Showing posts with label al Qaeda. Show all posts
Showing posts with label al Qaeda. Show all posts
Friday, August 08, 2008
What is the sound of one shoe dropping?
The Anonymous Liberal has more on the gang that couldn't forge straight.
Tuesday, August 05, 2008
Modus Operandi
Remember last year when former CIA analyst Ray McGovern accused Vice President Dick Cheney of being behind the Niger forgeries?
Now Ron Suskind claims in his new book that the White House ordered the CIA to forge a back-dated, handwritten letter from the head of Iraqi intelligence to Saddam Hussein that would state that 9/11 ringleader Mohammad Atta had actually trained for his mission in Iraq.
From the linked Politico article: “It is not the sort of offense, such as assault or burglary, that carries specific penalties, for example, a fine or jail time,” Suskind writes. “It is much broader than that. It pertains to the White House’s knowingly misusing an arm of government, the sort of thing generally taken up in impeachment proceedings.”
I seriously doubt that this will lead to impeachment proceedings, and that doesn't really bother me. Sure, I'd like to see it happen, but I'm sympathetic to the argument that at this point in the election cycle impeachment proceedings might be counterproductive to the aim of making sure Barack Obama wins the election in November. What does bother me somewhat is the possibility that Congress won't even make a serious effort to investigate the truth of Suskind's claims, and that even if they attempt to do so the White House will successfully stonewall the investigation, as they have countless times before. But what bothers me the most is the likelihood that the vast majority of the American public won't get even slightly angry about this, that we won't see the sort of public outrage about this that would make Congress seriously consider impeachment. Instead, the public will be distracted by the thought that in some way Barack Obama is somehow the political equivalent of Paris Hilton. I hope I'm wrong about this, but I fear I'm not.
Grrrrrrrr.
Now Ron Suskind claims in his new book that the White House ordered the CIA to forge a back-dated, handwritten letter from the head of Iraqi intelligence to Saddam Hussein that would state that 9/11 ringleader Mohammad Atta had actually trained for his mission in Iraq.
From the linked Politico article: “It is not the sort of offense, such as assault or burglary, that carries specific penalties, for example, a fine or jail time,” Suskind writes. “It is much broader than that. It pertains to the White House’s knowingly misusing an arm of government, the sort of thing generally taken up in impeachment proceedings.”
I seriously doubt that this will lead to impeachment proceedings, and that doesn't really bother me. Sure, I'd like to see it happen, but I'm sympathetic to the argument that at this point in the election cycle impeachment proceedings might be counterproductive to the aim of making sure Barack Obama wins the election in November. What does bother me somewhat is the possibility that Congress won't even make a serious effort to investigate the truth of Suskind's claims, and that even if they attempt to do so the White House will successfully stonewall the investigation, as they have countless times before. But what bothers me the most is the likelihood that the vast majority of the American public won't get even slightly angry about this, that we won't see the sort of public outrage about this that would make Congress seriously consider impeachment. Instead, the public will be distracted by the thought that in some way Barack Obama is somehow the political equivalent of Paris Hilton. I hope I'm wrong about this, but I fear I'm not.
Grrrrrrrr.
Thursday, May 31, 2007
Yet more evidence of pro-dog, anti-human media bias.
New York Sun editor John B. Bogart once said, "When a dog bites a man, that is not news, because it happens so often. But if a man bites a dog, that is news."
Everybody knows that al Qaeda is made up of bad guys. Really bad guys. Guys who hijack airplanes and fly them into buildings, killing thousands of innocent people. Guys who recruit young men and women to be suicide bombers. Guys who kidnap people, gruesomely behead them, and videotape the whole thing just so they can show the whole world how bad they are. There is ample reporting in the media of the evil things that they do. The fact that al Qaeda is made up of evil people who commit evil acts is, frankly, not news.
So consider the case of those who allege that some news organizations are biased because they didn't give sufficient coverage to a particular piece of evidence of how utterly evil al Qaeda is, and, in the same breath, imply that the media overhyped evidence of torture of prisoners by U.S. soldiers at Abu Ghraib.
Such people are morons.
I'll try to make this as simple as possible, for those who still don't understand.
When the people who are supposed to be the good guys do bad things, it is something that we the people need to know about. Reporting such things is not evidence of bias. It is just reporting, plain and simple. Such stories naturally get a lot of attention because people expect the good guys to act like good guys, and we are shocked and disappointed when they don't.
When bad people do bad things, that's newsworthy too. But when we read repeated accounts of the same bad people doing yet more bad things, we might be saddened, but we are not shocked or disappointed, because it is not so surprising to learn that people we already know to be bad have done bad things yet again. And when the news is already full of stories about the same group of bad people doing bad things over and over again, the failure to report on any particular horrible act is not evidence of bias. To allege otherwise not only reveals your own bias, it also reveals you to be an idiot. So you should stop making such foolish allegations, for your own good.
Everybody knows that al Qaeda is made up of bad guys. Really bad guys. Guys who hijack airplanes and fly them into buildings, killing thousands of innocent people. Guys who recruit young men and women to be suicide bombers. Guys who kidnap people, gruesomely behead them, and videotape the whole thing just so they can show the whole world how bad they are. There is ample reporting in the media of the evil things that they do. The fact that al Qaeda is made up of evil people who commit evil acts is, frankly, not news.
So consider the case of those who allege that some news organizations are biased because they didn't give sufficient coverage to a particular piece of evidence of how utterly evil al Qaeda is, and, in the same breath, imply that the media overhyped evidence of torture of prisoners by U.S. soldiers at Abu Ghraib.
Such people are morons.
I'll try to make this as simple as possible, for those who still don't understand.
When the people who are supposed to be the good guys do bad things, it is something that we the people need to know about. Reporting such things is not evidence of bias. It is just reporting, plain and simple. Such stories naturally get a lot of attention because people expect the good guys to act like good guys, and we are shocked and disappointed when they don't.
When bad people do bad things, that's newsworthy too. But when we read repeated accounts of the same bad people doing yet more bad things, we might be saddened, but we are not shocked or disappointed, because it is not so surprising to learn that people we already know to be bad have done bad things yet again. And when the news is already full of stories about the same group of bad people doing bad things over and over again, the failure to report on any particular horrible act is not evidence of bias. To allege otherwise not only reveals your own bias, it also reveals you to be an idiot. So you should stop making such foolish allegations, for your own good.
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