Glenn Reynolds: War Opponents Unpatriotic
Quoted by Kevin Drum.
All I can do right now is more-or-less second what Drum says, roughly: hey, I thought you guys said that you never said this?
Quoted by Kevin Drum.
All I can do right now is more-or-less second what Drum says, roughly: hey, I thought you guys said that you never said this?
posted by Winston Smith at
4:31 PM
33 Comments:
Is "you guys" me, WS?
I'll take it that it is, because I'm the only Travis Bickel around here.
You talkin' to me?
If you haven't given up on me, neither have I given up on you, WS, despite our recent contretemps and dropping of the gloves like the hockey game that is today's American politics. Perhaps a clearing of the air was in order. We've got an election coming up.
"You guys" might be a rhetorical formulation to the universe of righties who universally don't read this blog, but that seems implausible for a clever fellow like yourself. Accordingly:
We're into the toy store again---Drum on Reynolds on Henniger on Gen. Ricardo Sanchez' remarks. Sanchez is the only member of the real world, and so we should cut to the chase.
For those who avoid the rightosphere and get their information distilled by the Washington Post, etc., Gen. Sanchez condemned the Bush administration's conduct of the war. That much you might have heard. But he spent fully half his speech condemning the media's reporting of the Iraq war, which the media itself largely edited out. Glenn Reynolds simply piled on---his addendum insignificant in the scheme of things, as is Drum's demurral.
Is the press unpatriotic? Non-patriotic would be a more accurate description of Gen. Sanchez' charge. They see their first duty is to the "truth," not to the American troops in the field.
OK, fine. Admirable in some quarters, perhaps, but worthy of questioning by American generals in the field, who see it as instrumental in getting their troops killed.
"It seems that as long as you get a front-page story there is little or no regard for the 'collateral damage' you will cause. Personal reputations have no value and you report with total impunity and are rarely held accountable for unethical conduct. . . . You assume that you are correct and on the moral high ground."
"The speculative and often uninformed initial reporting that characterizes our media appears to be rapidly becoming the standard of the industry." "Tactically insignificant events have become strategic defeats." And: "The death knell of your ethics has been enabled by your parent organizations who have chosen to align themselves with political agendas. What is clear to me is that you are perpetuating the corrosive partisan politics that is destroying our country and killing our service members who are at war."
I think that's a charge of non-patriotism. No spin here, just my best reading of the controversy, respectfully submitted. I have more of course, but let's get the automatic jumping down my throat over with before I decide whether or not to continue.
Arguing with the law of the excluded middle, always a pleasure to watch.
No, no, Tom, not you. Sorry...no intention of in any way suggesting that. You've never said anything like that. 'You guys' was intended to mean something like 'Reynolds et. al.'
Despite LL's perfectly reasonable protest, I kind of like the distinction implied by the introduction of the term 'non-patriotic.' So the suggestion: 'unpatriotic' is ambiguous as between 'non-patriotic' and 'anti-patriotic.'
Thing is, that distinction having been helpfully drawn...I have to say that my first reaction is that the press *should* be non-patriotic. The press should strive to be like low-level scientists; just the facts, ma'm.
But Reynolds isn't just talking about the press. He was also talking about "the political class"...a suspiciously vague term...
Thing is, I oscillate between two polls, he patriotic and the non-patriotic. I get mistier over the Founders and the constitution and bloody Omaha beach than most conservatives, I'll guarantee you that. So there's some PatCred, if anybody's interested. But some would say I'm not a real patriot because I merely love my country because I think it's objectively good. True patriotism is tribal: my country right or wrong, facts be damned. And that I don't have. Most of me is "cosmopolitan" in the technical sense: I think you've got to be dispassionate in your moral judgments about countries; ergo, your own country can get no special treatment.
But anyway:
Thing is, we all know that big parts of the right--especially the fever swamps--really do think that people like me are unpatriotic. They don't draw Tom's distinction, but what they think is: anti-patriotic. They pretend they don't believe it when pressed on it, but it's always there, just in the background.
WRT Sanchez's charges against the press, it would be nice to read a few examples of what he's describing. As in, evidence rather than mere assertion. Perhaps the press should have hushed up Bush's exhortation to *bring it on*.
As for the larger point, I think "non-patriotic" is fine; kindly report the facts and allow us to use our intelligence to arrive at our own opinions. In no way did the founders of this nation regard the press's role to be one of cheerleader for the government's chosen policy. This is true despite the pressure brought to bear on news organizations to delay and spike stories (e.g. Bush ANG service, illegal wire-tapping) which are harmful to the Administration; or to plant stories favorable to the administration solely so they can later be referenced on talk shows, a la Cheney citing the sewage they fed Miller and Gordon at the NYT.
That being said, it's dishonest to pretend that there isn't a world of difference between those examples of the media allowing itself to be used as a political tool on the one hand and providing valuable tactical information to our enemies on the other; the giving away of secret troop movements and military strategies being an example of the latter. The truth is that there's enough room in between those two to drive several Humvees through.
As for the my-country-right-or-wrong issue, Winston, I would say that Al Franken summed it up pretty well when he said something to the effect of the Right loves America like its Mommy or Daddy - it can't be wrong, while the Left loves it like an adult - it realizes that it can in fact be wrong, but loves it nonetheless.
My problem with the Right's formulation is that it smacks of nationalism rather than patriotism. That's not to say it IS nationalism, which has echoes of ethno-centrism and extreme xenophobia, which I don't think is the case with most of the blind hyper-patriotism of much of the Right.
P.S. It also bears stating here that while he has policy agreements with this group, I would not include Tom in that blindly pro-American-policy group; as you said, he wouldn't fit with 'Reynolds et al.'.
Correction: what I oscillate between is, of course, two poles, not two polls.
Why, thank you, all. That was nice.
2 things, briefly---I would compare the NYT, et al., uncovering [blowing the cover of] the details of anti-al-Qaeda programs as analogous to revealing troop movements.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/10/opinion/10goss.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
Therefore, we certainly are into the muck of the non-partiotic press in service of the truth vs. the consequences for the national interest. The dynamic is real, not abstract or rhetorical.
Secondly, Gen. Sanchez charges a bias (agenda-driven shading, if you will) in the media's handling of the facts of the war, a tougher subject. (I believe) it's fairly universally agreed upon that the media's coverage of the 1968 Tet Offensive in Vietnam turned a military victory (6,000 US-South Vietnam casualties vs. 50,000 for the Viet Cong) into an irreversible propaganda defeat.
http://www.marxist.com/1968/vietnam.html
This is where Gen. Sanchez is coming from, I think. The reporting from Iraq has been so day-to-day, hour-to-hour, that the media's attempts at a meaningful overview were doomed to failure---hell, the military and the Iraqis themselves don't know what's going on most of the time. In the absence of facts, the void will be filled by opinion, as Plato or Max Weber or somebody once said, and Sanchez believes that the default opinion of the press will necessarily be that things are always going badly, which they will report as fact.
fascinating story here about the press' non-patriotism---would you warn American troops of an ambush if you were accompanying the enemy as a journalist?
Peter Jennings said yes, Mike Wallace said, no, you have a higher duty as a journalist. Jennings changed his mind.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/press/vanities/fallows.html
Cameos by Westmoreland, Scowcroft, and even Newt Gingrich. Not to be missed.
This comment has been removed by the author.
Wallace/Jennings link.
Tom,
You're welcome. You ain't no mouth breather or knuckle-dragger. Faint praise, I know, but sometimes shit like that needs saying.
As far as the Vietnam thing goes, that's another story, but I think the reliance on body counts and *battles won* is really meaningless when assessing that war. 2 million+ dead VC and countless battle victories, and victory was still always just around the corner.
And sorry, but no sale on the wiretapping etc. as analogous to troop movement disclosures. As scummy as Al Qaeda is, I wouldn't accuse their leaders of being stupid. Of course they already knew we were monitoring their communications, suspicious bank transfers, etc. I'll turn the microphone over to Richard Clarke and Roger Cressey:
"So, too, however, are the Bush administration's protests that the press revelations about the financial monitoring program may tip off the terrorists. Administration officials made the same kinds of complaints about news media accounts of electronic surveillance. They want the public to believe that it had not already occurred to every terrorist on the planet that his telephone was probably monitored and his international bank transfers subject to scrutiny. How gullible does the administration take the American citizenry to be?"
Cite:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/30/opinion/30clarke.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
Dunno. Thanks for the mouth-breather thing, altho I admit I've been diagnosed with a deviated septum.
People tend to be lazy, and when they think their secret thing is working---absent evidence to the contrary---they keep doing what they're doing. When the NYT reveals the secret, it's entirely possible that then and only then, they find themselves forced to change.
As argument, I offer that the Allies broke both the German and Japanese codes, which resulted in many tactical victories. Had the Germans and Japanese, reputedly the most industrious people in the world, not been so damn lazy in keeping up with the security of their communications, I might be typing this in German or Japanese.
Das würde saugen.
I tend to agree about Vietnam. We offered them only the hegemony of the West over that of their own commies, who at least were homegrown.
Civil war? Mebbe. Big mistake philosophically and politically, no question in my mind. Nobody wants to give their lives for a proxy war. We deserved to "lose," because it was indeed a proxy war.
Altho we pulled out a sustainable (sustained!) draw in Korea, and the South (after admittedly many many years of authoritarian-autocracy) in 2007 has been gifted with their prosperity and freedom at the price of much American blood 50 years ago, while their northern [commie] brothers and sisters today simply starve to death by the hundreds of thousands if not millions.
Fucking ingrates in Seoul. They look for cell phone connections instead of some passing rodent to kill to feed their families.
An object lesson, but I just dunno what it is. Mebbe it just wasn't worth it. This nation spent the lives of 30,000 of its sons and daughters to win the south's freedom and now-smug prosperity, and today they alternately raise and spit upon the US flag.
Idealism vs. realism, I guess. Why should any American man or woman die in any of the buttholes of the world?
Interesting conjecture in the new Atlantic article about theologian Reinhold Neibuhr (subscription only, sorry)---did Bill Clinton's defeat [18 combat deaths, Black Hawk Down] and subsequent withdrawal from Somalia thereby stay his hand when the Rwandan genocide came up?
The butthole question, I guess we can call it, but a profound one. The moral obligation to stop the slaughter in the butthole house across the street, the isolationist impulse to let 'em all kill each other, who gives a damn. Won't make any difference anyway---if I stop it today, the coroner's van is still gonna be pulling up tomorrow.
I think the experience in Somalia definitely had an effect on the thinking re: Somalia. Although it was actually George Bush 41 who sent troops to Somalia, so I don't think that can be pinned on one guy.
I also think that the inaction on Rwanda had an effect on thinking re: Kosovo/Serbia.
Correction -
That should be I think the experience in Somalia definitely had an effect on the thinking re: RWANDA.
I'm also not convinced of your proposition that Al Qaeda has forgotten that we're monitoring their communications and financial transactions, despite the analogy to WW II.
Not sure what the WWII analogy can do here except remind us what we all already believe: that there are limits to what the press should print. The propagation of some info can be delayed if the relevant cost is too high right now.
And I think we all admit that it is sometimes worth it for Americans to die to save non-Americans. Though, not to push the point too much, this is more of a liberal than a conservative point. Many conservatives say they are "realists". (Though the corresponding liberal vice is pacifism, and/or the belief that violence never solves anything. (guffaw).)
And I definitely think that the debacle in Somalia (partially actually Clinton's fault for once, as he didn't send tanks) had an effect on his inaction re: Rwanda. But, again, it's important to remember that he was besieged in a way that no other president has been in recent memory: according to the VWRC, Clinton's good actions were bad, his neutral actions were treasonous, and his bad actions were demonic. Every decision and every action required him to drag Republicans along, kicking and screaming, every decision and every action came at an unusually high cost in political capital. He had to marshal his resources. He tried to kill OBL, hence stopping 9/11, but conservatives howled "wag the dog" (though this came later, it illustrates the problem.) He was almost not permitted to stop genocide in the Balkans--"insufficiently in our interest" went the objection. ("no oil" was actually said by actual Republicans, including Tom DeLay.)
The odds of Clinton, who payed a cost for every action he took, being able to send U.S. troops into an African country in which we had no self-interest whatsoever "merely" in order to do the morally right thing are small indeed. And even if he could have done it, the cost would have been enormous. And if he did anything but win big and bloodlessly, it might have been the end of him.
Incidentally, he himself identifies it as his biggest failure.
And NONE of the above can answer the charges that his admin. *actively worked to stop others from sending troops.*
I think he still should have sent troops anyway, but that's easy for me to say. I just want people to remember how many of Clinton's biggest failures came because the GOP virtually destroyed itself guaranteeing that it functioned as an anvil around his neck.
I forgot to mention that our breaking of Axis codes in WW II had the additional virtue of actually being legal.
As argument, I offer that the Allies broke both the German and Japanese codes, which resulted in many tactical victories. Had the Germans and Japanese, reputedly the most industrious people in the world, not been so damn lazy in keeping up with the security of their communications, I might be typing this in German or Japanese.
The Germans didn't get their codes broken because they were lazy, they thought that the Enigma machine used to encypher their transmissions was a unique piece of technology that rendered their transmissions virtually undecipherable.
From the Wikipedia entry on "Ultra":
The fundamental break into the Enigma systems that were to be used by Nazi Germany was made in Poland in 1932, just on the eve of Adolf Hitler's accession to power, by Marian Rejewski. The 27-year-old mathematician used advanced mathematics (group theory, particularly permutation theory) and cracked the Enigma system. Together with two colleagues at the Polish General Staff's Cipher Bureau (Polish: Biuro Szyfrów), he went on to develop practical methods of decrypting Enigma traffic. They designed working "doubles" of the Enigmas and developed equipment and techniques which helped in finding the keys needed for decryption (including the "grill," "clock," cyclometer, cryptologic bomb, and perforated sheets). Well before 1938, much German Enigma traffic was being routinely decrypted by the Poles; but accelerating changes in German operations (encipherment procedures, frequency of key changes, greater rotor choice) and looming war led the Poles to share their achievements in Enigma decryption with France and Britain. This happened during the famous meeting at Pyry, in the Kabaty Woods south of Warsaw, on July 25, 1939. Since neither the French nor the British had succeeded in breaking Enigma traffic, this was a major cryptanalytic windfall for Poland's western allies.
The German failure to realize their system had been compromised can be attributed to those most human of afflictions:
ignorance, arrogance, carelessness and lack of imagination.
After the War, American TICOM project teams found and detained a considerable number of German cryptographic personnel. Among the things they learned was that German cryptographers, at least, understood very well that Enigma messages might be read; they knew Enigma was not unbreakable. They just found it impossible to imagine anyone going to the immense effort required. (See Bamford's Body of Secrets in regard to the TICOM missions immediately after the war.)
As for the Japanese:
In the Pacific theater, the Japanese cipher machine dubbed "Purple" by the Americans, and unrelated to the Enigmas, was used for highest-level Japanese diplomatic traffic. It was also cracked, by the US Army's Signal Intelligence Service. Some Purple decrypts proved useful elsewhere, for instance detailed reports by Japan's ambassador to Germany which were encrypted on the Purple machine. These reports included reviews of German strategy and intentions, reports on direct inspections (in one case, of Normandy beach defenses) by the ambassador, and reports of long interviews with Hitler.
Admiral Nimitz had one priceless asset: American and British [1] cryptanalysts had broken the JN-25 code. Commander Joseph J. Rochefort and his team at HYPO were able to confirm Midway as the target of the impending Japanese strike, to determine the date of the attack as either 4 or 5 June (as opposed to mid-June, maintained by Washington), and to provide Nimitz with a complete IJN order of battle. Japan's efforts to introduce a new codebook had been delayed, giving HYPO several crucial days; while it was blacked out shortly before the attack began, the important breaks had already been made.[26]
Battle of Midway
Also, deception played a part as well:
From decrypted messages, U.S. naval commanders knew the general outlines of the plan, even the timetable. The messages, however, did not say where the Japanese intended to strike; the target was simply designated "AF." It was Rochefort who proposed a ruse to determine what AF stood for. Suspecting that it was Midway Island, he arranged for American forces on the island to send out a radio message saying that they were running short of fresh water. Rochefort and his group waited anxiously to see if Japan would take the bait. Finally, codebreakers intercepted a Japanese message: AF was running short of fresh water. Knowing that the assault was to come at Midway, the U.S. Navy was ready.
You are seemingly fond of revisionist history when you wish to make a point, TVD.
You would be better served by the proverbial Joe Friday "Just the facts, ma'm." approach, instead of making falsifiable statements that demonstrate ignorance of the matter you touch upon.
The codes should have constantly been changed. To not do so was lazy.
Or was it arrogance? No matter. Al-Qaeda will tend to stay with its status quo until it feels it's vulnerable. For the NYT to let them know certain things are vulnerable is not good.
Understand now, DA, or should I type slower so you can comprehend the argument?
To focus on one word in my statement to the exclusion of its greater meaning in order to "get" me is unworthy of a college professor, sir. Or any thinking person. I see why you hide behind a pseudonym.
[I must say, the amount of work some people put into an attempt to delegitimize me on the minorest of points is astounding. I'm not the Energizer Bunny around here, it's just that the mob splits up the work.]
Understand now, DA, or should I type slower so you can comprehend the argument?
Truly, civility is dead. Oh, my, we've browbeaten TVD down to our level.
Sarcasm, however, still lives!
The codes should have constantly been changed. To not do so was lazy.
Had the Germans ever replaced every rotor at the same time, the British might not have been able to break back into the system. And had German operating practices been more secure, things would have been much more difficult for the British cryptologists. However, due to the expense and difficulty of getting new rotors to all ships and units, this was never done. Instead the Germans every so often added new rotors to the mix, thereby allowing the British to work out the wirings of the newest rotors.
The same thing was true for the Japanese codes, along with the reality of a enormous offensive front which made changing the codebooks, as with the German Enigma rotors, expensive and difficult.
The proper assessment would be inadequate evalultaion of securitiy needs, along with beliefs of racial superiority('brown eyes can see better at night than blue eyes'- Japanese naval cliche that enforced a sense of superiority about naval engagements at night) with both major powers of the Axis.
Al-Qaeda will tend to stay with its status quo until it feels it's vulnerable. For the NYT to let them know certain things are vulnerable is not good.
Here's what that notorious sloppy Leftist thinker, George Will, had to say about that on 2/12/2006:
The Administration says talking about this(the NSA monitoring)tips off the enemy. Now, the idea that our enemies think that the most technologically sophisticated nation in the world isn't using all its' advantages to eavesdrop on them is peculiar. In 1978 we passed FISA. That alerted them, if any alerting was needed, that we were indeed listening in. Passing the Patriot act alerted them what we were going to do or not do.
So on the one hand, we have a threat to Western Civilization that to some is as great as when Muslim armies came to within sight of Vienna some 300-odd years ago, but on the other it never would've occured to them that their communications might be subjected to monitoring unless they read it in the NYT.
Understand now, DA, or should I type slower so you can comprehend the argument?
Ha. I can imagine that in the midst of a dialog between you and the Pope he'd be heard to say:
"Mr. Van Dyke, I am a Catholic!"
To focus on one word in my statement to the exclusion of its greater meaning in order to "get" me is unworthy of a college professor, sir. Or any thinking person. I see why you hide behind a pseudonym.
Such civility, wit, and mind reading to boot.
Is that the way you charm folks into visiting your blog? That might explain your hit count.
And you do realize that by attributing dark intent to the usage of a pseudonym, you implicitly include WS in your fatwa as well, do you not?
[I must say, the amount of work some people put into an attempt to delegitimize me on the minorest of points is astounding.]
You yourself stated that you were offering it as an argument, and now you downgrade it into the 'minorest of points' when it suits your need to do so.
Fascinating.
So let me say that you're over-reacting to the very, very, very minor corrections I made to your minorest of points/argument, while demonstrating a certain insecurity on your part that most people would be ashamed to have associated with their real name.
"Virtue should not be left to stand alone"--------Confucius
The corrections are welcome. The hostility with which they were offered is not. What, was the conversation not nasty enough for you?
For the NYT to alert al-Qaeda about vulnerabilities in their communications is not good. Get it?
Focus, professor, focus.
I'm not sure I'm following this...
I think that Tom analogized revealing NSA wiretaps to revealing troop movements, which seems like a questionable analogy to me. It's good in that it captures the core of the question, but bad in that there's no analog to the domestic concerns about civil liberties.
Perhaps a better analogy would be: Nixon's illegal bombing of Cambodia, or something like it.
Anyway, that point aside:
Proposition: It was wrong for the Times to reveal info that alerted the terrorists to a program that aimed to thwart them.
Response: Evidence was already available to aQ which entailed that we might be tapping their phones.
Counter-response: Well, still, it's worse to just come right out and TELL them exactly what we were doing. Better to leave them guessing, even if it's an easy guess. Laziness and wishful thinking might very well have led them to keep doing what they were doing.
O.k., I've been through that little argument with myself many times, and I'd be on the side of Tom and the admin. if it were not for the following point:
The NSA program *appears* to be illegal, and this administration can't be trusted. If they didn't have a history of lying, secrecy, abusing and rabidly increasing executive power, and deriding civil liberties...if, that is, they were a good and trustworthy administration...then I'd probably be for them and against the NYT here. But given the history of this administration, I end up *very slightly* more inclined to side with the Times. Which is to say: I might very well have revealed the information myself if given the opportunity. I'm worried about aQ, but, to tell you the truth, I'm probably more worried about this administration.
And note: this is not the kind of position I'm naturally inclined to take. It took a lot to get me here.
TVD, I made a remark about falsfiability, you're the one who brought most of the 'nastiness' and hostility into the conversation. I merely returned it and pointed out the logical contradictions in your POV.
I don't think Al Qaeda 'learned from the NYT' that they were subject to possible monitoring, they would already assume that as a given in their operational activity in America. I refer you to the George Will quote I cited earlier.
Demonstrate a problem with his reasoning, and then we'd have a basis for a dialog.
As I've told you before, if you don't want to be falsified, don't make falsifiable statements.
Also note the amount of electrons spilled since I made the similar point further up the thread with this quote from Richard Clarke and Roger Cressey:
"So, too, however, are the Bush administration's protests that the press revelations about the financial monitoring program may tip off the terrorists. Administration officials made the same kinds of complaints about news media accounts of electronic surveillance. They want the public to believe that it had not already occurred to every terrorist on the planet that his telephone was probably monitored and his international bank transfers subject to scrutiny. How gullible does the administration take the American citizenry to be?"
So on the one hand we have experts in Al Qaeda and counterterrorism explaining that it would be extremely naive to assume Al Qaeda isn't aware that it's being monitored, and on the other we have the Administration (the maniacially mendacious and power-abusing one Winston referred to above) and its apologists insisting that they weren't aware of it until evil, liberal entities like the NYT tipped them to it.
Of course, the issue with the wiretapping wasn't even the issue in and of itself. The issue was the gaining of warrants for said wiretapping, pursuant to a law (FISA) designed to allow such wiretapping, and the court set up to grant these very same warrants. I'm not going to research it now, but the statistics are such that over the 20+ years of this court's existence, thousands of such warrants have been issued with only a handful having been denied. The FISA law even allowed a warrant to be gained retroactively up to 72 hours AFTER conducting the wiretapping.
So the FISA law, having been enacted as a means for our services like the NSA to conduct surveillance without violating the fourth amendment, was unilaterall deemed *inapplicable* by the administration; this even after a senator DeWine, a member the intelligence committee, offered to make any changes necessary to keep the program effective against today's terrorists. His offer was met with the response that "we think we have all the authorization we need already".
Moreover, it had already been demonstrated that we didn't even have the capacity to make sense of the messages we were already intercepting, due to many problems including a lack of Arabic, Farsi and Pashtun speakers. Here's one of the administration's greatest hits in that regard:
"Rove may have forgotten, but we didn’t need warrantless-searches to garner intelligence about the 9/11 attacks — intelligence officials used legal means to learn about the plot. Intercepted messages led the CIA to warn the president about Osama bin Laden shortly before the attacks, and on Sept. 10, 2001, the National Security Agency picked up suggestive comments by al Queda operatives, including, “Tomorrow is zero hour.”
As it turns out, that communication wasn’t translated in time, but intelligence officials didn’t need to conduct illegal domestic surveillance; they needed more linguists."
Rove may have forgotten, but we didn’t need warrantless-searches to garner intelligence about the 9/11 attacks — intelligence officials used legal means to learn about the plot. Intercepted messages led the CIA to warn the president about Osama bin Laden shortly before the attacks, and on Sept. 10, 2001, the National Security Agency picked up suggestive comments by al Queda operatives, including, “Tomorrow is zero hour.”
As it turns out, that communication wasn’t translated in time, but intelligence officials didn’t need to conduct illegal domestic surveillance; they needed more linguists."
http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/8296.html
Google Sibel Edmonds if you'd like to get a better idea.
This leads to the undeniable conclusion that the administration's motivation was the expansion of executive power, plain and simple.
Sorry about the double-pasting in the above.
Well, I was thinking of the bank-monitoring program in particular. Clarke and Cressey argue "no secret, no harm, no foul," pretty thin gruel. The NYT expose itself captions a photo with "“Data provided by the program helped identify Uzair Paracha, a Brooklyn man who was convicted on terrorism-related charges in 2005, officials said.”
Apparently Mr. Paracha didn't get the word, but those like him did thereafter, thx to the NYT.
Prof. DA first writes that the Germans were complacent about the unbreakability of the Enigma coding, but then (apparently discovers) that they weren't, and occasionally replaced some of the wheels in the coding machine.
The second argument is far stronger than the first, so either the Professor can't recognize his own best arguments, or he found out something he didn't know the first time he slimed on me.
In either case, it speaks not well of him---he cannot recognize his own best arguments, or his second self should attack his first self as ignorant and revisionist. That way, he can have his fight and nastiness and leave me the hell out of it. And don't be disingenuous, sir. Your first comment was palpably hostile and not offered in good faith as a correction of a minor fact. You insult my intelligence and your own by claiming otherwise. Cut it out.
WS, I'm glad my analogy captured the core of the question. Analogies tend to break down at some point. I wasn't referring to the NSA program itself or its legality, which is a separate and valid question.
If a possibly illegal program is saving lives (despite Clarke and Cressey's attempt to elide that possibility), I suppose "patriotism" as journalists see it requires they disclose it. My take is that one should be damn sure that it's illegal (tough to do) before even considering jeopardizing innocent lives. But I'm not a journalist, so I tend to value lives over the technicalities of law, a view for which I do not apologize.
Anonymous wrote:
"Of course, the issue with the wiretapping wasn't even the issue in and of itself. The issue was the gaining of warrants for said wiretapping, pursuant to a law (FISA) designed to allow such wiretapping, and the court set up to grant these very same warrants. I'm not going to research it now, but the statistics are such that over the 20+ years of this court's existence, thousands of such warrants have been issued with only a handful having been denied. The FISA law even allowed a warrant to be gained retroactively up to 72 hours AFTER conducting the wiretapping."
Good point. In fact, crucial point here.
The admin could easily do what it needed to--the rules are almost incredibly permissive--but it wanted to be able to do what it wanted w/out going through the courts AT ALL. The system worked just fine, but the admin insisted on unnecessarily...one might even say gratuitously...trampling on civil rights. Consequently, the NYT was forced to either let this continue or blow the whistle. Given that only dumb terrorists didn't know the wiretapping was happening, considerations about civil liberties outweighed the strategic cost.
Seems an awful like the real problem here might be that the admin used terrorism as a stalking-horse in the service of their real goal, increasing executive power. Maybe not...but looks a lot like it.
The blameworthy party here seems to be the admin, not the NYT.
"Apparently Mr. Paracha didn't get the word, but those like him did thereafter, thx to the NYT."
Until the next time the Administration trots out someone caught *thanks to our surveillance programs*, thus using it as an example of why they need to break the law. Like they did here:
"In an indictment unsealed Saturday, federal authorities described a 16-month-long surveillance operation centered on Defreitas, a former cargo worker at JFK. He allegedly conducted extensive reconnaissance of the airport and took repeated trips to the Caribbean to conspire with the other men in seeking financing and other assistance."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/03/AR2007060301380.html
It's also worth noting that it wouldn't have been newsworthy as a story in the first place if the Administration had behaved legally.
And if they were really concerned only about saving lives, they wouldn't have done things like this, just because they needed fodder for their delusions of executive grandeur:
"A captured Al Qaeda computer whiz was E-mailing his comrades as part of a sting operation to nab other top terrorists when U.S. officials blew his cover, sources said yesterday."
http://www.attytood.com/2007/10/betrayal_how_bushs_iraq_politi.html
And here, around the time of the Democratic Convention:
"Within hours of Muhammad Naeem Noor Khan's name being publicized Monday, British police launched lightning raids that netted a dozen suspected Al Qaeda terrorists, including one who was nabbed after a high-speed car chase....
Now British and Pakistani intelligence officials are furious with the Americans for unmasking their super spy - apparently to justify the orange alert - and for naming the other captured terrorist suspects."
Much more here:
http://www.attytood.com/2007/10/betrayal_how_bushs_iraq_politi.html
So Tom, you may believe that it's about saving lives, but at best that's way down the list for the Bush administration, certainly after expanding executive power and gaining political advantage.
Prof. DA first writes that the Germans were complacent about the unbreakability of the Enigma coding, but then (apparently discovers) that they weren't, and occasionally replaced some of the wheels in the coding machine.
Sorry, Legate Van Dyke, but I stated that the German Navy was more pro-active about changing code settings than the rest of the Nazi organization, which isn't what you're accusing me of.
The second argument is far stronger than the first, so either the Professor can't recognize his own best arguments, or he found out something he didn't know the first time he slimed on me.
I didn't realize that falsification was the same as sliming, Legate Van Dyke.
Your lack of logic, along with your perjorative tactics when caught making a falsified statement, really lend weight to your arguments, Legate Van Dyke.
Your first comment was palpably hostile and not offered in good faith as a correction of a minor fact.
If you base your argument(which was your terminology, not one I imposed upon you) on a 'fact' major or minor, then expect that if it is falsifiable, it may be falsified.
You are correct, that I'm hostile to oversimplification and misstatements of fact. If you could refrain from both in the future, then I wouldn't have anything to be hostile about in the first place.
You insult my intelligence and your own by claiming otherwise. Cut it out.
While you feel justified to call me Prof., you want me to change my tune.
Don't insult my common sense, Legate Van Dyke.
To quote a famous Missourian:
If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.
Sorry, meant there's much more here:
http://www.americablog.com/2005/07/bush-admin-may-be-responsible-for.html
Reading the comment threads in this blog lately has been like watching a clogged toilet after it was flushed.
Professor DA, things were quite cool until you popped out of your little hole with your ill humor and bad faith.
As for the Bush administration, yes, it seems they've messed up more than a few things, if that's the topic.
However, I was discussing when the non-patriotism of the press runs into conflict with the national interest. Which was the topic, I believe.
Bush will be gone soon; the dilemma will remain.
A good overview of all sides. Peace, I'm out.
Legate Van Dyke, you could've spent a couple of minutes using Google or the Wikipedia, and I didn't say that you were deliberately distorting the facts about the German and Japanese codes, so I don't know how you come to the conclusion that I was engaging in bad faith here.
If my humor was ill, addressing me by a title I didn't use in a clearly perjorative manner didn't help you except by revealing your childish attitude when reality is brought in to a discussion.
Demonstrate some knowledge of a subject when you use it in an argument/minor point(moving the goalposts could itself be taken as a sign of bad faith, YMMV) instead of uninformed arm waving and perhaps you'll be taken more seriously when you post something here.
Anyway, I'll use the name you dubbed on me without a sword or other ceremony in your honor, and if you decide to use other forms of address in the future, I'll use them as well, Legate Van Dyke.
I'll just end with what my sister said about what you quaintly term my professorship:
"He reads everything!"
Why my being well-informed on a variety of subjects causes such problems with some folks, I've yet to figure out in my 48 years on this planet.
Yes, that was the topic. Which you alluded to by giving us the excerpts from General Sanchez's interview. Which you also then admitted contained no evidence of any counterproductive actions on the part of the press.
You then proceeded to offer the disclosure of illegal wiretapping as evidence of of said unpatriotic behavior on the part of the press. When that was shown to be *no longer operational* because no non-naive person believes the terrorists didn't already know we were monitoring their communications and financial transactions, we somehow moved on to World War II codebreaking.
At that point, it was shown that it was the illegality of the Bush administration's behavior that was the news story in the first place, the exposure of which any patriotic American, in my opinion, would believe is *in the national interest*. But I guess if the press doesn't hew to Tom Van Dyke's opinion of what's in the national interest, they're unpatriotic.
Then it was shown that the Bush administration is more interested in politics and power- grabbing than actually doing the hard worka and using the abilities it already had to track down terrorists and protect us. If "tipping off the terrorists" counts as unpatriotic, as you suggest, then the blowing of the British seizure early (to gain political advantage) makes a mockery of the contention that the Bush administration is primarily concerned with saving lives.
And you may consider the fourth amendment the "technicality of a law", but some of us don't, not to mention your false dichotomy that they can't save all the lives they want *legally* within the bounds of FISA.
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home