular President in modern American history. People who regret their mistakes and learn from them should be welcomed and encouraged. But a vital aspect of what happened over the last eight years is the role the media -- our leading media stars -- played in glorifying and venerating George Bush, and that can't be re-written or forgotten.

Truly learning from one's mistakes -- as opposed to wet-finger-in-the-air abandoment of previously revered leaders when they are revealed as failures and lose their power -- requires, at the very least, an acknowledgment of one's own role in what happened. There have been very few mea culpas from establishment media journalists, many -- most -- of whom, to this day, think they did nothing wrong ("It was all Judy Miller!"). As bad as this absence of remorse is, it is simply intolerable to watch those who cheered on many of the worst excesses try now to pretend that they were skeptical, adversarial critics all along. Journalists with influential platforms have responsibilities, the primary one of which is to be accountable for what they say and do.

UPDATE: Tristam Shandy notes some other relevant highlight reels from Joe Klein.
-- Glenn Greenwald

MSNBC Questions Clinton's Truthiness, Says She Was Pro-NAFTA

ABC Delivers Biased Debate: Obama Answers

Before last night's ABC debate, I e-mailed some questions I would like asked. I did it for the following reasons, since the debate had become debased to the point of personal attack ads by the Clinton campaign reminiscent of the Bush campaigns... complicit with a press that was afraid to press Bush on anything. This was sent out yesterday before the debate (my e-mail), and oddly enough, the debate did exactly the opposite of what I hoped it would do. It went on the offensive of one candidate, run by a former employee of the other candidate's family. The following is what I asked, followed by Senator Obama's assessment today of last night's debate, in what I thought was very accurate. I stated as follows in my e-mail:

Attacks are using fabrications or half-truths about a candidate to divide voters and cause questions in voters minds, albeit questions fabricated by the attacker.

There is a difference between that and asking direct questions of an opponent about why they actually DID do something, or why they have certain stands on issues. That is not attacking. That is winning the political fight through discussion of issues.

Facts I'D like examined are
1) Why did Hillary support the Bush's War on Iraq when Bin Laden was in Afghanistan?
2) Why did she vote to declare the Iranian Brigade a terrorist organization, thus giving Bush the ammo to go into Iran before he leaves office?
3) Why was she the ONLY Senator (Democratic or Republican) absent from the vote on granting retroactive immunity to the telecoms?
4) Why was Mark Penn on her payroll for a full year while still consulting the Colombian government on trade and jobs? - and, concurrently, how does she feel about her husband receiving an award and large sums of money from that same Colombian government as she "professes" to oppose Nafta? And Why is Mark Penn still advising, if this is an issue?
5) Why did she work so hard to support NAFTA in the beginning?
6) Why did she vote for Bush's Federal Bankruptcy Law which made it more difficult for those with mounting credit card debts to gain bankruptcy amidst the escalation of credit card rates that approaches the usury of organized crime in decades past? (30 percent in some cases)
7) How did she feel about her ultrawealthy supporters who wrote the infamous letter to the DCCC stating that they would take their money from local campaigns if the superdelegates did not go with Hillary? And, again, concurrently, how did she feel about the ties of some of those letter writers to organizations such as Rupert Murdoch's Newscorp, which Ed Rendell now calls fair and balanced, and other groups, such as the one that sold illegal weapons to the Chinese Government, was fined, and declared bankruptcy before having to pay the U.S. Government the fine?

These are not attack points. They are checkable facts that I wish and hope the newsmedia will ask her, and that the moderators in the debate will ask her. But, given my skepticism that they won't, I hope that Senator Obama DOES check the facts on these issues, and then ask her in the debate.



What we got was an hour-long questioning of Obama on such "tough" points as: Why doesn't he wear the flag pin? (Where was Hillary's, Charlie's, and George's as they asked that question?); what about someone who was on a board with him long ago who was in the Weather Underground when he was 8, while at the same time there was no follow-up with Senator Clinton as to why she didn't feel it a problem that her husband pardoned two members of the Weather Underground?; and the re-instatement of race into the campaign by our fair friends at ABC, just as Senator Obama had delivered a wonderful speech having united the various splintered groups in this country.

And why were none of the substantial questions I, as a mere blogger, could see were factual issues that needed to be addressed?

McCain gets donuts; Obama gets likened to a terrorist

Salon: The War Room
Tuesday, April 15, 2008 17:14 EDT

We've known for a while that so many political reporters fawn over John McCain that the media is often considered "McCain's base," but Dana Milbank's latest piece suggests news outlets are anxious to solidify the relationship.

Appearing before the nation's newspaper editors yesterday, AP chairman Dean Singleton pressed Barack Obama on whether he would send more U.S. troops to Afghanistan, where "Obama bin Laden is still at large." McCain's treatment was slightly different.


McCain's moderators, the AP's Ron Fournier and Liz Sidoti, greeted McCain with a box of Dunkin' Donuts. "We spend quite a bit of time with you on the back of the Straight Talk Express asking you questions, and what we've decided to do today was invite everyone else along on the ride," Sidoti explained. "We even brought you your favorite treat."

McCain opened the offering. "Oh, yes, with sprinkles!" he said.

Sidoti passed him a cup. "A little coffee with a little cream and a little sugar," she said.


This is neither a joke nor an exaggeration. ThinkProgress even has a video.

So, in March, McCain gives political reporters free barbecue, and in April, the nation's leading newspaper editors give McCain free doughnuts (with sprinkles!) and coffee.

There's something about this that undermines the notion of objective and detached journalism.

― Steve Benen

The Leader isn't protecting us and keeping us safe

I could not have put this any better than Glenn Greenwald. 1) The President refuses to sign an extension to FISA because he doesn't get EVERYTHING he wants, i.e., retroactive immunity for his pals at the telecoms who likely illegally collected information on you and me; 2) He lets it expire... holding his breath until he turns blue... but saying it's "our fault" or "the Democrats" fault; and 3) FURTHER... he instructs the Republican house members to vote against extension of the FISA Act !!!!

It's no one's fault if we're less safe than this President's. And it's HIS administration (no one else's) where planes were flown into buildings even WITH advance warning from our nation's security people... he continued to read a book to an elementary class while it was all happening; he let Bin Laden escape and continues to let him live in the hills of Pakistan. YET he tells us Armageddon is coming. Perhaps if he could make one correct decision based on the ACCURATE information he was given ahead of time.

I hope the House Democrats have the fortitude to hold their ground, unlike some of the House Democrats.(Keystone)

Glenn Greenwald, Salon.com
Saturday February 16, 2008 11:45 EST

(updated below - Update II - Update III)
According to the President and his followers, we will be -- as of the stroke of midnight tonight -- no longer safe, no longer protected, no longer snug and secure in the strong and loving arms of our Federal Government. That's because the Protect America Act -- a law which has only existed for six months yet is now indispensable to America's ability to survive and avoid being slaughtered by the Terrorists -- expires tonight.

The President himself this morning dramatically intoned: "At the stroke of midnight tonight, a vital intelligence law that is helping protect our nation will expire." Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell gravely pointed out: "What will happen at midnight tonight is much more significant than stump speeches, steroids or superdelegates. On Sunday, the terrorist tracking program . . . no longer will be fully operational." National Review warrior and all-around tough guy Andy McCarthy fretted: "When the Clock Strikes Midnight, We Will Be Significantly Less Safe."

This is one of the most bizarre propaganda dramas ever, even when weighed against other Bush Terrorism propaganda dramas of the past. There is one reason, and one reason only, that the Protect America Act expired. Its name is "George W. Bush." That is who refused to agree to the Democrats' offer to extend the law by 21 days (or longer), then repeatedly threatened to veto any such extension ("US President George W. Bush on Wednesday vowed to veto another temporary extension of a domestic spying law"), then directed the always-obedient House Republicans to vote unanimously against the extension, which they (needless to say) did. This vital-to-our-safety piece of legislation expired only because George W. Bush repeatedly blocked its extension.

It's just that simple.

All of the right-wing war cheerleaders who will be rendered sleepless as of midnight tonight, petrified that the Muslims who normally lurk menacingly on their corners will now be free to spring attacks since we now live under FISA (1978-8/2007) rather than the PAA (8/2007-2/2008), have only the Warrior-Protector Commander-in-Chief to blame for making us all so very "unprotected and unsafe." And George W. Bush's (absurd) claim this morning that, as of midnight tonight, "it will be harder for our government to keep you safe from terrorist attacks" amounts to a confession that he has deliberately chosen to make us all Unsafe because he is the one who single-handedly ensured the death of this Vital Intelligence Tool. This is an extremely straightforward, clear and indisputable fact which even our national press corps ought to have no trouble conveying.

From the John Edwards Blog.. an intriguing thought... Edwards/Gore '08

Dear Edwards Friends:
Happy Weekend to all of you. Let's see a show of hands (or in this case, postings) for those of you who believe in the UNSTOPPABLE POWER OF AN EDWARDS-GORE '08 TICKET TO THE WHITE HOUSE--AND BEYOND.
Write back. We'd love to hear from you.
Edwards-Gore '08--It's Not Too Late. Tomorrow Begins Today.
http://www.harmonyforlife.com/

A note from Greetings: Despite winning or placing well early on, why did the press carry so LITTLE of John Edwards and his ideas? Many of those ideas are now being espoused by Sens. Clinton and Obama, but were not before John Edwards brought them up. He wanted the troops out as soon as he got in - neither Clinton nor Obama did, but Sen. Clinton does now. He wanted anyone entering a hospital without healthcare to either get a chance to get their own, or sign up for federal coverage if they were unable. Does this sound familiar? Now his ideas get coverage from the candidates still being covered by the press. I'll never forget Chris Matthews pushing for a Hillary/Rudy battle from day one over a year ago. That is not press coverage... that's editorializing.

Rating Bush, on a scale of 1 to 10

Note from Greetings: More nuggets of wisdom from Dan Froomkin. This time in Nieman Watchdog. Why DOESN'T the press ask the Republican candidates what they think about Bush's policies... why didn't they oppose them at the time... did they vote for them, etc? I believe they need to answer now for their actions and inactions over the last 8 years. And why is the press afraid to ask these questions? It doesn't seem to have come up in any of the debates...articles...or anywhere. Was Bush a ghost?

ASK THIS December 13, 2007 Dan Froomkin, www.NiemanWatchdog.org
Republican presidential candidates avoid talking about President Bush, for obvious reasons. But journalists should press them to say what they think of Bush's legacy, which elements of his presidency they would emulate, and which they would reject.

By Dan Froomkinfroomkin@niemanwatchdog.org

The Republican candidates for president rarely mention their party’s deeply unpopular standard-bearer these days, particularly in their debates. In Harry Potter-speak, President Bush has become He Who Must Not Be Named for Republicans.

Bush’s name was uttered only twice during the GOP’s two-hour-long CNN/YouTube debate on Nov. 8. CNN correspondent Carol Costello observed: "It sure seems like Bush has become a four letter word you don't want to mention if you're a Republican running for office. They've taken to talking about him in code -- not daring to say Bush, but not shy about promoting his agenda.”

At the Dec. 9 Univision debate in Miami, the name Bush was mentioned once, by Sen. John McCain. And McCain was referring to the president’s brother Jeb, the former governor of Florida.

At yesterday’s Des Moines Register debate, the Bush name again came up only once. This time, it was former governor Mitt Romney talking about the current president's dad.

The reasoning is obvious. Publicly identifying with Bush is a losing proposition overall, given his dismal job-approval ratings. But attacking the president risks upsetting the Bush loyalists who, while few in number, make up a good chunk of Republican primary voters.

Furthermore, keen political observers have noted that Republicans are very eager not to make 2008 a referendum on Bush, because on those terms, there is little doubt they would lose.

And yet, what the GOP candidates think of the Bush presidency – what they consider its strengths and weaknesses, which elements they would emulate, which they would reject – is crucial information for anyone trying to figure out what they would be like as president themselves. In fact, it’s hard to imagine what could be more important.

As it happens, there is one way to get the candidates to address the Bush legacy in their debates or elsewhere.

And that’s to ask them. Here are some possible questions:
Q. Do you approve of disapprove of the job President Bush is doing?
Q. On a scale of 1 to 10, how would you rate Bush as president?
Q. What would you consider some of Bush’s greatest successes?
Q. What would you consider some of Bush’s greatest failures?
Q. Had you been president, would you have invaded Iraq?
Q. If you had to give President Bush a grade for how he managed the war in Iraq, would it be an A, B, C, D or F?
Q. What decisions if any would you have made differently if you had been in charge these past seven years?
Q. How would you assess President Bush’s credibility? High? Low?
Q. Do you approve of the job Vice President Cheney is doing?
Q. Historically, the vice president has been in a more subordinate role. Do you think Bush was overly influenced by his vice president? Would you expect your vice president to serve a similar function?
Q. Historically, a main job of national security adviser has been to serve as an honest broker between other parties, to make sure the president was making decisions based on accurate information, and to present the president with alternative options and dissenting views. By most accounts, Condoleezza Rice was not that sort of national security adviser. Do you think Condoleezza Rice did a good job as national security adviser? Would you expect your national security adviser to operate differently?
Q. Do you feel President Bush has been operating in too much of a bubble?
Q. President Bush rarely ventures out in public, and almost always talks to invitation-only audiences. Historically, presidents have appeared at events that were open to the public, at least in part to make it clear that they had been chosen to represent the whole country, not just those who voted for them. Would you return to this tradition?
Q. Would you continue President Bush’s practice of using signing statements to quietly assert his right to ignore legislation passed by Congress?
Q. President Bush’s lawyers have asserted that there are few Constitutional checks on a wartime president. Do you agree? And would you consider yourself a wartime president?
Q. Do you think President Bush is within his rights to assert executive privilege to block the testimony of White House aides in the investigation of the politically-motivated firings of U.S. Attorneys? Would you do likewise in similar circumstances?
Q. Some critics have accused the Bush White House of being dominated by politics, at the expense of policy. Do you think Bush got the balance between campaigning and governing about right?

Define Victory

The American people are told that "we" are close to victory. Just allow the escalation to take effect. Why reporters have readily accepted the term "surge", I am not clear. But it does show a pattern of journalistic acquiescence - or at least a lack of curiosity. Give them something to write, and they will write it.

What would be journalistic would be to begin to ask questions, rather, to be a journalist and not a stenographer. The first question that has never been asked of the administration by the press is, "Define victory."

We've been given many reasons why we should stay in Iraq, and many more why we needed to go in the first place. We are well past the possibility of actual journalistic investigations into the over half a dozen reasons that the administration gave to U.S. citizens as to why it, and we, went to war with Iraq. Each reason was duly noted by the press as a reason. The public did what it was used to doing and accepted each "reported" reason.

Since the press was asleep for the first round of questions, perhaps they can begin to ask the next round. What does the administration consider victory?

We have been told 1) that we needed to quell the insurgency; 2) that elections needed to be held; 3) that "we would stand down when they stand up"; and most recently 4) so that Iraq would not become a haven for terrorists.

We found out that the insurgency was a civil war. Elections were held, and a government was elected that has closer relations with Iran. The Iraqi civilians now appear afraid of their own police. And Afghanistan remains the central war with Bin Laden and Al Qaeda; a war we are losing due to the lack of troops in that region. Bin Laden has found a safe haven in Pakistan, and remains there. And from Pakistan, he is launching a move to try to regain a foothold in Afghanistan. Afghanistanis are tired of being left in the lurch and the U.S. appears to be losing the hearts and minds of that nation.

The escalation is said to be working. However, the same people who questioned Cheney on his assertion that "we would be greeted as liberators" have noted some similarities between the escalation and the start of the invasion of Iraq. Insurgents, which reads either Iraqi Sunnis or Iraqi Shiites, have left Baghdad as more American troops move in, much as they did at the start of the war in 2003. Much like in 2003, they have moved into two surrounding provinces, where violence has apparently increased as violence in Baghdad has decreased. Ali called this his "rope-a-dope". I'd like to think we are smarter than George Foreman, although experience at least provided him with The George Foreman Grille and success in his later years.

Again, I come back to one question I would like the press to ask Bush and Cheney - repeatedly. "Define victory." In World War II, the definition of victory was clear. The defeat of Germany and Japan, at whatever cost it took from our citizenry and whatever it cost those countries in terms of civilian lives, as well. The fire bombing of Tokyo devastated Japan. Dresden Hiroshima, Nagasaki,- were all calculated to defeat not only the armed forces of those countries, but the wills of their citizens. After all, they had invaded us. And complete victory was our only option. Whatever it took to defeat those countries and their allies. Is that something we really want to do to the Iraqi people?

In Vietnam, victory was not well defined, and it was not achieved. We wanted to stabilize Vietnam so that other countries would not tumble as Communist dominoes. What was stabilization? What was victory? We wanted "to win the hearts and minds of the Vietnamese people", which we finally found were one against us. We now do most of our manufacturing in Vietnam, but we did not win that war, and we did not "define victory" in that war. China did not follow us home.

We were, and are, told that Iraq was involved in 9/11 - it was not. It was tied in with Bin Laden - it was not. And that it had weapons of mass destruction - it did not. And finally, that we would be welcomed as liberators. Many citizens and knowledgeable people questioned those facts, but many in the press and government did not. They wrote them down and passed them on to the public.

When we reached Baghdad, President Bush stood on the deck of the aircraft carrier and declared victory. Apparently not. So again... "Define victory."

For, while fighting terrorism has a more vague definition of victory, defeating a country does not. But are we prepared to do what it takes to defeat a country like Iraq and "define victory" as the defeat of that country, much as we did with Germany and Japan in World War II? In those cases it was much easier to install a government that we thought would be one that would act honorably in later years. And the governments of those countries have done just that. They have become allies, at least under previous administrations.

It becomes more clear that invading Iraq was meant by Bush and his neo-cons as a way to show our strength. They had premised the invasion of Iraq before Bush even took office in their documents under People for the New American Century. They felt it would be an easy win for Bush to unite the country behind him and the Republican Party. Pursuing Bin Laden and fighting terrorism is more difficult and more subtle.

So did invading Iraq get us closer to finding and defeating Bin Laden and the Taliban? It appears they are regrouping as I write this. Again, "Define Victory" - at least in Iraq. And journalists, please regain your wits and ask that question.

Then we can get on to pursuing the terrorists in Pakistan and Afghanistan, before they grow stronger. We can describe to the American public how we intend to fight and defeat terrorism, so that Americans again trust our leaders and unite behind them to fight the terrorists.Then we will know where to send our soldiers and why - or if we should send them or prescribe a different course of action. Then we can quit making our soldiers sit in a shooting gallery with no apparent goal in mind, other than "to fight there so 'they' don't follow us here'." We can stop saying that being in Iraq is the definition of victory.

Then we will know not when, but HOW our brave men and women in Iraq who have fought so valiantly can come home. Without a definition of victory, how can we win?