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You are here: Home / This Is Beautiful

This Is Beautiful

by John Cole|  May 19, 20037:50 pm| 20 Comments

This post is in: General Stupidity

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Via Common Dreams I see this shocking headline that appeared in the UK Guardian:

You Let Al-Qaida Off Hook, Bush Told

Who told Bush this? The CIA? Nope.

Military Intelligence? Nope.

The Homeland Security Department? Nope.

The FBI? Nope.

Mossad? Nope.

Interpol? Nope.

The source for these drastic revelations are none other than, you guessed it- the Democrat candidates for President in 2004.

Congressman Richard Gephardt said: “We are vulnerable to future attacks because this administration has not done its job.”

Governor Howard Dean accused the White House of “strangling cities and towns” by refusing them money for protection.

Perhaps most significantly, the bombings offered a new impetus to the presidential campaign of Senator Bob Graham of Florida, the oldest, probably least-known and maybe the weirdest of the nine Democratic candidates challenging Mr Bush.

Mr Graham was reported to have stolen the show in Iowa with a powerful attack on the administration’s decision to invade Iraq as a distraction. “They have conducted an ideological war in Iraq … and at the same time they have stopped the war against terror,” he said. “We have let al-Qaida off the hook.”

This, my friends, is OBJECTIVE journalism. A point of note is that this piece of bile was written by first rate hack Matt Engel, of Olive Garden, and Mississippi fame. Why does this idiot have a job?

*** Update ***

As noted by the Instapundit and the Calpundit (in the comments), the most offensive thing about this piece is the headline, with which Engel may have had little or nothing to do. However, I also hate the absolutely uncritical tone of the piece, which simply accepts as gospel truth what the candidates have to say- you see, they sit in on intelligence briefings, so it must be true. If President Bush had stated “Democrats hat any kind of tax cut,” it would be perfectly fair (and the writer’s responsibility, IMHO), to point out that the Democrats have recently proposed a number of tax cuts. Why should a writer not point out all of the recent arrests and successes in the War on terror when someone is claiming that Bush has ‘stopped the war on terror?’

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20Comments

  1. 1.

    Kevin Drum

    May 19, 2003 at 8:53 pm

    I don’t get it. This is just a straightforward report about a campaign event in Iowa. A bunch of Dem candidates criticized Bush (big surprise) and the Guardian reported it.

    What’s the problem? How should they have reported the event?

  2. 2.

    John Cole

    May 19, 2003 at 9:20 pm

    Kevin- it really is the headline, which, as IP noted, may not have been Engel’s doing. None of the candidates have any evidence to back up their assertions, yet the story is written uncritically as if it simply the truth.

    This statement is rather annoying:

    The renewed evidence of al-Qaida’s viability gives the Graham campaign unexpected importance, partly by allowing other candidates to stake out similar territory.

    There is simply NO evidence that any action in Iraq had anything to do with interfering with our capture and pursuit of Al Qaeda.

  3. 3.

    Kevin Drum

    May 19, 2003 at 10:05 pm

    For what it’s worth, not only did Engel not write the headline, but I’ve noticed that this is just a very British style of headline. Their headline writers are much punchier than ours.

  4. 4.

    Belle Waring

    May 19, 2003 at 10:08 pm

    John-even given the headline I still have to agree with Kevin that this is not particularly objectionable. It doesn’t say: “Bush let Al-Qaida off the hook” period. The “Bush told” part makes it clear that some one other than the writer has made this claim (though I grant he might not be unsympathetic.) As for a lack of proof–if the Bush administration is going to claim and get credit for an absence of terrorist attacks (which they have) then it isn’t surprising that opponents would try to make political hay out of a resurgence of attacks, whether this is justified or not. That’s politics, and this is a political report. I am less than outraged.

  5. 5.

    Nate

    May 20, 2003 at 11:16 am

    The WHOLE Bush administration let Al Queda off the hook.

    http://www.pbs.org/now/transcript/transcript_hersh.html

    SY HERSH: Okay, the cream of the crop of Al Qaeda caught in a town called Konduz which is near … it’s one little village and it’s a couple hundred kilometers, 150 miles from the border of Pakistan. And I learned this story frankly– through very, very clandestine operatives we have in the Delta Force and other very…

    We were operating very heavily with a small number of men, three, 400 really in the first days of the war. And suddenly one night when they had everybody cornered in Konduz– the special forces people were told there was a corridor that they could not fly in. There was a corridor sealed off to– the United States military sealed off a corridor. And it was nobody could shoot anybody in this little lane that went from Konduz into Pakistan. And that’s how I learned about it. I learned about it from a military guy who wanted to fly helicopters and kill people and couldn’t do it that day.

    JANE WALLACE: So, we had the enemy surrounded, the special forces guys are helping surround this enemy.

    SY HERSH: They’re whacking everybody they can whack that looks like a bad guy.

    JANE WALLACE: And suddenly they’re told to back off–

    SY HERSH: From a certain area–

    JANE WALLACE: — and let planes fly out to Pakistan.

    SY HERSH: There was about a three or four nights in which I can tell you maybe six, eight, 10, maybe 12 more– or more heavily weighted– Pakistani military planes flew out with an estimated– no less than 2,500 maybe 3,000, maybe mmore. I’ve heard as many as four or 5,000. They were not only– Al Qaeda but they were also– you see the Pakistani ISI was– the military advised us to the Taliban and Al Qaeda. There were dozens of senior Pakistani military officers including two generals who flew out.

    And I also learned after I wrote this story that maybe even some of Bin Laden’s immediate family were flown out on the those evacuations. We allowed them to evacuate. We had an evacuation.

    JANE WALLACE: How high up was that evacuation authorized?

    SY HERSH: I am here to tell you it was authorized

  6. 6.

    John Cole

    May 20, 2003 at 11:18 am

    SY Hersh. Giggle.

  7. 7.

    Nate

    May 20, 2003 at 11:39 am

    John Cole – SY Hersh. Giggle.

    Please tell me all of your historical knowledge about a man who is not just award winning for his decades of investigative journalism, but who has credibilty which far outweighs anyone the Bush administration or the Bill Bennet conservatives have to offer.

    In short, what is your reason for keeping your head in the sand? Why do you mock information which at best you are completely uniformed on the realities. Hersh has more credibility in his left nut than the whole Bush administration. That is a fact.

    You need to take a long look at the real world. Something does not become a fact only when conservatics say it’s so, as much as you would like to think.

    You speak as one who is manipulated to react, not discern.

    Tell me, could I list all the other true information you ignore? That would be easy.

    What is startling is your willingness to comply.

  8. 8.

    John Cole

    May 20, 2003 at 12:05 pm

    I can’t handle the truth.

  9. 9.

    HH

    May 20, 2003 at 12:31 pm

    http://slate.msn.com/id/2082639

  10. 10.

    Nate

    May 20, 2003 at 3:36 pm

    HH,

    Don’t see where Slate is disputing his facts, just his wrong predictions derived from them. He is reporting the tea leaves are there, he just isn’t reading them right. The criticism in the article, that his sources are not broad enough and agenda driven, should be heeded but the author doesn’t disavow any facts he reports. Reporters like Hersh and Jack Anderson of old, mix in their own interpretations. As a reader, I know that.

    It is a fact that officers, who were critical of how the Iraq invasion was being handled, were not few and far between during the period he published one of those articles.

    Thankfully he and his sources’ assumptions, in this case, were wrong. That does not mean many high ranking officials didn’t think the plan wasn’t working at the time and told him so. They may not have had the intelligence reports divulging we knew Iraq’s military wouldn’t fight for Baghdad. They may have not had all that information, if that information didn’t exist, we were fortunate. Had the Iraqi’s defending Baghdad, been as crazy as many feared and ACTUALLY had WMD, another story. Maybe we weren’t so worried about those WMD after all?

    The facts, as Hersh reported, I have no reason to doubt. Bush let much of Al Queda go. The hard core Al Queda, the ones who will be most likely to use the radioactive materials they had the opportunity to procure during our invasion of Iraq. Or maybe not, they might simply use the WMD they received from Saddam, during the year and half Bush telegraphed he was coming. That is, if you believe he had them. If you were Saddam, and you knew Bush was coming, wouldn’t you call in all the terrorists you could dig up and have a yard sale? Anyone who thought we weren’t going to invade Iraq after 911, wasn’t reading the tea leaves properly either. In fact, Iraq’s and America’s fate was sealed on Dec. 12, 2000. Feel safer?

    from your article, the premise,

    >Hersh has leapt to the front of the editorial pack with a bracing, well-researched, and controversial explication of the war on terror. And almost every time, Hersh’s predictive take on the course of events has been wrong.

    “well-researched” & “Predictive”

    They have a problem with his ‘predictive’ abilities, not with his facts.

    The feelings expressed by those officers, the feeling something wasn’t right, will hold true. This will become evident as we have 200 thousand troops policing, as I read once, “a Gaza Strip the size of California” for the next few years. Hersh has a much longer history than this period. In the case of letting Al Queda go, the administration did it, get over it.

  11. 11.

    Aaron

    May 20, 2003 at 9:45 pm

    “Hersh has more credibility in his left nut than the whole Bush administration. That is a fact.”

    If that is a fact, could you please prove it?

  12. 12.

    JKC

    May 21, 2003 at 7:12 am

    John-

    I should point out that Bob Graham DID sit in on intelligence briefings, and has been the loudest in stating that the Bush League screwed up.

  13. 13.

    John Cole

    May 21, 2003 at 8:22 am

    Graham has intelligence briefings that are more in depth than the President?

  14. 14.

    Nate

    May 21, 2003 at 12:46 pm

    >Graham has intelligence briefings that are more in depth than the President?

    We can expect Bush to tell us how inept he is? This administration wants the American people to be less informed on what their govenment is up to than any in history and you think that is a good thing for your liberty.

    You are like an abused spouse taking up for your abuser. You’re like the bloody wife, telling the cops as they haul off your wife-beating husband, “He didn’t mean anything bad officer, he’s a good man.”

    They have names for people who always defend a president by saying ‘he knows more than us,’ they are called chumps.

  15. 15.

    John Cole

    May 21, 2003 at 1:50 pm

    YEs, Nate- and only you know how truly inept Bush is.

    Go read Lilek’s piece on Sheeple (http://www.lileks.com/bleats/archive/03/0503/052103.html ).

    Look in the mirror, o proud bearer of capital T truth:

    If there

  16. 16.

    Nate

    May 21, 2003 at 2:10 pm

    You’re the one who is buying the BS hook line and sinker and you want me to look in the mirror. You’re the one acting the abused spouse defending George at all costs. Now are you gonna tell me you are against George’s ‘support’ for the assault weapons ban so you are a ‘free thinker’? Or have you figured out that fruad.

    Nice try, I think they call it projection.

    I’ve never used the word sheeple in my life. I think it is a freeper term to make them think it is honorable to follow the leader.

    BTW, I take very little from TV news, that would be like someone watching FOX and thinking they are not getting right wing propaganda…like they are a receiving the ‘whole’ story. You are not sheeple, you are a chumps

  17. 17.

    Nate

    May 21, 2003 at 2:32 pm

    John you’ll like this.
    http://www.prospect.org/webfeatures/2003/05/tomasky-m-05-21.html

    Since Bush took office, the same machinery that spent eights years accusing the Clintons of everything up to (and actually including) murder has turned its sights on anyone who has dared to have a different idea about America than the administration. Sen. Tom Daschle (D-S.D.), often denounced as unpatriotic, is now the target of a campaign by two South Dakota businessmen to destroy him; doing so, said one, would be an act of “political hygiene,” a phrase that echoes with a decidedly national-socialist ring. Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), for a line about regime change at home that was basically a joke and a throwaway, was subjected to repeated abuse designed not just to answer him but to smear him and besmirch his reputation. Academics who have uttered the mildest criticisms of administration policy have found themselves monitored by a group set up by Lynne Cheney and William “Bellagio” Bennett. Comics, movie stars and recording artists have been slimed, and the Murdoch Empire, functioning as a GOP Ministry of Propaganda, keeps it all rolling along.

    The Bush White House, of course, is clever enough to keep its powder relatively dry on the worst of these attacks. It leaves such dirty work to its loudmouths and crackpots on FOX and in The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Times. But this, too, is cynical and cheap. And if conservatives wonder why liberals have such negative feelings about this White House, they might ponder this: A leader who was actually trying to unite the country after it came under attack and who was actually interested in the nation pulling together behind its troops overseas just might say something to the effect of, “Hey, let’s cool it here. Tom Daschle is a patriot. John Kerry proved his patriotism in war. Let’s disagree, let’s argue and let’s even sling a little mud, in respectable measure, because that, too, is a part of politics. But let’s keep patriotism out of it. We’re all Americans here.”

    That’s something a leader worthy of respect would say. Bush would never say it, though, both because Karl Rove would never permit him saying it and because he benefits so grandly from the bloviators and mercenaries who say the opposite on his behalf.

  18. 18.

    Nate

    May 21, 2003 at 2:44 pm

    John go here:
    http://www.whiterosesociety.org/

    and download
    George W Bush and 1984: You decide. – Five easy steps for turning America into a totalitarian state.–

    Maybe that will open your eyes just a little. Be sure to listen to the whole thing. Quite a catchy tune at the end. It was done a while back, but it is timeless where Bush and what he is doing is concerned…Rove just shuffles the subjects and the names.

  19. 19.

    John Cole

    May 21, 2003 at 3:03 pm

    Nate- Personally, I wouldn’t mind the ‘political cleansing’ of Tom Daschle- I have written about how he is everything wrong about the Democrats.

    I am not so sure why it is now Bush’s job to say nice things about Democrats. I don’t recall him ever saying anything negative about his opponents (and certainly not to the extent that Clinton/Gore attacked everyone who opposed them). Bush simply let’s the Democrats speak for themselves- and that often turns out to be damning enough.

    I am not sure why you think making me read crackpot conspiracy website and the American Prospect is going to change my mind about things. I know where the prospect stands on issues…

    And please, no more tinfoil hat Bush/Nazi ties websites, please?

  20. 20.

    Nate

    May 21, 2003 at 4:32 pm

    Did you download the 1984 file? I hadn’t in some time and couldn’t get it to load. You point to a BS site and I read it. I see many problems with it but I won’t waste yours or my time, you have made your bed. I try to look at things in their totality and then try to do my best deciding. I am here aren’t I? You have several interesting posts.

    Tell me, why won’t you read or listen to one side? I suspect you have rooted out opposing information systematically for several years. I have noticed this is quite common on the right. In fact YOU are the one who knows all and those who disagree have the problem. Classic projection.

    I listen to and read many views. Even Sheer has some redeeming value. What I posted are just THOUGHTS and VIEWS, they are to help one understand. Critical thinking uses the process of taking in differing viewpoints. Honestly, I didn’t even read where the Prospect article had originated. It could have been any one of hundreds of sources of information I use. I didn’t look, I read the article as linked by another blog. I read it and thought it commented on what you were saying. It was well written and thoughtful. Yes, it had a point or two, I may not agree with, or a point wasn’t made the way I saw it, but I learned something.

    Did you ever read, “The Hunting Of the President?” I heard they are doing a doc-u-movie on it. Lots of information there. Very well documented, not just by the facts, but by the future actions of many of the participants verifying who they were and the type people they were.

    Will you read Sidney Blumenthal’s new book?

    It shows you live in a very closed world if you say you won’t. What will you do? Wait for the right wing slander boys to come in and tell you why you shouldn’t? Do you ever decide things for yourself or do you always let others decide for you? I know it is painful to read opposing views but you really ought to try it.

    Rush tells the truth once in a while. Most of what you are complaining about was institutionalized by the right. You would expect Clinton/Gore to run and hide from bullies? Gore did that in 2000 and look what happened to the world. Do you even remember the past? Where do you think this started? Ever listen to talk radio? Do you think the people who do, have any sense of the real world? Do you think that is healthy for the republic?

    http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=20030521-104306-4488r

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