Little Miss Patriot has had to keep her Little Miss TV off to keep her 2-year-old from watching TV all day. (If I watch my shows, he wants his on too.) So, no more CNN all day. I'm still reading the Net but most of what I get hot about is already being addressed by what I'm reading.
First, let me point you to the new CNN Political Ticker. They've turned their politics page into, well, it looks like a blog but I wouldn't go that far. The posts are mostly old-journalism-style fast-fact news bulletins. But in doing it this way, they cover a lot more of the things going on in a day than one might expect from CNN, even though it's clear the suits aren't going to let those two cute girls on their internet team actually, you know, blog like normal people. It's done at the top of the day, for one thing, and appears to not get updated during the day. One item that's pretty cool though is that they give you the President's schedule as well as a rundown of today's planned events of political figures like speeches and news conferences so all of us PolJunkies can fill out our Day Planners.
Second, The War Room at Salon.com (you'll have to watch a short commercial to get there) has been on fire lately. Tim Grieve is always great, but when he's out he has Glenn Greenwald fill in for him. Mr. Greenwald is even more long-winded than I am, God love him, but spot-on, and lately he has been making the points I would make. I start to think, "I'm going to do a post on this [fill in the blank Bush Atrocity]" and then I realize I'm reading one that's better than I could say it. So go read you some War Room, they are rockin' the house.
Now that I've covered my butt with flattery (hmm, that paints a different picture than I intended...) I have to pass on a point Mr. Greenwald made because it's so true I want to shout it (which of course is why I have a blog).
OK, an NIE comes out in April. The WH classifies it. In September part of it gets leaked and it does not look good for the WH. The leaked part basically says, you know, the truth, that the Iraq war has conflagrated terrorism and Bush & Co. have screwed this up six ways to Sunday. Bush is irate, and in trying to take back control of the news cycle, he declassifies the whole report because, according to him, it wasn't as damning as all that, if you read the whole thing.
So GG's point is, is the NIE worth classifying, or not? Let's see the arguments.
YES-- If it was worth classifying in April, it's because it has things in it that, if published, would threaten national security. If that's the case, WHY ARE YOU DECLASSIFYING IT? The WH is revealing classified information that when released could do us harm, simply to get off the policital hot seat. Shame on you, Mr. Bush!
NO-- If the document was not worth classifying in April, because it does not contain sensitive information related to national security, and therefore is harmless to declassify now, then WHY DID YOU CLASSIFY IT THEN? That means that Bush & Co. took a valid document that was a report card on their administration, and like a middle-schooler, hid it from us so they wouldn't get in trouble. Shame on you, Mr. Bush!
Either way, this whole thing should blow back on them. Unless of course it doesn't, because we obviously live in The Twilight Zone.
There's something else bugging me about this NIE story, and that's something I saw on CNN Pol Ticker. They said that a conservative blogger had received leaked quotes from the NIE (this apparently was after the NYT published their leaks and before yesterday's declassifying) that contradicted the earlier leaks, that is to say, painted a rosier picture and backed up what Bush was saying in speeches ("if you saw the whole thing you'd see it's not so bad"). Well, they linked to it like good little blogger wannabes and I followed the link. I read this guy's stuff, and his interpretation, and wanted to punch him in the cybernose. It all reminds me of the line from The Princess Bride, "I don't think it means what you think it means." This guy is claiming to be ex-CIA but his take on things is wonky. Here's an example [the italics are his, to delineate his take on the quote]:
"A large body of reporting indicates that people identifying themselves as jihadists is increasing...however, they are largely decentralized, lack a coherent strategy and are becoming more diffuse." Hmm...doesn't sound much like Al Qaida's pre-9-11 game plan.
Um, OK, and? What they're saying is, if you run over the fire ant hill with your mower, you decentralize them and spread them everywhere. And anyone knows, that is much, much worse. Not only does this cause them to multiply and go underground, like the ants, but in the world of cells that also means that any command structure that provided leadership and control is gone. Wanna blow some shit up? Go ahead! There's no one to rein you in.
Anyway, all of points are like that, and I wanted so badly to do a comment and take his whole post apart like an Edsel, but I refrained because I don't have that kind of time and because I was afraid I'd start a flame war. So would someone who is either calmer than I or doesn't care about remaining polite go over there and kick this guy's ass, please?
And then take your ire over to CNN, because I was equally pissed off that their "blog post" just said, "Hey, this right-wing guy found some stuff that backs up the President," without mentioning that this guy was full of crap. So if you didn't follow the links and read it for yourself, you would come away from that thinking that the NIE really does back up Bush like he's been saying. Shame on you, cute CNN internet girls!
That's all for today, class. I'll try to be on top of this blog more in the future. I don't know if you've missed me, but I've sure missed writing you.
LMP
