Chuck Todd’s Law
Aside from MSNBC’s squeamishness about blow jobs (but not about torture or the murder of teenagers or slobbering racism), here’s why, according to Chuck Todd, we cannot have an investigation of the crimes Dick Cheney committed.
- "I have a couple of roles as a journalist. Of course, number one is to hold government officials accountable, but also report on what they’re trying to do, what the motivations are behind what they’re trying to do, why they’re doing certain things"
- "This issue, whenever you see the words Cheney and intelligence pop up, and when I use the phrase ‘cable catnip’, it is when something becomes, when something becomes, whether the two polarized parts of our political society, are very entrenched in their views on this, and believe the other side is completely irrational on it. And so, that’s, whenever you have an issue like that, that’s what I describe as ‘cable catnip’. Because it becomes something that is easy to put on television, because you can find a left versus right, which is something that cable embraces to a fault"
- "If you could also guarantee me, that this wouldn’t become a show trial, and wouldn’t be put, and created so that we had nightly debates about it, [prosecution] is the ideal way to handle this … if you could guarantee me that we could keep this debate off of television"
- "We know it’s going to turn into a political trial. I’ll take that back – we don’t know whether it’s going to turn into a political trial. That is the experience of how these things have worked in the past, that end up getting turned into a political trial"
That is, we can’t hold Dick Cheney accountable for his crimes because the media–including Todd himself–is incapable of reporting the story as anything but a partisan story (in spite of the fact that–Glenn points out–there is bipartisan support for a torture prosecution), which guarantees that any investigation would turn into a show trial.
But it’s even stupider than that. Todd says we shouldn’t investigate the past administration becaues if we do the rest of the world might think we’re a banana republic (as if decorum and not rule of law is the example the US wants to set for the rest of the world). For Todd, it’s enough that we punish Administrations through the ballot box–but of course, we didn’t punish Bush in 2004 after he started an illegal war, and by the time 2008 rolled around, Bush was term-limited and Cheney was not on the ballot, so we have not, in fact, punished the criminals at the ballot box.
In addition, Todd repeatedly says this is an ideological question, because it is not black and white whether Cheney and his torturers broke the law, in spite of:
- The psychologist/interrogator/contractor quoted in the OLC opinion admitting he exceeded John Yoo’s guidelines
- The OLC memo’s descrption of CIA HQ ordering up another round of waterboarding for Abu Zubayah when that violated the OLC memo’s clear prohibition on waterboarding when the detainee was compliant
- The near-daily White House authorization of torture before John Yoo crafted a memo saying it was legal
These guys broke even the perversion of law they themselves instituted, so there’s no question of ideology. To say nothing of the fact that St. Reagan’s DOJ found waterboarding to be illegal and Republicans like Phillip Zelikow are among those demanding an investigation.
Which is Chuck Todd, noted journalist’s, real problem: he’s not aware of the facts. At a time when (as Glenn points out) Nora Dannehy continues to investigate the US Attorney firings, Chuck Todd declares that firing those US Attorneys was "perfectly legal." He apparently doesn’t know–or won’t report–the many pieces of evidence that show the Bushies violated the law, and so can conclude that any investigation would be "cable catnip," and so can claim that because the media won’t do its homework we can’t ask DOJ to investigate either.
In other words, we can’t hold Dick Cheney accountable for his crimes because the beltway media can’t help themselves but turn any investigation of crimes into a political trial.
What on earth are these people afraid of? Cheney and Bush have no problems supporting everything they did. Shouldn’t they welcome a chance to spread the good word through all and any fora? Shouldn’t their fellow torturers?
So, that pink face in the stripey tie is Chuck Todd? (I’m TV illiterate — sorry.)
Sorry, no. That’s David Shuster, who I suspect would have been agreeing with my blow job comment if the powers that be weren’t screaming “apologize” in his ear.
I just thought the blow job YouTube made an appropriate image for this post. Here’s Todd’s wiki, with a pic.
He’s sort of a beltway version of Nate Silver–good at numbers–but after the election they put him in charge of the DC bureau and he has been no more immune to the wiles of beltway CW than anyone else has been.
Thanks. (Maybe we need a “Field Guide to Cable Heads” somewhere on the Web.)
Notice that on Todd’s wiki page, under the word ‘Controversy’, some one has already posted about the Greenwald podcast with Todd.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chuck_Todd
He’s David Gregory with a beard, some guy who Olbermann was forced to acknowledge because GE had given him a job, a man who couldn’t do a serious investigative piece on anything remotely complex let alone something as clear-cut a violation of domestic and international law as torture.
— Ah. No. Some other privileged doughhead. Probably would be hard to keep them all straight even if I knew who they were.
The indifference of the press is so very tiring.
Todd in the GG piece:
So, he starts by saying he is/was only reporting on the Administration’s attitude, BUT THEN he goes into full apologist mode.
This switch alone should get him disbarred, or whatever they do to newshounds, never mind the topic. They could be talking about the kind of muffins the White House serves for breakfast, and this kind of switch in function would be detestable.
Yeah, even though Todd CLAIMED his first role was holding govt accountable, I think he instead understands it exclusively to be the second, which is why he really can’t tell where Rahm’s comments end and his own unquestioned assumptions begin.
Some kind of adoration complex going on. Big MSM news political director, and he’s looking for a way to, well, if you can say “blowjob”, I can say “suck up to” the current holders of power. And not a whole lot else, from the looks of it.
Yup, that’s it: claims he has one role, then performs another, then, like Cheney, denies he did and does it, then condescends to Glenn as if he were some academic aesthete with no street smarts. Unlike Chuck Todd.
I have to give Todd credit for being interviewed, though. It’s more than NPR’s ombudsidiot or Jonah Goldberg would do. But it doesn’t mean his arguments are consistent or valid. It might also mean that he doesn’t value “access” to Glenn very much.
“disbarred”? Hardly. In the Neocon, Bushie world this is a sign that he’s bucking for a raise.
It isn’t the media who make a show trial a show trial — that happens because whoever structures and runs a phony legal process sets it up and runs it that way (see military commissions), whatever the media and the public do.
Given the really distressingly low levels of media and public reaction to classic and historic violations of domestic and international law, some of those rising to the level of war crimes, I think it would be a good thing to have “nightly debates” in public arenas about just what happened, how it was allowed to happen, and why so few blew whistles at the time or are teaching or protesting now.
Todd is just another one of those guys who think that table manners matter more than Nuremberg or something, if he’s ever even heard of Nuremberg. That we have ended up with elites who think that way is itself shocking, except Todd seems to have lost the capacity to be shocked.
A trial would be shocking to him? Good.
Nicely put. Table manners don’t count for much in the Hate Media, but they are all important for Serious media types like PBS’s Jim Lehrer, and his worn bookends, Brooks & Shields.
The MSM accepts directness and competence only at its margins, and only so long as commentators’ work never reflects poorly on the media (which results in being Ashley Banfielded to Saskatoon).
The MSM attempts to keep commentators like EW, Rachel Madow and Glenn marginalized with descriptors like “passionate”, code for partisan and likely to run off chasing rabbits if not kept on a short leash. I wonder if being Gitmo-ized for a week would make Chuck more passionate about presidential crimes and state sanctioned torture?
I’m sure we agree, eoh — I always enjoy your fluency and clarity — but no fair picking on Saskatoon, eh? *wink*
And Ashley Banfield’s experience is relevant, although I see that she has become a U.S. citizen and now resides in Connecticut. What she said that annoyed NBC, though, is the kind of thing that someone from Winnipeg might say. There’s a tradition of these things: Lyndon Johnson is supposed to have ordered a background check on Morley Safer after one of his reports from Viet Nam, and then expressed relief to learn that Safer comes from Toronto — not a communist, just a Canadian.
I dit a rod of thinkin’ before whipping up that comparison.
I’m sure there’s a song in there somewhere …
If world politics of left and right were a spectrum of light, the part that Americans would find visible would be a small band of infrared.
So who’s paying him off? Todd IS smart enough to see that his reports are factually challenged and ideologically baised and he has to know his peers see it too.
As for holding Dick accountable, we have to hope Holder’s conscience will override his bosses desires.
Boxturtle (Yeah, I know: Conscience. Objection! Assumes material not in evidence)
Concur. I’m hoping, but look what our hoping has wrought…. maybe it’s the last of the ninth?
I lost my faith in our democratic apparatus…
Pitchforks, anyone?
GG & MW – the first places I turn to in the morning.
And upChuck’s a feckin’ tool…
Chuck Todd is paid to stay unaware of the facts.
Damn Liberal press. They just won’t let journalists find the Truth. Sheesh.
So whether or not people who are involved in instituting a regime of sodomy with objects, forced nudity, disappearing whole families, hostage taking, hostage abuse, battering, repeated head and neck trauma, repeated drowning, repeated hypothermia, repeated beatings, drug manipulation, etc. — whether or not people involved in that can be prosecuted depends on (#3) whether or not someone can guarantee Todd, a reporter, that there won’t be any debate on TV about the prosecutions?
Yes, that is correct; furthermore there can be no such investigations and prosecutions because Todd and his ilk cannot stop themselves from turning it into a circus.
You think OJ ate up their airtime? Wait until the torture trials come to TV. Hell, they may have to spend YEARS without faux fainting over excited utterances of oral copulation.
There will be worse than oral sex. If they ever get to the truth, I don’t know if I’ll be able to watch segments on child sodomy, rape, murder.
I suspect this is the real reason they don’t want to dig too deeply; they’re more uncomfortable with looking into that heart of darkness than I am, and recognizing themselves in the process.
Yep. That’s going to bring on some serious cognitive dissonance, grappling with their culpability in enabling all these horrors. Heads in sand feel much better.
I think OJ is the relevant example. By Todd’s logic, OJ never should have been put on trial.
I think Todd does not understand the American system of justice. It is designed to handle controversial cases.
Bob in HI
I think part of what he is laying the groundwork for is that they won’t. They won’t cover. Period. GE isn’t going to get in the pissing match with Halliburton.
It won’t eat up their air time bc they won’t cover it and right wingers won’t want them to (it’s easier to support torture without the facts) and the main of the uninformed won’t push much on it, bc it’s so damn uncomfortable to see what we as a nation have supported for so long and what we have made our militry and intelligence agencies into, all for the undefinable mission (of transferring mass amounts of wealth to Halliburton and Lockheed with the hoped for payoff of being able to transfer massive amounts of Iraqi oil to Exxon as well – although that’s not going so well right now).
If the DOJ brings the case, do they have any other option? As phred said @46, would it be a show trial of pre-ordained outcomes? Or a trial where they constantly attempt to discredit the evidence and argument?
Halliburton (Xe) has bigger problems. Like a too close relationship with a former VP. And the evening timeslots (Ed, Chris, Keith, Rachel) have been perfectly willing to set their eyes and ears on fire.
As bobschacht said @53
And TV is designed to cover controversial cases.
I just remember things like the original Uighur rulings, or the original Kurnaz rulings. You would have thought those cases would have generated big coverage and reaction, but they were deep sixed.
You had a Fed Dist Ct judge YEARS ago making a finding of fact that the petitioners in the case before him (then Uighurs as well – held at GITMO) were innocent, were not combatants, had never been enemy combatants, were being illegally held, that it was Kafka-esque, but he couldn’t do anything about it. Nada on the coverage.
You had a Fed Dist Ct judge YEARS ago making a finding of fact in the Kurnaz case that he wasn’t a combatant, that not only did the evidence being hidden from the accused not show that he was a combatant but instead it affirmatively showed that multiple intelligence agencies in multiple countries had all made the determination that he was not a terrorist and not an enemy combatant, and also that the primary allegation about him – that his friend has been a suicide bomber killed in a high profile explosion was somewhat negated by the fact that his friend was alive and well at home in Germany and hadn’t left the country. Immediately after that ruling, you had Gov “classify” or “re-classify” all the exculpatory evidence and make claimst that the defense lawyers would be violating states secrets laws if they argued exculpatory evidence on appeal on behalf of their client. It was the most outrageous and bizarre thing I’ve seem and no coverage.
You will also have Gov invoking all kinds of issues relating to foreign govs – all kinds of foreign govs were local news services like CNN, NBC, etc. have reporters in country. If things don’t come out, the trial is a farce – if things do come out, reporters may be caught in retaliatory actions of foreign govs.
You also have an American public that, while it wants to salaciously sit through every bit of the Anna Nicole Smith story, doesn’t really want to hear about patriotic anal assault of children, especially when they already “took side” during the media pro-torture sales pitch years back.
Mary, I was hoping there would have been more coverage of the Vandeveld testimony last week, but almost nothing. He really got to the heart of the matter and who could have been a better witness? It seems to have resulted in the DOJ deciding not to use coerced confessions and statements at least in some cases. That was not widely reported either.
That’s the kind of thing I mean. I look for stuff and barely can find it (this site and the links help a lot) bc I can’t make it a full time occupation.
People who aren’t looking for it never hear any of it. And that’s Todd’s fault. Not just his – but his. Hell, he doesn’t bother to know a little bit about any of it himself, much less make sure it is reported. But for youtube and c-span and blogs, it would be nearly impossible to know about even the things that are not “classified” and are supposedly in the public domain.
CHeney could “classify” and his media cohorts could merely ignore, and both to much the same effect.
BTW -keep in mind the pasing and obfuscation when you get to the DOJ decision to “not use” the coerced statements. They are using a “clean team” approach – things they can get the subjects of the “learned helplessness” experiments, who have been tortured and disappeared and refused contact with the world and who are subject to day in, day out threat from assault teams “responding” to their “lack of cooperation” through force feeding, forced isolation, etc. — as long as they can trot someone into a room and get that experiment subject to repeat out what was said before, under the ongoing and both implicit and explicit threats of what will happen outside the room and what has happened to them every day of their life for the last few years —- as long as they can have the “clean” statement now, they are ok with that.
Not much progress imo, but who knows.
He reminds me of dealing with the swaggering yet jaded police down here; they show up and within a few seconds tell you exactly what happened because “they’ve seen it before”. Anyone who disagrees with their take on the situation is obviously lying.
We even had one stand there and tell us what the judge was going to say therefore it wasn’t worth arresting the guy for going after someone with a baseball bat. (When he picked up the bat he “uninvited him” from his apartment). FWIW we got him reassigned.
Time for some of these “reporters” to move into management or some other non-working job.
I finally read the full transcript. GG is terrific; I agree with his every word. This is a great response to the “cable catnip” vulgarity:
And btw – the main polarizing issue on all of this has been the medias crappy reporting.
To beat this death again, I have over and over gone into facts of some of the torture, GITMO, etc. cases with rightwing, “torture the terrorists” people and the ONLY way any of them are able to stay in their camp is to hold to saying that what I am telling them can’t be the truth or they’d know about it, the “news” would be “all over it”
Give them copies of some cases with the factual recitations and the ones who will look at it get very disturbed. They are “polarized” because people like Chuck Todd really do leave them with “reporting” that we only have the “worst of the worst” Al-Qaeda plotters and murders at GITMO and we really only had the “worst of the worst” al-Qaeda at Abu Ghraib etc.
It’s the same way the media coverage of Iraq/9-11 left most people convinced that Hussein was involved in 9-11.
Here’s a flip back to Todd. How about we not let the MSM cover the war until they can “guarantee me” that they won’t equate Iraq with 9/11 over and over; that they won’t put Judy Miller’s flat out flagrant pro-war (which is, after all, pro-murder of civilians in their homes) propaganda unchecked and un questioned on the front pages; that they won’t shove defense contractor lobbyists and Rumsfeld plants down the public’s throat as “independent analysts” and that they will actually get around to asking halfway decent questions.
You know, during the attorney firing scandal I waited and waited for anyone in “the press” to ask Bush the main question – he gave them a few opportunities to question him, but no one asked that main question. It was, “Mr. President, when the firing scandal broke your office said several times that you had nothing to do with the firing (insert the references even) and now that you are back and have consulted with counsel your office and you are saying that USAttys serve at your will. So Mr. President, did you personally make the decision to fire these USAs and if so, why did your office prior to your consultation with counsel say that you had nothing to do with the firings”
To let a schmuck like Bush strut around saying, “USAttys serve at the pleasure of the President” without ever even taking the effort to ask the baseline question “so you’re saying that you are the one who fired them and is responsible for firing them” is just such bad journalism that it can’t be that bad by accident.
For the kind of ‘reporting’ that Chuck Todd does, the media outlets could eliminate him and his cohorts of the WH Press Corps and have Robert Gibbs e-mail press releases to the outlets to make soundbites out of and have their talking heads comment on. In the future, the WH will just sent e-mails directly to the public bypassing the press. Have you been getting e-mails for the WH like I have?
From his discussion with GG, he lacks the background, contacts or intellect to do the job of a journalist holding the government accountable. Why didn’t he know about the lawsuits resulting from the US Attorney firings? How could he take the WH word that it was all legal and not question it? Same for torture and wiretapping and everything else.
Congress is the last to do the job of investigating and holding accountable. They will only react to a public outcry and the public has to be informed before they will cry out. Todd pushed it on the Congress to do his job and that just will not work.
The Greenwald-Todd interview transcript was a painful read. It was obvious Chuck didn’t know his facts, despite covering these very issues for a national news organization. His idea of “coverage” mistakes the felt for the whole pool table.
The refrain he repeated most was that any investigation would turn into an impermissibly political “witch hunt”, though he didn’t use words that big. As EW says, that’s because that’s the only way in which Todd and his cohort would cover it. Heaven forbid focusing on facts or laws or weighting them according to their relative importance. That would require judgment and courage, rare commodities in today’s journalism.
In Glenn’s interview, Todd kept dancing back to the same point: Glenn is correct that “from 30,000 feet”, the Bush administration’s behavior might merit investigation. (And Todd is ALL for investigating wrongdoing, but only in general and not in connection with any specific individual.) Down on the ground, though – that is, inside the Beltway’s bottomless rabbit hole – right and wrong, truth and lies, legal and illegal behavior are opposite poles in a journalistic world that has no compass, no maps, no sense of direction except marching ever rightward toward access and corporate profitability.
The real problem. Too many “White House Correspondents” for major media companies will be shown to be stenographers of White House partisan-motivated crap.
And the Villagers will get the vapors. (Someone really should look up what that refers to. Hint: it ain’t a fainting spell.)
I hope you apologized EW……….NOT!!!
We all know why the repugs don’t want any investigations. Toad is just another msm lackey. Anyone with half a brain knows NBC (subsidiary of GE) leans right, and if there was ever a suck up, it’s Toad. I’ve watched, listened to and read real journalists for years and he’s no journalist. EW, you’re a real journalist. I am continually impressed with your hard work, detailed knowledge of the issues and forthrightness. I thank you and tip my hat to you.
The conundrum: If Chuck plays the role of journalist, he loses access and joins Helen Thomas as an unwelcome member of the WH press corps. If he plays the role of stenographer, he keeps access, feels like he is “in the loop”, and the public loses. While it’s true that the administration sees an investigation as a distraction which also damages it in the polls (and thus a lessening of political power, needed to pass its agenda)it seems willing to sacrifice the rule of law. I feel for Chuck, but feel more for the country. Of course, the elephant in the room is the question of the limit of power of the chief executive in a time of war. The question can’t seem to make it through the courts, and with the present makeup of the SCOTUS, the answer might well be a tremendous disappointment to us. (I know, SDO stated “The President doesn’t have a blank check”, but that was then, this is now.
The fallacy of Chuck Todd’s argument is his self-identification as a “journalist.” He’s some kind of stat-gatherer who lucked out via the Peter Principle.
And clearly, no one ever told him the golden rule: “If your mother says she loves you, CHECK IT OUT.” Do not take anyone’s word for it, do independent investigation. A la Marcy.
He is an insult to real journalists everywhere. But then, so is much of what passes for news on the toobz.
Chuck Todd has never in his life held anyone accountable, nor will he. Accountability comes from being prosecuted when you break the law, and Mr. Todd has never been involved in that. Thank goodness, it isn’t up to him.
It’s up to the dead bodies. Dead bodies of people who were tortured to death, by our own admissions, like Abed Hamed Mowhoush, Abdul Jameel, Fashad Mohammed, Manadel al-Jamadi, Nagem Sadoon Hatab, Abdul Wali, Habibullah, Dilawar, Sajid Kadhim Bori al-Bawi, Obeed Hethere Radad, Mohammed Sayari and Zaidoun Hassoun.
Holding them to account? I’ll put Marcy’s record up against his ANY DAY OF THE WEEK. Why do we know what we know? Because people with a real commitment to accountability like my hero Marcy Wheeler have dug and dug and spent sleepless nights trying to undo what was done in our name.
We have a rule here in America. It is called the Rule of Law. It is not a Monarchy, but a Separation and Balance of powers. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, defiled the Constitution, committed war crimes in our name, and lied to everyone to avoid paying the price. Charles Graner, Lynndie England, and others WENT TO PRISON for their crimes. You can’t have it both ways. Either what all of them did was not a crime, or by the decision of the court, it was a crime. Why should we take the word of criminals, about their own crimes? This is why accomplice testimony requires corroboration. This is why Bybee and Yoo and Addington and the rest of the torture lawyers must be held to account.
If you wish to commit crimes without accountability, Mr. Todd, I suggest you find a true Banana Republic. Are you also proud of My Lai? The government coverup that followed? Or can you at least have a clear conscience after the trial and convictions? There is a long list of these “corrections”, and they have always made America stronger.
Fortunately, the crimes of which you speak are war crimes. We have a duty under our law to prosecute them. When we don’t then international Law takes over and Spain and other civilized countries must take the lead because we are no longer one of them. We have become fascist barbarians, destroyed by our own leaders.
You don’t really seek to defeat the Taliban, or wahabi Islam, or even the IslamoFascists. You seek to defeat America. When you stand by people who committed TREASON, outing a non-official cover agent, a covert soldier of the Republic, merely for political cover for their lies, you stand in support of treason. That’s NOT accountability.
It isn’t your country, Mr. Todd. It doesn’t belong to you and it NEVER DID. It belongs to the People, to the Republic for which it stands, to those who have given the ultimate sacrifice – lives, limbs – to preserve and protect – what? What is it that the oath of an officer says?
Remember that Bush, Cheney, et al are ENEMIES OF THE CONSTITUTION. If you ever swore this oath, then you are obligated to fight them, or your word means nothing. So does Holder’s if he doesn’t prosecute.
So if you choose to defile the Constitution that I have sworn to protect and defend, against all enemies, foreign and domestic; if you choose to defend war criminals and side with treason; if you choose to defile the blood sacrifice of my family and my countrymen; if you choose blind ideology over your own sworn oaths; then realize that you and your kind are my enemy and will be given no quarter. You are nothing more than a pirate of the mental seas, without morality or conscience.
Hear Hear!!!!
Chuck Todd, who as Marcy pointed out, has a history of being good in analyzing polling data and trends, was reportedly one of the finalists for the Meet the Press gig. I always liked him when he was on as an expert, but moderating and interviewing weren’t his strong suits. He answered questions better than he asked them.
I assumed at the time that his appointment to the White House reporter gig was to groom him for future high-vis positions.
Not compatible with making waves. Too bad.
That’s a key part of the equation; they picked a guy who is not a people person but a number cruncher, a guy who will reliably miss human-based cues.
The other part of the equation is that we are still dealing with Tim “Pumpkinhead” Russert through his legacy. These guys, both David Gregory and Chuck Todd, were reared in an environment where Pumpkinhead could do no wrong, and the presumptive heir was Pumpkinhead’s clone (David Bloom). But after both the presumptive heir and the lord of the DC beat both died, neither of these two had the inate, on-board ability to create a new agenda; they were brought up to be handmaidens to Pumpkinhead-world and are stuck in that mode, unable to question, only able to shift around the bits that are still branded with Pumpkinhead’s mark.
David Schuster would have been a far better choice for the MTP slot or Chuck’s slot, not having been in thrall to Pumpkinhead or apparently ever in the succession plan, and having a little more moxie. But alas, NBC is still in Pumpkinhead-land.
O/T: tortured confessions
Judge Suppresses Coerced Confessions and Refuses to Delay Hearing in Gitmo Case
By DAPHNE EVIATAR 7/17/09 11:09 AM
“U.S. District Judge Ellen Huvelle this morning denied the government’s attempt to further delay the hearing of Guantanamo Bay prisoner Mohammed Jawad and, as expected, ruled that his coerced confessions will not be admitted in his habeas corpus proceeding. This is the first time that a judge has ordered the suppression of statements in a habeas corpus hearing, according to American Civil Liberties Union lawyer Jonathan Hafetz, who represents Jawad. It’s also the first time the government has agreed to have the statements suppressed.”
Link.
Chuck Todd may have been a good analyst of poll data and even a decent reporter at some point, but seems he’s traded all that in to be a hired hand. Maybe his confrontation with Greenwald will lead him to do some self-analysis and -evaluation.
Human Rights First report on Command’s Responsibility
Thanks for this. It should be widely shared.
Bob in HI
This is probably from one of Marcy’s old posts since it is THREE YEARS OLD.
You are welcome, btw. That’s what we do here, remind each other of the facts so that when the stupidity comes, we are well armed to fight it.
Out the “maintream media” for what they are: part of the deception. They are NOT “liberal”. They’re doing their job, it’s not a “failure”.
It’s the WWF: The “mainstream media” and “rightwing media” are all owned and speak for the same people. The mainstream media whines that they are under attack from rightwing media on purpose so you think they’re liberal. The rightwing media accuses the mainstream media as being liberal.
Then they get everybody, people who think they’re liberal choose their WWF wrester the mainstream media, people who think they’re conservative pick their WWF wrestler the rightwing media. ALL are being deceived! It’s like the two parties, too.
Yes, you’re absolutely right. The ownership of the media in this country remains highly consolidated, and in the hands of people who use it to further their corporatist aims rather than furtherance of democracy.
When they aren’t using the news to this end, they are using bread and circuses to encourage consumers of their product to mistake consumption and participation for engagement in democracy.
Look at how many television viewers regularly vote for an American Idol.
All Americans Idle.
Let me make this perfectly clear: the “mainstream media” is NOT liberal. They’re NOT “failing”. They’re doing their job. Their job is to push the same things as the rightwing media, but appear liberal.
5 corporations own the “liberal media”. Corporations aren’t liberal.
The mainstream media is presently speaking for Dick Cheney. They paraded him on TV, and when everyone caught on to this, they are parading surrogates, like his daughter and Chuck Todd. The Cheney “torture victim” TV tour has NEVER STOPPED! It’s just not directly Dick Cheney himself on TV now.
Just look at the FACTS, it’s simple. Watch and OBSERVE what is on “mainstream media” TV news. It’s simple!
The rightwing media’s job is to constantly accuse the corporate mainstream media of being “liberal”. It’ a SHOW, folks!
STOP defending the corporate mainstream media, they are not liberal. OUT them for what they are, and what their job is. Actually, you’re doing a good job of it!
WHO is the corporate mainstream media speaking for? Dick Cheney! How can that be?
I think everyone’s “getting it”. Everyone’s catching on.
How can the mainstream media TV be defending a past administration? So, who do they speak for and work for? If Cheney’s no longer in office, how can this be?
If the Detainee Dies, Doing Sleep Deprivation Is Wrong where Marcy goes through the Senate Armed Services Committee torture report , which I doubt Mr. Todd has even read.
Human Rights First report on Command’s Responsibility at pg.15-16
You think that’s funny Chuck? To torture somebody so badly they cry out to God to help them? You think its funny to torture people until they die? Why don’t you read the descriptio of what they did to him OVER THE AIR and then try to claim that excited utterances of oral copulation are more important.
If the people who did this are not held publicly responsible, then we are complicit.
Bob in HI
We are complicit.
Matthew 25:41-46
I was thunderstruck by Todd’s disingenuousness regarding his “show trial” assertions to GG. As I see it, there are 2 ways to create a show trial:
1) The government creates an unfair system to try people to reach a pre-ordained conclusion. The media may or may not pretend this system is fair.
2) There is a fair trial that the media pretends is unfair and assiduously promotes that view until the whole process is tainted in the public eye.
Todd is completely comfortable with the first class of show trials (see Guantanamo), and refuses to acknowledge his own role in creating the second class of show trials. Todd comes across as both lazy and dishonest, pretending he has no role at all in the “show” aspect of “show trials”.
Great comment, phred. That’s it exactly.
Thanks EW : )
By the way, good response to Shuster. I think MSNBC knows that if they gave you enough time it would put the MSM in a real bind. They would have to start covering topics they want to pretend are political rather than criminal and we clearly can’t have that can we? ; )
That’s exactly the problem:
The MSM is labelling necessary, good, appropriate, responsible criminal investigation “politics”.
Yet it’s the media and those who are against investigation who are being political.
It’s flat out hypocrisy.
As a matter of fact, here’s a link that fatster put up in an earlier thread:
The truth of the matter is, we can’t have ANY trials that aren’t propaganda tools and kangaroo courts and show trials UNLESS we put torture, kidnapping and rampant Executive branch lawbreaking on trial first or at least contemporaneously.
When every trial, at every turn, is cut off because of the illegality of Executive actions that are covered up under the cloak of state secrets, how is any trial anything but a show trial?
I don’t recall Todd having such a huge and vocal objection to no one making the CSRTs at GITMO show trials, although I will say he and his crew did follow through on their part of the pact – to keep the debate off of televion.
Which is why people are going elsewhere to have the debates that society needs and the televised GE “we bring good things to light and keept the bad stuff in the dark” approach to news has so little to recommend it.
Hello EW (or should I say “MSNBC guest”),
I guess I haven’t found it, or perhaps you haven’t answered, but I am curious if you have apologized or planned to, or decided not to. Each has their ramifications, and if you don’t, my first thoughts are that you will not be back on the national air any time soon, and you’ll always be the lady who said “blowjob” on TV. It won’t matter how much work you did on the Libby trial or how your insights into the torture investigations made their way into the NY Times, you’re the lady who said that word (titter, titter). The MSM’s attitude is juvenile and CYA, but playing the game would still allow you a national TV format. I would be disappointed if you weren’t able to go back on the air because we need your progressive voice, but I would certainly understand if you don’t want to apologize. There are plenty of other media outlets, but national TV is the most exposure for a subject these days. I also feel if you did apologize, it still wouldn’t get you back on the teevee (maybe Rachel Maddow). Thoughts?
Thanks,
John
I find the suggestion that Marcy has to apologize in any way for the words she used highly objectionable.
And I also find the notion that TV is the only way to go extremely naive and outdated. The audience who consumes the majority of their news by TV is dying by the thousands ever day, being replaced by younger audiences who get their news from the internet. You can check this in any number of studies, especially Pew Internet American Life studies.
I told Shuster that I was sorry of the phrase got him in trouble, but I stood by the statement and did not apologize for it. Shuster said he understood.
Frankly, I think MSNBC STILL has more trouble having me on because I report stuff they don’t like than because I said blowjob. The apology was, by all appearances, just theater, and no one has asked me to apologize for it.
Thanks for the explanation. Since I have followed your blog and writings for quite a while, I knew what you were saying was spot on. I just don’t want your opinion/reputation to be diminished because of the brouhaha over a word. Keep up the good work.
I don’t think blowjob is a word they can get fined for, but I wonder if AAR is in trouble for Noah Wiley dropping the “F” bomb Tuesday night on “Clout.” Richard Greene was not a happy camper. As soon as Noah said it, you could hear Richard saying to his engineer, “John, did you get that?” I don’t know if John got it, but I sure heard it. So much for 7-second delay.
You know, these guys have pretty much the opposite impression of “banana republic” that I do.
In my quaint li’l world, a “banana republic” has a government with rampant lawlessness, domestic spying, assassination squads, and no accountability.
My mistake I guess.
personally I like the term coined by the Economist to refer to Myanmar and Zimbabwe,: “thugocracy”
shrub led a thugocracy. Rule by thugs.
I recall a post quite awhile back on kos that pointed out that political reporters are the only reporters that actually hate what they report on – policy.
One thing that never ceases to amaze me is how uninformed they are about the actual underlying issues. For example, when BabyDick first started going around she was saying “if you read the report, it says _____” . It was clear that Norah O’Donnell had not read the report herself.
How can anyone who claims to be a “journalist” have so little knowledge or understanding of the facts and issues? They don’t care because it bores them and they are only interested in the political strategy/messaging aspect or during elections, the horse race.
If (FSM/Holder willing-not necessarily in that order) we ever have trials, would the corporate media even show it? If so, they will try to cover it just like they did the Libby trial, but once again they will be surprised when DFH bloggers view the same proceeding and report actual facts and analysis instead of comparing notes to make sure they come up with the same CW.
I don’t know if I can live through watching them spin a torture trial. At some point it might be like Village sepsis – my whole system will just finally give up and shut down.
I’m at the point where I just want to scream.
Elections matter? Who says? Ben Nelson?
We finally get a “Pecora Commission,” and the brain-dead idiots who are our elected Congressional leaders give the Republican vice chair (none other than old friend Bill Thomas, the ex-DeLay Posse Ways & Means chair infamous for his arrogance and bad temper) veto power over staff hiring; and require that at least one GOPer on the commission vote to subpoena, otherwise, NO SUBPOENA POWER. Who on god’s earth thought this one up?
Then there are the Chuck Todds and David Ignatius’ of the Mainstream Media who tell us in all seriousness (ALL SERIOUSNESS, especially the sonorous Mr. Ignatius) that we surely don’t want to engage in tit-for-tat! As if breaking the law, lying to Congress, wiretapping without warrant within these United States, data mining, torturing–TORTURING!—stealing elections, rigging the electoral and justice systems, and doing god only knows what all else–is just, you know, tit for the tat. Christ almighty.
But I guess that this is where we are.
Glenn is right: This culture is debased, no more so than in our nation’s capital.
I really think we’re just a step away from being the Roman Republic in its last days.
The Banking Culture owns both parties. One just happens to be worse–a whole lot of worse, to be fair–than the other. And, well, the less debased party does have a handful of genuinely noble leaders midst the wretched, self-serving, ignorant dross. (I wonder how they–the decent ones–maintain their sanity.)
Barbarians INSIDE the gates, eh? Heh.
Maintaining sanity? Care for a cup of tea? Maybe a footrub or neck & scalp massage? Probably some headphones with which to listen to one’s favorite music? Mmmmm.
Ruh roh, MT, you’re going to make Todd mad that you didn’t talk to him first before you wrote this! The beltway media think they are celebrities not journalists. Celebrities can say what they want. But they have very thin skins.
This is my first time posting here so I hope I don’t blow it by saying the ‘wrong’ kinds of things.
I signed up just to comment about Chuck Todd and what I have to say is not flattering. I have watched him on TV for a very long time. He strikes me as another media gate keeper.
It really bothered me the way he would spin polls and other information during the elections. Exit polls don’t match poll results? He has an easy answer and it is NOT investigating the GOP for election fraud.
I do not think he is a disinterested party at all, and only appears to be one in order to fool the audience. We really have to wrap our minds around the fact the Bush administration would never have gotten away with half of what they did if the national media was properly doing their job. Chuck is demonstrating exactly how it is done.
It looks like treason to me.
Of course he will deny that is what he is doing, and it is very impolite to even suggest he is, but if I don’t suggest it, and if others don’t take it seriously, aren’t we just helping him cover it up?
Welcome and thanks for speaking up.
“Blowing it” is perfectly acceptable around here. Now Todd, Chuck…he’s a Fluffer.
I had trouble even understanding Todd’s half phrases, run-on sentences and loop backs. I read the transcript.
His thought process seems muddled. At first I thought it was because his words were spoken, but then Greenwald’s words were spoken, too, and Greenwald’s phrases were normal, understandable English.
kudos, emptywheel for making sense of Todd’s ramblings enough to show that Todd is not interested in being an investigative journalist.
Many here are ancient enough to have followed Watergate in real time. Apparently the impression had by some too new to the planet [plus others who either weren’t paying attention or prefer fake history] is that partisanship was all or mostly absent from Watergate — that public investigations into that huge clusterfuck were critically more apolitical, more principled, more ethereal even, than what Chucklehead Todd argues would be the case these days for investigations into Bush/Cheney administration-sponsored murder, the disappearing people, regulated torture, systemic illegal surveillance etc etc etc — that is, into a litany of organized crime that renders John Dean’s observation at to it being ‘Worse Than Watergate’ hilarious understatement.
Nothing could be further from the truth. The Refuddlican questioning of Judge Sotomayor this week was plainly clownish and rife with ideology and hypocrisy to anyone with an earnest interest in obtaining a fair, impartial, intelligent judicial system. Back in the early 1970s it was relatively easier for Refuddlicans to appear non-partison, principled and austerely ethereal, mostly because we didn’t have anything like the detailed and immediately-available knowledge we have these days about, for example, what a bought-and-paid-for dick Refuddlican SJC counsel Fred Thompson was as he threw up roadblocks and smokescreens and ate up oodles of time in an effort to blunt the contrary efforts of Sam Dash and others on the Democratic SJC counsel side. My own impression is of getting the same sorts of feelings listening to the Watergate hearings as I did the Sotomayor hearings, except in the case of the former far worse because it seemed the fate of the entire republic and all its democratic institutions was on the line, whereas with the latter it was just a pretty big chunk of those.
Anyway, its only when one somehow accepts Todd’s actually accurate projection that such hearings now would be deeply characterized by partisanship as arguing for not holding such hearings that his point of view is seen as fundamentally corrupted by hanging around the White House press corp and in beltway buzz circles and too close to those such as Morgen Joe and his vacuous blond presenter.
An unchallenged but invalid assumption underlies the thought process that leads many people to conclude that we shouldn’t investigate whether certain people in the Bush Administration, including the President and Vice President, violated the Geneva Convention and our own domestic laws prohibiting torture. It’s unthinkable to admit publicly that the United States did something wrong and apologize to the victims or their survivors and the nations to which they belong. More than a few people in this country absolutely don’t want an investigation to take place because they don’t want to trouble their beautiful minds, as Barbara Bush once said, with the truth and all of its implications regarding the validity of our image of what we are and what we stand for, which is a myth.
The “real” United States of America is quite different as we all know and I believe we have a duty to ourselves and to each other to know what our elected officials have been doing in our name no matter how shocking or depressing the truth might be. Wrapping oneself in the symbols and myth of the United States while refusing to see the reality of how it acts in the world is irresponsible. If widespread, such a view creates a permissive environment in which unprincipled power seekers flourish without fear of accountability. The behavior of the Bush Administration and Goldman Sachs are Exhibits 1 and 2.
The Rule of Law is much more than a list of prohibitions and consequences. It’s a process designed to get to the truth of a matter in an open and fair manner with due regard given to protect individual rights. Our nation now has an opportunity to show this process to the world, and if the participants honor it the truth will be revealed for all to see. We the People cannot fix what we cannot see.
How can our nation weaken its image to the rest of the world by engaging in a fair and open process to discover the truth of what was done in our name, and revealing that truth for all to see, no matter how ugly and painful it may be for us to face it and own it?
Could we strike a more deadly blow against terrorism?
It takes immense courage and strength to do that, but the reward for doing so will be beyond measure because we will recover our honor and grace, restore our nation’s reputation, regain control of our disgraceful, deceitful, and unaccountable government while setting an example for the rest of the world to follow until the end of time.
We are at the crossroad and we must choose to breathe life into the mythical United States that’s comatose and on life support or choose to unplug it and forever consign it to the graveyard of soon to be forgotten dreams.
Bravo! Bravo! The first goal in the war against terror is to not become the terrorists ourselves.
EPU’d when I posted this on the Yoo thread.
Here’s a link to a story about Cheney directed CIA assassination squads authorized to carry out missions within the United States per presidential order. The story first appeared the Washington Post yesterday.
http://rawstory.com/08/news/20…..n-program/
Getting into EPU territory on this thread too, but here’s on last comment.
Todd and the others have spent the last 8 years going to parties, talking to the staffers, swapping family stories while they killed time, etc. with people like Cheney’s staff and Haynes/Rumsfeld’s crew and the like. They still have Karl Rove as a “colleague.”
And if you have trials that bring out the truth, they are left in the postion of being the girls on the bridge, eating blueberries and laughing with the Nazi mass murders. The become a part of the scrapbook – the torturers scrapbook. That’s not the thought that many want to have every night before the go to bed.
@68. Amen. Especially where, as here, you have memos going out to the “bad people” that those in the prisons and beig tortured are innocent, and they smile, smirk, fill out their kids college and private school apps, and go out to dinner without a care. Then sit down with “students” at Harvard and Boalt Hall or with “businessmen” at Lockheed and Boeing and collect money and flattery for their fealty to depravity.
Shorter Todd:
Haven’t read the whole piece. In a word, you can’t make this stuff up. I started to suggest that EW must be making this stuff up, we, alas. Maybe we can put Todd on the Michael Jackson beat; facts don’t matter.
Were that it was just Todd. If you put all the catnip assholes on the Jackson beat, the halls of media would be vacant but for a handful of Charlie Savages.
And they’d probably be fired quickly, and have to move over to huffpo.
More true words have not been spoken… until just one element of the formulation, shifts ever so slightly on the sand.
Oh the arrogance and the ignorance of the MSNBC “news” speaking “assets”.
For Torture/ Murder/ Treason to be treated in a nonpartisan manor would be restarting the Nuremburg Tribunal or sign on to the International Criminal Court and give them a full and fair trial, something denied to those questioned to death. If found guilty strip them of their worldly possessions except the underwear they have on that day and their citizenship. They gave up the right to be called Americans or even human.
Treason is never a mistake but it’s always a mistake not to call it Treason.
It’s too bad Russert didn’t live long enough to renounce his own reporting [sic] methods, because none of his proteges in the newsgathering [sic] business will ever challenge them. It’s as if, in death, Russert’s horrible standards became engraved in stone and will always be the Versailles Way.
This was the same exact crap we saw in 2000. Any efforts Gore made to get what was rightfully his were decried by the Villagers as adding to the CHAOS! Eeeeeek, look, CHHAAAAAAOOOOOS!
The Dems can’t investigate the Bushies because the shout shows will go nuts?
Sounds like a perfectly rational reason to me. Move along, people, there’s nothing to see here.
The shout shows thrive on going nuts. They must be secrestly pushing for investigations.
It would be a nice break from the steady flow of movie celebrities and chefs. Not that I don’t enjoy those, but variety is nice too.
I’m sorry, IRS, but you can’t audit my taxes because if you do, my parents will start arguing. Thank you, I knew you’d see it my way.
Can’t investigate previous administrations, right? Except the village media didn’t bother complaining about it when the Bush government investigated the missing ‘w’ keys supposedly taken by Clinton’s people. A claim which a village media idiot, Tony Snow, admitted he made up.
This is a whole lot of ink over an ignorant NBC political news director. I listened to the radio debate between Todd and Greenwald, and it doesn’t take GG very long to expose Todd for being completely unknowledgeable about that which he opines. It’s actually painful to listen to it’s so embarassing for Todd. Todd’s reputation would have actually fared better if he’d taken the coward’s way out and simply ignored Greenwald’s criticism. You can give him credit for having the gumption to publicly engage with GG, but you then have to admit that he’s not fit for his post.
hey emptywheelers and firedogs,
y’all seen this ? ’bout an hour ago
Congress To Probe Secret CIA Program:
TPM
apparently Chairman Reyes disagrees with Chucklehead on the whole investigating previous administration thingy
But it says they’re only going to investigate how Congress is kept informed. It’s all about process, not anything else.
Chuck Todd thinks:
1. Presidents and high-level officials can never be prosecuted for anything, and
2. It’s not clear that torture is illegal.
And that’s all you need to know about Chuck Todd.
The idea that we shouldn’t investigate previous administrations is ludicrous…Has Todd never heard of the Church Committee? Or the Walsh Report? Is he f**ing kidding?
Todd is a number cruncher, not a policy wonk. Putting him in charge of the DC bureau guaranteed that any real understanding of the issues would be missed.
Chuck is writing a book about the Obama administration, I guess based on his experience with so many administrations.
Let’s face facts, he was promoted to keep another white guy on Tee Vee news. Is the most most qualified for the position, hell no, but then white males are an endangered species.
Just finished listening and that was stunning.
I think that it says good things about Todd as a man that he didn’t take the cowardly way out and just ignore Glenn, but I have to agree with bobash that it would have been better for his image if he had. It was devastating to hear such ignorance from someone that is a gatekeeper at a major network.
True. Though I had to laugh when he said he appreciates Glenn’s legal mind.
I’ve heard less stupid lines from drooling drunks trying to get in my pants.
Since Phred & I are deadlocked in a battle to rename certain friends [ me naming Russ Douthat of NYT as Douchehat & she naming Liz Chiney as babyDick ] … I henceforth decree that Chuck Todd be known as Fuck Wad !
Chuck, the French Beard hides neither your shallowness nor stupidity. Say Hi to Ed, Chip & Major for me !
whatever is going on with Todd et al, Gitmogate just got worse, far beyond the point of absurdity this time:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31….._politics/
Foreign agents (Chinese agents no less) were apparently invited by our government to come TO Gitmo to TORTURE OUR prisoners THERE. For a 7-10 day interval, Chinese intelligence agents were allowed to do the same bs (extreme temperatures, withholding food, etc) we did to the same guys, at our prison… which I guess is about as absurd as the Gestapo inviting the Stalin’s NKVD to one of their Stalags to interrogate American POWs.
And was this invitation supposed to give us clean hands? Or, teach us better torture techniques? O wait, maybe Dick and W will tell us it didn’t happen. Shall we investigate even if that may cause a dust-up?
oh I don’t know. I can’t imagine any scenario where you get deniability by inviting foreign thugs to augment the torturings of your own thugs in your own illegal prison. This isn’t rendition, its just inviting some other bullies to your den to beat up on your victims some more. ’sides, from what we’ve learned about American torture techniques used by the shrubco thugocracy (developed from Chinese torture techniques used during the Korean war, ironically), the pupil has long since surpassed the master in the refinement of cruelty. Reading about Chinese torture in Amnesty Int’l reports these days is positively innocent and rather boring and prosaic compared to what shows up in leaked CIA reports. Perhaps the Chinese were there to learn how best to more efficiently kick the shite of their own Muslim minorities?
International beyond anything the Germans did. They kept it in house.
How many citizens of different countries have we tortured or outsourced this garbage.
Nuremburg 2.0 or nothing.
Look at Hadifia and tell me we pass out equal justice.
They were also forced to give pictures and identification to the Chinese. So what do you think happened to their families back in China, once China could claim that they had interrogated the “terrorists” at GITMO?
Who lends themselves to that kind of crap – taking people sold to you that you know had nothing to do with 9-11, torturing them, then bringing over the Chinese to also torture them and collect info to take back and use to disappear their families?
Who lends themselve to that? Obama and our Dept of Justice and every high ranking DOJ and State Dept and Pentagon and CIA and FBI lawyer over the last 8 years, with the exception of Mora and some JAG.
And then there’s this – with Moran wanting the Pentagon to answer questions and the Pentagon refusing up pipes Dana Rohrbacher:
When Dana Rohrbacher is to the left of the Obama administration on GITMO torture, I tend to lose heart.
and I’m sure that the Chinese intelligence people were asking their torturees at Gitmo to finger other like-minded people in China (inaccurately, since we now know that torturing names out of people doesn’t work).. which no doubt led to more torture of innocents within Chinese borders. Go shrubco.
and by the way? what irony. We’ve gone from the somewhat principled stance taken by Bush I on pressuring China on their domestic rights abuses to Bush II inviting the Chinese secret police to join our own secret police in jointly torturing innocent people on American soil. No satirist could’ve come up with a bitter skit. Wonderful. Just wonderful.
American soil? GITMO is under American control and the SC has determined US law applies there, but if you ask most people, they still would not label it ‘American soil’ and that is why so many Congress people are against closing GITMO or having any trials or prisoners transfered to the mainland.
This is a long, long way from being resolved and the signals from Congress are that they are not going to help. Again, it goes back to the images that have been engraved on the minds of the public by a compliant and syncophantic media repeating the ‘worst of the worst’ claims.
I categorically reject that argument. I’m sorry. Gitmo is US soil by any argument ‘cept those in the service of shrubco legal sophistry. We bear as much responsibility for whatever happened there as we would if it happened (which it did happen) at the gulag where we tortured Padilla and Hamdi in South Carolina.
I agree that we are responsible. That makes two of us. We make up a small minority. My point was that the press gives the public a different impression and I have heard no Congress people who are brave enough to try to counter it or do anything about it. The Bush/Cheney regime painted us into a corner and we still standing here waiting for the paint to dry.
So, because Todd can’t be a real journalist, and cable can’t report appropriately on a serious investigation and proceeding, we should ignore that laws were broken and allow law breakers free reign now and the next time around. Todd is such a disappointment and apparently stunningly stupid.
Chuck Todd is just a tool, a dope who is paid to not understand what he reports. His arguments if you could call them that chase their own tails. The idea that this guy thinks of himself as an analyst is a hoot. He can’t derive the consequences of his own arguments, let alone anyone else’s. For him, all investigations by definition of a political figure most be political and therefore he rules them out. This is pure hogwash. Nixon anyone? On top of that he isn’t sure if that is what he’s saying or the Obama White House or the Conventional Wisdom. He comes across as a complete idiot, and that’s the charitable version.
@107 – and for keeping the cover up going and refusing to get the Uighurs out of GITMO and fighting Judicial release orders – go Obamaco too. And for the assinine legislation defunding any transfer of innocent people out of GITMO to the US, go Demsco. I really get very fed up with all of them. I’ll probably vote for the pink haired Mary Kay libertarian candidate next time through – how would it worse?
)108
Have you been getting e-mails for the WH like I have?
*g* No I have not. Either you are more special or I am less special or both. For some bizarre reason, though, now and then I get stuff from that Redstate crazy guy and from Cornyn. It’s very odd how these email lists work.
and the public has to be informed before they will cry out.
Exactly and that’s why we have such a bad partisan divide. Once the facts get squared away, there will be divide but it is much less and less partisan. The media were the girls on the bridge eating blueberries with the Nazis and they didn’t get the facts out. Now Obama has squandered what should have been his time to get the facts out. A Presidential address, early on, admitting all the errors of GITMO and Bagram and Abu Ghraib to explain to Americans what a real mish mash we have of nasty evil bad guys and innocent people who we have treated with depravity – using one of two of the very compelling cases – an address the media couldn’t have ignored, and not only would America as a whole view it all on a less partisan, less bitter basis – there would be more affirmative impetus to work things out and get them right.
Instead, he bought into the “we can’t tell the truth because then we are war criminals” mindset and made his choice. It was an evil choice and eventually, enough evil choices change a good man into an irretrievably bad man.
The reason I get WH e-mails is because I used the WH website to send comments. What that does is get you put on their e-mail PR list. It’s the same way you get on lists by donating money to causes or political campaigns. It’s the spider part of the web.
If you search the White House site as I do from time to time, you will invariably be asked for your email information. The first time I submit a search this happens. If you go back and resubmit the search, it will take you to the results. I found the Obama White House so annoying I made it one of the entries in my Obama scandals list.
Chuck Todd is entitled to his opinion on this issue, and I’m entitled to mine, as we all are. We have prosecutors who are up to the jobe of not turning the prosecution of Dick Cheney, if it comes to that, for any crime, big or small, into a show trial.
But the reasoning for no prosecutions is in the foreign policy context a good deal like the pickle we are in with respect to the financial economy on the domestic policy ledger. With the banks we have the dilemma of having to support one or more big banks, and they keep getting larger as an unintended consequence, with taxpayer dollars because they are too big to fail. Similalry, we can’t prosecute Cheney et al for what I would argue is a massive fraud against all American citizens and taxpayers in light of the growing evidence of the manufactured evidence for invading Iraq, and the fraudulent reasons given for avoiding FISA courts in the systematic collection of intelligence, and the lies told about the efficiency and effectiveness of obtaining actionable intelligence through enhanced interrogation and torture becuase that would be prosecuting ideology? An ideology which holds that is okay to lie and fabricate and deceive and mislead in the formulation and conduct of this nation’s foreign policy under a bizarre constituional theory that the Commander-in-Chief can do anything during a time of war if it is the least bit related to the conduct of America’s foreign policy. (Not rationally related, but minimally related.)
There is no way of avoiding the issue of ideology when it is the motivating factor in all which you have done which, the people allege, amounts to illegal conduct and activities that not excused by one’s ideology and the constitutional theory which suits that ideology.
This is far graver matter for America, now and for our the future, if we avoid an investigation and do not follow up in an appropriate fashion on the evidence of federal crimes, if any, that that investigation yields.
At long last, the rule of law must mean something or it simply becomes a quaint fairy tale that we read our kids and grandkids as they nod off to sleep. The rule of law is the most fundamental precept to the legitimacy of any democracy.
That is what we will have sacrificed if we fail to investigate that wish we know requires investigation.
Chuck Todd shot his mouth off on Morning Joe saying some very partisan things. In the interview with Glenn, he recanted, claiming that he was only trying to convey the White House perspective. If true, he was either serving as a White House propagandist:
Or as a semiconscious plagiarist:
The notion that he’d assimilate White House talking points and mindlessly regurditate them as his own without advocacy sounds preposterous but is, in fact, all too believeable.
Shorter Todd: “If Obama and the media don’t fight against upholding law and order, then there will be real debates in the media, and that would be bad.”