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WaPo’s Manufactured “Landslide”

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[NB: check the byline, thanks. /~Rayne]

When a distinguished professor of journalism calls out the Washington Post on its bullshit, you’d hope WaPo would take note and make a correction in its direction:

One Democratic senator who is noted for being to the right end of the Democrats’ political spectrum apparently constitutes a landslide in Democratic Party opinion.

If Democrats stood on Sen. Michael Bennet’s side of the boat we’d be Republican Lite sinking the boat.

What’s truly disgusting about WaPo’s skewed priorities is that another event of far more import than Bennet’s lone opinion took place last evening and hasn’t received the scrutiny it should have.

Laffy wrote a thread summarizing Donald Trump’s campaign rally. I’m not going to post the entire thread, just posts 2 and 3 from a 10-post thread:

The entire thread begins at this link.

This synopsis spares you Trump’s droning whine as he reels out over an hour of white Christian nationalist/supremacist grievance using an absurd number of lies.

I listened to this nauseating dreck this morning and it’s awful. If this man is elected and allowed to act on his hatred relying on the Roberts’ court’s presidential immunity, no one who is a person of color or LGBTQ+ will be safe let alone other marginalized groups.

The rotting cherry on the top of this ugliness: this was a campaign rally held at Trump National Doral Golf Club in Miami.

In other words, Trump laundered campaign funds which paid for this event, transferring it to his Trump org-owned golf course and eventually into his own pocket.

The Secret Service was surely charged by the course for what resources it used to protect him at the course — this money went directly to the course and into Trump’s pocket.

GOP presumptive presidential nominee Trump was grifting right under the noses of his supporters and what little media was present, while airing so much hateful screed as a campaign speech.

But a “landslide” of one Democratic senator was more important and featured on WaPo’s front page.

Washington Post’s Sunday Night Editorial Massacre

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[NB: check the byline, thanks. /~Rayne]

This morning’s Washington Post newsletter – The 7 – offered a peek into the outlet’s ideological bent.

The seven topics offered to subscribers before 7:00 a.m. to help them catch up, in order presented:

1 — Mexico elected its first female president yesterday.

2 — Hunter Biden’s trial on criminal gun charges begins in Delaware today.

3 — President Biden announced a new cease-fire plan for Gaza.

4 — Anthony Fauci is set to testify in Congress today.

5 — Billions in U.S. taxpayer dollars are being used for tuition at religious schools.

6 — Simone Biles won her ninth national all-around title.

7 — A Chinese spacecraft landed on the “dark” side of the moon yesterday.

That’s right: the U.S.’s fourth largest newspaper by number of subscribers feels that Hunter Biden’s trial is more important than the Biden administration’s efforts to stop the genocide in Gaza.

Never mind the protests across the country over the last six months which have spurred numerous horserace polling articles as well as coverage of conflicts on U.S. campuses.

The trial isn’t even being held in D.C. which the Washington Post calls home.

At the very bottom of the newsletter is this news blurb:

Before you go … some news from The Post: Sally Buzbee, our executive editor since 2021, has stepped down.

How benign that sounds. Happy trails, Ms. Buzbee, good luck on your future endeavors.

Except this is what happened, reported last night:

Steve Herman @[email protected]

Washington Post – Matt Murray, former Editor in Chief of The Wall Street Journal, will replace Sally Buzbee as Executive Editor until the 2024 U.S presidential election, after which Robert Winnett, Deputy Editor of The Telegraph Media Group, will take on the new role of Editor.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/pr/2024/06/02/sally-buzbee-steps-down-executive-editor-washington-post-matt-murray-rob-winnett-take-editorial-leadership-roles-new-newsroom-structure/

Jun 02, 2024, 10:58 PM

Did Buzbee leave willingly? WaPo’s certainly not telling us. It’s as if Buzbee accidentally fell out a window leaving a vacancy.

Here’s the first two paragraphs from the WaPo’s own report on the shakeup:

The Washington Post today announced Sally Buzbee has stepped down as Executive Editor. Buzbee has been with The Washington Post since 2021, leading the newsroom through the turbulence of the pandemic and expanding its service journalism, including Climate and Well+Being. Under her leadership, The Washington Post has won significant awards, including the recent Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting.

Matt Murray, former Editor in Chief of The Wall Street Journal (WSJ), will replace Buzbee as Executive Editor until the 2024 U.S presidential election, after which Robert Winnett, Deputy Editor of The Telegraph Media Group, will take on the new role of Editor at The Washington Post, responsible for overseeing our core coverage areas, including politics, investigations, business, technology, sports and features.

Why would WaPo allow an Executive Editor who oversaw award-winning work to “step down”? Why would they promptly replace that EE with a temporary placeholder, and one who operated in a very different news organization?

It seems incredibly convenient that former Murdoch-News Corp editor Matt Murray will run WaPo just until the election.

Then WaPo will be helmed by an editor from a British conservative right-wing news organization, because we don’t have enough of our own Tories in media here. We need to rescue from Brexit import a Tory from a flailing media outlet overseas.

Not to mention Robert Winnett leaves a British paper with a subscriber base one-third the size of WaPo and with far less domestic and international impact.

When WaPo announced their slogan in 2017 – Democracy Dies in Darkness – one month after Trump was inaugurated, most observers scratched their heads. Would WaPo truly shine a light on that which is intent on killing our democracy? Would the paper be up to what has proven to be a monumental task?

But in hindsight we didn’t see that slogan for what it was. WaPo warned us it was going to turn off the lights. This abrupt change in editorial executives moving the paper further to the right is an indicator of yet more dimming of a truly free press.

Three Things: Let the Tedious Bashing Commence!

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[NB: check the byline, thanks. /~Rayne]

Don’t you despise tedious media bashing which is often off base? Ha. I’m still laughing about this.

Quick, name five critics of U.S. media.

If you can’t rattle off at least five without a lot of thought, there isn’t enough media criticism.

We haven’t even touched the depths of tedious media bashing in this country let alone at this site.

~ 3 ~

Headline and subhead from The New York Times on May 9, 2024:

At a Dinner, Trump Assailed Climate Rules and Asked $1 Billion From Big Oil
At a private meeting at Mar-a-Lago, the former president said fossil fuel companies should donate to help him beat President Biden.

Headline and subhead from Washington Post on May 9, 2024:

What Trump promised oil CEOs as he asked them to steer $1 billion to his campaign
Donald Trump has pledged to scrap President Biden’s policies on electric vehicles and wind energy, as well as other initiatives opposed by the fossil fuel industry.

Guess who’s on the bylines for these two pieces. If you read Marcy’s work here frequently you’ll be able to take a good stab at it because of the consistency with which these journalists produce such dreck.

Neither of these articles use the word “bribe” or the phrase “quid pro quo,” and yet that’s exactly what Trump engaged in with fossil fuel companies.

The word “Ukraine” also doesn’t appear though Trump’s first impeachment was kicked off by a whistleblower disclosing a quid pro quo – no association made at all in the articles above with how transactional Trump has been, is, and may be should he win the 2024 election. Readers are supposed to know already just how corrupt Trump’s offer to fossil fuel companies is; they’re not to be so bluntly informed by the two major newspapers in the U.S.

Journalism by shovel. Not just burying the inconvenient, but shoveling bullshit like that POS NYT headline. “At a Dinner…” Really? That’s so critical to the public’s understanding of this candidate’s corrupt election behavior that we need to know this was just a harmless dinner?

If readers are surfing headlines to sift for important news to read, prefacing bribery with “At a Dinner” is one way to ensure readers speed on by.

So is ignoring the bribery.

Go to Google News and search for “trump oil companies” and compare and contrast headlines and articles since May 9. Amazing the consistency with which the Democrats are assailed for questioning a quid pro quo offered during a campaign event.

It’s ridiculous that it took 16 days to learn that the fossil fuel industry would receive a $109 billion return on investment if they paid Trump the $1 billion donation bribe he asked for.

And yes, the Guardian’s piece used the words “quid pro quo” though they quoted Sen. Jamie Raskin in doing so.

~ 2 ~

Jeff Jarvis, journalism prof at CUNY’s Newmark School, is succinct about this particular problem:

Jeff Jarvis @[email protected]

I challenge you to find this good news on the home page of The New York Times. Go to Business and you’ll have to dig to find it. “News judgment” is bias….
S&P 500, Nasdaq and Dow all hit record highs after encouraging inflation data

https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/15/economy/consumer-price-index-inflation-april

May 16, 2024, 07:42

I’ll let the NYT’s front page speak for itself:

You can see today’s front page at https://cdn.freedomforum.org/dfp/jpg16/lg/NY_NYT.jpg

Coverage of the internal friction about the appearance of ideological bent between parent NBC and cable subsidiary MSNBC makes the front page. So does a sextortion piece (which could have been run any time in the last year), and a puff piece about everything becoming a “journey” for celebrities.

The NYT’s online front page is fresher but no better. At 10:25 a.m. as I wrote this, the word “inflation” didn’t appear at all.

Plenty about Biden’s loss of donors and Trump leading Biden in polling.

Can’t imagine why coverage of ideological bent in reporting is above the fold at this newspaper.

~ 1 ~

CNN announced the moderators for the June 27 presidential debate. Jake Tapper and Dana Bash, hosts of CNN’s Sunday talk show State of the Union are queued up.

Doesn’t sound like CNN handled this well in past, blaming the institution for confusion about the venue.

You’ll find all the posts at this site tagged with “Jake Tapper” at this link:

https://www.emptywheel.net/?s=jake+tapper

And all the posts at this site tagged with “Dana Bash” here:

https://www.emptywheel.net/?s=dana+bash

Pardon me if I am incredibly skeptical about the ability of these two to catch a lie on the fly – especially at a news media outlet under pressure from management to be more Fox News-ish.

~ 0 ~

This is an open thread. Bring discussion here which would be off topic in other threads.

Aileen Cannon Is Stiff-Arming the Press

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I’m going to write up what really happened yesterday — as predicted, virtually all outlets I’ve seen simply quoted what Aileen Cannon claimed she had done, rather than describing what she had actually done.

Before I do that, I want to note that Judge Cannon is stiff-arming the same press that is reporting so credulously on her interventions.

Back on August 31, the press coalition that does such things moved to intervene in the case. Most of it was the same boilerplate the coalition uses for all such motions, but they did cite both sides in the matter calling for transparency.

Former President Trump himself has called for greater transparency. See, e.g., ECF No. 1, at pp. 2-3 (noting personal desire for more openness). The Government has stated likewise. See, e.g., ECF No. 1, at pp. 9-10 (detailing Attorney General Merrick Garland’s statements on why the Government sought to unseal certain search warrant records); see also ECF No. 48, at p. 2 n.1 (noting that the Government is “prepared . . . to unseal the more detailed receipt”).

They described that the government did not oppose the motion and Trump took no position on it. They asked to be heard on the matter on September 1.

The next day, Judge Cannon released the detailed inventory the government had submitted (it has since submitted a slightly revised inventory, but didn’t address the press access.

After the government moved to unseal the privilege status report on September 8, the press coalition submitted their own request for unsealing.

Then, after two weeks had elapsed since their initial motion, the press coalition tried again. They pointed out that if anyone wanted to oppose their intervention, the two week deadline to do so had expired. And they noted that the privilege review status report still remained under seal.

The News Media further note that certain records remain under seal in this matter, namely those docketed at ECF No. 40. The News Media understand ECF No. 40 to contain the Government’s submission regarding its Privilege Review Team’s Notice of Status of the Filter Process. The Government filed a motion to unseal that document (less Exhibits A and B to that filing) on September 8, 2022. See ECF No. 71. The News Media filed a further motion to unseal that court record on September 9, 2022. See ECF No. 79.

But Judge Cannon has simply ignored those requests.

There’s an obvious reason she did so: In her September 5 order first appointing a Special Master, she made claims based on that sealed status report. The claims are not only probably false, but she effectively double counted the potentially privileged materials as both potentially privileged and personal. That was the means by which she found that Trump had a possessory interest in the items seized on August 8. So she likely can’t allow that status report to be unsealed, because if it were, her deceit would become evident.

Ironically (or perhaps cynically), Cannon cited the importance of the perception of fairness in that same ruling relying on the status report she won’t let the press see.

A commitment to the appearance of fairness is critical, now more than ever.

[snip]

As Plaintiff articulated at the hearing, the investigation and treatment of a former president is of unique interest to the general public, and the country is served best by an orderly process that promotes the interest and perception of fairness. See supra Discussion III–IV; see also In re Search Warrant Issued June 13, 2019, 942 F.3d at 182 (“[A]n award of injunctive relief in these circumstances supports the ‘strong public interest’ in the integrity of the judicial system.” (quoting United States v. Hasting, 461 U.S. 499, 527 (1983) (Brennan, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part))).

[snip]

“[E]fficient criminal investigations are certainly desirable,” In re Search Warrant Issued June 13, 2019, 942 F.3d at 181, but so too are countervailing considerations of fair process and public trust.

But she only maintains this perception by stiff-arming the press and hiding that status report.

Thus far, she has gotten away with it. Not only isn’t the press calling her out for stiff-arming them, but they continue to quote what she says rather than reporting on what she does.

Update, 10/4: After she ordered the status report unsealed, Judge Cannon granted the motion to intervene prospectively.

Trump Charity A Continuing Fraud On The People Of New York

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scammer419One of the items of breaking news (no, really!) over the last 24 hours is the cease and desist order issued by the New York Attorney General’s Office to Donald Trump’s vaunted “charity”. The full text of the official letter can be found here.

The New York Times described it thusly:

The office of New York Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman has issued a “notice of violation” to Donald J. Trump’s foundation, ordering it to immediately stop soliciting charitable donations in New York.

The letter, which was sent on Friday and released on Monday morning by Mr. Schneiderman’s office, said its charities bureau had determined that the Donald J. Trump Foundation had been fund-raising in New York this year when it was not registered to do so under state law.

“The Trump Foundation must immediately cease soliciting contributions or engaging in any other fund-raising activities in New York,” wrote James Sheehan, the chief of the charities bureau.

I want to focus on one particular clause in the letter however. The part identifying the “fraud”. To wit:

“The failure immediately to discontinue solicitation and to file information and reports required under Article 7-A with the Charities Bureau shall be deemed to be a continuing fraud upon the people of the State of New York.”

Now, in fairness, that is likely boilerplate/template language for such a cease and desist letter in New York, but that makes it no less true. What has occurred is that the Donald J. Trump Foundation, by not properly registering and being accountable for its activities, has been perpetrating a fraud on the People of the State of New York.

A state government is entitled to regulate, oversee and audit such activity occurring within its borders. As appears to be a pattern with Mr. Trump, he and his organization seemed to think they were simply above such common regulation. The willful non-compliance itself is a fraud, the size of the fraud perpetrated can only further be determined via full registration and full accounting for the multiple years of non-compliant activity the “charity” has engaged in.

There has been a fraud under the statutory and regulatory framework of the State of New York, we are only yet to ascertain the relative scope of it yet. And given the dogged reportage of David Fahrenthold of the Washington Post, which depicts rampant self serving and dealing by Trump as to personal debts via his charity, there is every reason to believe there are very serious issues to be dealt with.

But the ability of the NY Attorney General’s Office to actually deal with these questions depends on the prompt registration and disclosure by Trump of his offending and illegal charity.

Trump and his ill begotten “charity” have 15 days to comply with registration and disclosure. What do you think the odds are he will actually comply in good faith instead of hiding behind some bogus baloney, or submitting patently non-responsive filings, until after the election is over? I’d rate the odds at 100%.

The same odds that exist for Trump turning over his tax returns. Even the one from 1995, that has been beyond the statute of any limitation, whether criminal or civil, for over 15 years.

Just Another Misogynist Monday

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[What's her name? How hard is it to print her name? Isn't this Journalism 101 -- get the subject's name?]

[What’s her name? How hard is it to print her name? Isn’t this Journalism 101 — get the subject’s name?]

I’m not watching the Olympics on NBC. I see more than enough of the events in my social media feed that I don’t need to turn on the television. This post is based on the observations and media content shared online, an indicator of just how much content there is about the Olympics, both corporate and personal.

And I am SO glad I haven’t bothered to watch based on the persistent anger in my timeline. NBC’s coverage has been a bunch of sexist and racist nonsense, framing female athletes not by their performance but by the men or white family members in their lives.

Like noting a particular athlete became a mother since her last competition — gee, how many of the male athletes became fathers? The narrative NBC built around each woman competitor sounds more like an observation of their performing femininity. “She’s turned in the best time and look, she can still clean house and wear a dress!” Obnoxious.

Or in the case of Simone Biles, a woman of color, about whom NBC’s Al Trautwig feels compelled to note she’s adopted. He cannot simply talk about Biles’ gymnastic performance or the family who came for her as her parents.

Other U.S. media covering the Olympics don’t do any better, like this ridiculous bullshit from The Chicago Tribune and USAToday. First this internationally-recognized athlete is not named but identified as the spouse of non-Olympic male athlete — then half-assed corrections revealing her name still ensure she’s pegged as a man’s wife. Are you kidding me with this?

[Because the Chicago Bears figure largely to the Olympics...]

[Because the Chicago Bears figure largely to the Olympics…]

The Washington Post criticized NBC’s coverage this weekend, but the columnist made her own sexist dig in doing so by calling it “paperback romance novel approach.” Can you say “internalized oppression”? This merely reinforces the marginalizing pink ghetto-ization of genre literature which for women offers subversive escape.

The rationalization for NBC’s craptastic framing as offered to WaPo:

Women don’t watch the Olympics for the live results; they watch it for the narrative. Or that’s the reasoning of NBC, anyway. As the network’s chief marketing officer John Miller explained:

“The people who watch the Olympics are not particularly sports fans,” he told Philly.com recently. “More women watch the games than men, and for the women, they’re less interested in the result and more interested in the journey. It’s sort of like the ultimate reality show and miniseries wrapped into one.”Women don’t watch the Olympics for the live results; they watch it for the narrative. Or that’s the reasoning of NBC, anyway. As the network’s chief marketing officer John Miller explained:

“The people who watch the Olympics are not particularly sports fans,” he told Philly.com recently. “More women watch the games than men, and for the women, they’re less interested in the result and more interested in the journey. It’s sort of like the ultimate reality show and miniseries wrapped into one.”

“Less interested in the result” — yeah, that’s why so many women in my timeline were holding their breath as they waited for gymnasts’ scores, or flailing on keyboards as swimmers sped toward the end of the pool. They do care, deeply and intensely, about the results of each sport.

But they don’t care for propping up men — oh, look, this swimmer co-parents with his med student wife, and wow, this guy was responsible for this woman’s swimming medal — at the expense of women.

We are not things. We are not your wallpaper or props. We are not accessories to men’s or white people’s lives. We don’t need your white and/or male validation to affirm our existence. We are competitors who work fucking hard to meet others as committed to sports as we are. We are viewers who appreciate the competitors’ respect and commitment to sport and want to see the field strive hard and the best win.

The fact that we have been born with a vagina or different skin color should be irrelevant to corporate content.

I’ll do a daily roundup later today. Get your sports talk out here in thread. ~R

Washington Post Fails to Disclose Heinonen’s UANI Connection in Anti-Iran Op/Ed

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We are now in the “final” week of negotiations to set the framework for the P5+1 long-term agreement on Iran’s nuclear technology. With so much in the balance, voices are popping up from every direction to offer their opinions on what constitutes a good or bad deal. While Netanyahu’s address to Congress dominated the headlines in that regard, other sources also have not held back on offering opinions. In the case of Netanyahu, informed observers considering his remarks knew in advance that Netanyahu considers Iran an “existential threat” to Israel and that violent regime change in Iran is his preferred mode of addressing Iran’s nuclear technology. When it comes to other opinions being offered, it is important to also have a clear view of the backgrounds of those offering opinions so that any biases they have can be brought into consideration.

With that in mind, the Washington Post has committed a gross violation of the concept of full disclosure in an Iran op/ed they published yesterday. I won’t go into the “substance” of this hit piece on Iran, suffice it note that the sensationalist headline (The Iran time bomb) warns us that the piece will come from an assumption that Iran seeks and will continue to seek a nuclear weapon regardless of what they agree to with P5+1.

The list of authors for this op/ed is an anti-Iran neocon’s wet dream. First up is Michael Hayden. The Post notes that Hayden led the CIA from 2006-2009 and the NSA from 1999 to 2005. I guess they don’t think it’s important to note that he now is a principal with the Chertoff Group and so stands to profit from situations in world politics that appear headed toward violence.

The third of the three authors is perhaps the least known, but he’s a very active fellow. Here is how Nima Shirazi describes Ray Takeyh:

Takeyh is a mainstay of the Washington establishment – a Council on Foreign Relations Senior Fellow before and after a stint in the Obama State Department and a founding member of the neoconservative-created Iran Strategy Task Force who has become a tireless advocate for the collective punishment of the Iranian population in a futile attempt to inspire homegrown regime change (if not, at times, all-out war against a third Middle Eastern nation in just over a decade). Unsurprisingly, he dismisses out of hand the notion that “the principal cause of disorder in the Middle East today is a hegemonic America seeking to impose its imperial template on the region.”

The Post, of course, doesn’t mention Takeyh’s association with the group Shirazi describes, nor his membership in another Iran Task Force organized by the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs.

Sandwiched between Hayden and Takeyh, though, is the Post’s biggest failure on disclosure. Olli Heinonen is described by the Post simply as “a senior fellow at Harvard’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs and a former deputy director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency”. As such, uninformed readers are likely to conclude that Heinonen is present among the authors to serve as a hefty dose of neutrality,given his background in the IAEA. Nothing could be further from the truth. What the Post fails to disclose is that Heinonen is also a prominent member of the Advisory Board of United Against Nuclear Iran.

Not only is UANI an advocacy group working against Iran, but they are currently embroiled in litigation in which it has been learned that UANI has come into possession of state secrets from the United States. The Department of Justice has weighed in on the UANI case, urging the judge to throw the case out on the grounds that continuing to litigate it will disclose the US state secrets that UANI has obtained. Since the litigation involves UANI actions to “name and shame” companies it accuses of violating US sanctions against Iran, one can only assume that the state secrets leaked to UANI involve Iran.

How in the world could the Washington Post conclude that Heinonen’s role on the Advisory Board for United Against Nuclear Iran would not be something they should disclose in publishing his opinion piece entitled “The Iran time bomb”?

Oh, and lest we come to the conclusion that failing to note Heinonen’s UANI connection is a one-off thing in which Heinonen himself is innocent, noted AP transcriptionist of neocon anti-Iran rhetoric George Jahn used Heinonen in exactly the same way a month ago.

We can only conclude that Heinonen is happily doing the neocons’ bidding in their push for war with Iran.

Update from emptywheel: The judge in Victor Restis’ lawsuit just dismissed the suit on state secrets grounds. Here’s the opinion, h/t Mike Scarcella.

Petraeus Plans for The Day After

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The title of Petraues' op-ed is clearly trying to play off this 1983 made for TV movie about Lawrence, Kansas after a nuclear war.

The title of Petraues’ op-ed is clearly trying to play off this 1983 made for TV movie about Lawrence, Kansas after a nuclear war.

On September 26, 2004, the Washington Post disgraced itself by giving David Petraeus space to write an op-ed in which he spouted pure bullshit on how well his vaunted “training” program was going in Iraq. Of course, that program failed multiple times with Petraeus never being called to account. Despite clear military regulations prohibiting political activity by members of the military, Petraeus’ op-ed was seen by some as providing an endorsement which gave a significant boost to George W. Bush’s re-election campaign at a time when public opinion on the war in Iraq was beginning to sour. Just short of ten years later (and after his career got Broadwelled, I mean, broadsided), Petraeus is back on the pages of the Neocon Daily today, warning us that the “US needs to plan for the day after an Iran deal“.

The reviews of Petraeus’ newest op-ed are now in, and it has been called “Provocative!”, “Apocalyptic!” and even “Gut-Wrenching!” Oh, wait. That’s how the 1983 made for TV movie The Day After is described on its DVD cover. My mistake. But clearly Petraeus is playing off that old title. The old movie deals with life in Lawrence, Kansas after a nuclear war and Petraeus is now telling us we must prepare for life after preventing Iran getting the chance to wage nuclear war.

The central tenet of the op-ed is that Iran is “the leading state sponsor of terrorism”. Like most of what Petraeus does or says, that statement is just flat wrong. Even though the US (including the military when Petraeus was head of Central Command and the CIA when Petraeus led it) never admits it publicly, the rest of the world knows that Saudi Arabia is by far the largest state sponsor of terrorism. There are even Wikileaks cables confirming the role of Saudi money in supporting Sunni extremists. And note that the single most important organizer of state sponsored terrorism, Bandar bin Sultan, is now returning to his role after a brief interruption.

It appears that Petraeus stopped paying attention to world events when he resigned from the CIA in disgrace in November of 2012, because nowhere in his anti-Iran screed do we see any acknowledgement that in June of 2013, Hassan Rouhani was elected as Iran’s new president and has ushered in a new, more moderate outlook that is credited with providing the window for diplomatic progress toward an agreement on Iran’s nuclear technology.

Okay, so here is Petraeus (and co-author Vance Serchuk, who was Joe Lieberman’s foreign policy advisor after cutting his teeth at the American Enterprise Institute–you just can’t make this shit up!) framing the problem for us: Read more →

Wait. Where Are These “Gains” NIE Says We Might Lose in Afghanistan?

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The latest effort by War, Inc. to prolong the war in Afghanistan consists of a “leak” of the latest National Intelligence Estimate on Afghanistan. The Washington Post dutifully stepped up to transcribe the official line, bleating breathlessly in its headline “Afghanistan gains will be lost quickly after drawdown, U.S. intelligence estimate warns”. Since drawing down our troops closes the spigot feeding war profiteers, we just can’t consider leaving:

A new American intelligence assessment on the Afghan war predicts that the gains the United States and its allies have made during the past three years are likely to have been significantly eroded by 2017, even if Washington leaves behind a few thousand troops and continues bankrolling the impoverished nation, according to officials familiar with the report.

And if we leave faster, Afghanistan will go to hell faster, according to our Intelligence Oracles:

The report predicts that Afghanistan would likely descend into chaos quickly if Washington and Kabul don’t sign a security pact that would keep an international military contingent there beyond 2014 — a precondition for the delivery of billions of dollars in aid that the United States and its allies have pledged to spend in Afghanistan over the coming years.

As I have long maintained, however, virtually all claims of “progress” in Afghanistan come more from a process of gaming the numbers than any real calming of the country. Consider this post from June of 2012. Note from the figure in that post that violence in Afghanistan varies greatly with the season, but that the peak level of violence increased steadily from 2006 through 2011. I intended to go back to this same source to see how the subsequent years look on the graph, but it appears that these particular reports are no longer published for the general public.

The UN does still release reports on its collection of data regarding protection of civilians in Afghanistan. Noting that the current claim regarding the “success” of the surge in Afghanistan is that it managed to “reverse the Taliban’s momentum and give the government more of an edge”, consider the latest data on civilian deaths that the UN ascribes to anti-government elements in Afghanistan:

Afghanistan civilian AGE deaths

 

Perhaps, if we consider only deaths, an argument can be made that the rate of increase of deaths has been slowed, but there certainly is no basis for claiming that there is a trend to fewer deaths.

Lurking beneath this dire warning in the NIE is a tacit admission that the $50 billion that the US has spent to train and arm Afghan security forces has been a total waste, since the ANSF will not be able to maintain security once we are gone.

The bottom line is that the entire US war machinery has failed in every single facet of the effort in Afghanistan. Our presence has accomplished nothing but death, destruction and the wasting of nearly a trillion dollars. Our leaving will see further death and destruction. Staying longer would make no difference other than continuing to enrich War, Inc. There are no good options left, but getting our troops out at least stops the hemorrhaging of money.

 

When Susan Rice Is Right, She’s Right!

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gps31From the No Kidding Files, courtesy of Jason Leopold, comes this gem from vaunted National Security Advisor Susan Rice:

“Let’s be honest: at times we do business with govts that do not respect the rights we hold most dear”

Well, hello there Susan, I couldn’t agree more. Especially on days when I see things like this from the Glenn Greenwald and Pierre Omidyar Snowden file monopoly err, Barton Gellman at the Washington Post:

The National Security Agency is gathering nearly 5 billion records a day on the whereabouts of cellphones around the world, according to top-secret documents and interviews with U.S. intelligence officials, enabling the agency to track the movements of individuals — and map their relationships — in ways that would have been previously unimaginable.
….
The number of Americans whose locations are tracked as part of the NSA’s collection of data overseas is impossible to determine from the Snowden documents alone, and senior intelligence officials declined to offer an estimate. “It’s awkward for us to try to provide any specific numbers,” one intelligence official said in a telephone interview. An NSA spokeswoman who took part in the call cut in to say the agency has no way to calculate such a figure.

It is thoroughly loathsome that Americans must do business with a government that does this, and insane that it is their own government.

It is “awkward” to determine how many innocent Americans are rolled up in the latest out of control security state dragnet the United States government is running globally. Actually, that is not awkward, it is damning and telling. Therefore the American citizenry must not know, at any cost.

Susan Rice is quite right, we are forced to “do business” with a government that does “not respect the rights we hold most dear”

[Here is the full text of the Susan Rice speech today that the above quote was taken from. It is a great speech, or would be if the morals of the United States under Barack Obama matched the lofty rhetoric]