I pit the short-sighted self serving twits at the New York Times

The BBQ Pit
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Pretty soon, we may all have to watch what we say here on the Dope too. Big Brother is watching.

http://www.defenselink.mil/transformation/articles/2006-06/ta062906b.html

[QUOTE=US Air Force]

Blogs Study May Provide Credible Information

The Air Force Office of Scientific Research recently began funding
a new research area that includes a study of blogs.
By William J. Sharp / Air Force Office of Scientific Research Public Affairs

ARLINGTON, Va., June 29, 200

The Air Force Office of Scientific Research recently began funding a new research area that includes a study of blogs. Blog research may provide information analysts and warfighters with invaluable help in fighting the war on terrorism.

Dr. Brian E. Ulicny, senior scientist, and Dr. Mieczyslaw M. Kokar, president, Versatile Information Systems Inc., Framingham, Mass., will receive approximately $450,000 in funding for the 3-year project entitled “Automated Ontologically-Based Link Analysis of International Web Logs for the Timely Discovery of Relevant and Credible Information.” … Patterns include the content of the blogs as well as what hyperlinks are contained within the blog.

Within blogs, hyperlinks act like reference citations in research papers thereby allowing someone to discover the most important events bloggers are writing about in just the same way that one can discover the most important papers in a field by finding which ones are the most cited in research papers.
[/QUOTE]

Comments:
What if someone here says really bad shit about the president (no, that will never happen). Could that person and/or anyone who replies be flagged as a seditionist or a terrorist? Maybe.
Jesus Horation Christ on a crutch. It just never stops, does it.

322

[QUOTE=SteveG1]
Comments:
What if someone here says really bad shit about the president (no, that will never happen). Could that person and/or anyone who replies be flagged as a seditionist or a terrorist? Maybe.
Jesus Horation Christ on a crutch. It just never stops, does it.
[/QUOTE]

I was talking about being bugged to a friend of mine once, his advice was he always assumed there was a hidden mic in the corner of the room and he always addressed his more seditious remaks towards it.

Advice I have always followed since.

323

There’ve been some nice roundups of information here. Still, one thing I’ve recently come across is a bit puzzling: one of the Times stories insists that the program is a closely guarded secret. If everyone really DID know about it beforehand, then why did they say this? And why don’t they take this “out” now that everyone’s criticizing them?

324

[QUOTE=Leaper]
There’ve been some nice roundups of information here. Still, one thing I’ve recently come across is a bit puzzling: one of the Times stories insists that the program is a closely guarded secret. If everyone really DID know about it beforehand, then why did they say this? And why don’t they take this “out” now that everyone’s criticizing them?
[/QUOTE]
Possibly just to make it more of a story. I mean, yeah, pretty important story already, but it’s the media. They hype, it’s what they do.

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[QUOTE=Revenant Threshold]
Possibly just to make it more of a story. I mean, yeah, pretty important story already, but it’s the media. They hype, it’s what they do.
[/QUOTE]

As opposed to what any Administration does. :frowning: Be it Democrats or Republicans.

Nothing directed towards you, Revenant. Just the irony.

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Part of the thing for me is that it really confuses me on one point: was the revealed info a secret, or wasn’t it? The newspaper story SAID it was, some government folks SAID it was, yet some said it was NOT. Which is it?

327

[QUOTE=Leaper]
Part of the thing for me is that it really confuses me on one point: was the revealed info a secret, or wasn’t it? The newspaper story SAID it was, some government folks SAID it was, yet some said it was NOT. Which is it?
[/QUOTE]

What do you mean by “secret?” There is “secret” and then there’s “secret.” :slight_smile:

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[QUOTE=Leaper]
Part of the thing for me is that it really confuses me on one point: was the revealed info a secret, or wasn’t it? The newspaper story SAID it was, some government folks SAID it was, yet some said it was NOT. Which is it?
[/QUOTE]

From “The McLaughlin Group” this morning, I gathered that the devil is in the details. Apparently, the NYT was the first to mention the company SWIFT as giving access to the data, among other things.

329

[QUOTE=Andrew Sullivan]
This piece of hysterical support for an unlimited executive power in a permanent war, and contempt for the critical role of the judiciary in a constitutional republic reveals the depth of the rot in the American conservative mind and soul. From conservatism being a political tradition rooted in freedom from government control, and in the checks and balances of a constitutional order, conservatism has now morphed in America into a defense of unfettered executive power, in which all judicial checks are regarded as a form of tyranny. Yes: an executive empowered to be judge, jury, torturer and executioner is no problem. A Court attempting to uphold the constitution, in contrast, is a sign of outrageous tyranny. We truly have passed through the Looking Glass.
[/QUOTE]

The piece he, a bona fide conservative, talks about is from the Natl Review Online (NRO)
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=ZTYwOTYzMWY5NGZlNDM0MTg2MDc3ZjkxYmI4ZmY4NmU=

[QUOTE=Natl Review]
The Supreme Court’s decision to impose by judicial fiat a treaty that no politically accountable official would dare propose - a one-sided compact wherein the United States gives elevated due process to al Qaeda’s terrorists while they continue slaughtering civilians and torturing their captives to death - is an abomination.
…
To begin with, the Court had no business deciding this case at all. Not only did it target the president’s commander-in-chief authority to determine what is militarily necessary in wartime, it also imperiously slapped down the U.S. Congress.
…
And meddle it did. It rewrote legislation that clearly authorized the military commissions for captured terrorists that President Bush ordered in late 2001. It rewrote the Geneva Conventions. And it claimed for itself the mantle of final authority over both international relations and military necessity — matters in which it is wholly lacking institutional competence and which the Framers committed singularly to the chief executive.

The result was somehow to find that the military commissions are unauthorized under federal law and unfair under international law.
…
In deciding as it did, the Court also ignored its own venerable precedent — of over a half-century’s standing — that the Geneva Conventions, even when they do create binding obligations on governments, do not create judicially enforceable rights for individuals. Disputes over their application are, rather, to be worked out diplomatically, among the political representatives of sovereigns. Moreover, the Geneva Conventions were irrelevant to Hamdan’s case. He is a terrorist combatant who fails to meet the conventions’ definition of a prisoner of war; consequently, he is not entitled to the conventions’ POW protections. In order to get around this inconvenient fact, the Court had to invoke (and distort) Common Article 3 of the conventions,
…
As yesterday’s decision again demonstrates, this Court would rather impose its preferences on us than simply follow the law. We should find this unacceptable in any case. But when the consequences of the Court’s arrogance rise to the level of life and death, there is only one word to describe what it is: an outrage.
[/QUOTE]

There is so damn much wrong with the NRO position that I don’t even know where to begin. Let’s start just with their claim that the Supremes are claiming unfettered power - Not true, if anything they (the SCOTUS) are saying that the president is the one who needed reminding that HE doe not have unfettered power. They (SCOTUS) are saying the president must obey the law and honor treaties (the Geneva Convention does apply). The NRO claims the president is the one who deals with and decides international relations - false, congress declares war and makes treaties. Then, there are other absolute lies and misrepresentations in the NRO’s position. However their claims sound too much like the various objections and "what if’s we have seen here at The Dope.

“A state of war is not a blank check…” Sandra Day O’Connor

330

[QUOTE=DMC]

We’ve demonstrated that SWIFT, which is simply a clearinghouse, is also not a secret organization.
[/QUOTE]

It’s so super secret that they have a website up
htp://www.swift.com/

331

Uh oh, it’s time to indict Cheney for treason:

The VP is WORSE THAN THE NEW YORK TIMES! :eek:

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[QUOTE=Squink]
Uh oh, it’s time to indict Cheney for treason: The VP is WORSE THAN THE NEW YORK TIMES! :eek:
[/QUOTE]

You fuckin asshole ! Nothing in your cite suggests that Cheney should be indicted. You just wasted my time !

From your cite

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[QUOTE=The Flying Dutchman]
Nothing in your cite suggests that Cheney should be indicted.
[/QUOTE]

Did you miss the VP’s deliberate and covert leakage of classified information?
He compromised National security for political purposes.
God, I’m surprised the terrorists didn’t just take over Washington the very next day!
Or does that only happen if the leaker isn’t a republican?

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[QUOTE=The Flying Dutchman]
You fuckin asshole ! Nothing in your cite suggests that Cheney should be indicted. You just wasted my time !

From your cite
[/QUOTE]

Libby has said that neither the president nor the vice president directed him or other administration officials to disclose Plame’s CIA employment to the press.

My comment: Libby is saying Bush and / or Cheney did not tell him to leak anything.

Libby, in language strikingly similar to Bush’s words, testified to the federal grand jury in the leak case that Cheney had told him to “get all the facts out” that would defend the administration and discredit Wilson. Portions of Libby’s grand jury testimony were an exhibit in a recent court filing by Fitzgerald.

My comment: Get all the facts out could just mean “find out what the hell happened”, or it could mean “issue a rebuttal statement”, or it could mean “out the CIA lady” (but that is not clear from this at all, whetherf I think Cheney had some hand in it or not).

Federal investigators have concluded that Libby’s account is implausible. They have also questioned Libby’s testimony that he does not believe he discussed the matter again with Cheney until at least July 14, 2003, the date of Novak’s column that called Plame an “agency operative.”

My comment: and that’s why Libby was indicted.

Why – if the criminal charges against Libby are correct – would Libby lie to the FBI and the grand jury that he was only circulating rumors he had heard from reporters?

One obvious reason, prosecutors have believed, is that Libby did not want to admit that he was disseminating material gleaned from classified information.

My comment: He leaked. Now why is it that all the outrage is directed against the Times for leaking, and yet when Libby did it, the attitude was “hey it’s just part of the game”?

Libby further testified that Cheney was not referring to going public with information about Plame, but rather making available other classified information that both men believed would rebut Wilson’s charges and discredit him.
*
My comment: Again, not much here. They could have been talking about researching for info to defend with, or creating more leaks, or anything.*

Cheney encouraged Libby to disclose portions of a then-still highly classified National Intelligence Estimate regarding Saddam’s weapons-of-mass-destruction program, according to court records filed by Fitzgerald. One section of the report mentioned the Niger allegations as credible, and Cheney, Libby, and other senior administration officials wanted to demonstrate that the CIA’s incorrect assessments were a reason why the administration was making its own claims about the Niger matter.

*My comment: Ah ha! Finally a “disclose portions of a then-still highly classified”.
Disclose a higjly classified Anything, without going through proper channels, is a leak (if it happened). We know the Niger info was leaked. We know now that the CIA was right and yet the administration is still trying to blame the CIA (after ignoring CIA reports an recommendations to the contrary). *

Good leaks, bad leaks. Same game.

335

[QUOTE=SteveG1]
Good leaks, bad leaks. Same game.
[/QUOTE]
Funny thing about the NY Times ‘leak’ though. No one seems to be able to point to any actual and bonafide piece of classified information that was revealed by the newspaper.
Lots of folks point to the word ‘secret’ in the article, and work themselves into a huff, but ‘secret’ has a far more general meaning in the context of writing a news story than ‘derived from classified sources.’

It’s pretty clear that the stuff Cheney ordered leaked was from classified sources.

336

[QUOTE=Squink]
Funny thing about the NY Times ‘leak’ though. No one seems to be able to point to any actual and bonafide piece of classified information that was revealed by the newspaper.
Lots of folks point to the word ‘secret’ in the article, and work themselves into a huff, but ‘secret’ has a far more general meaning in the context of writing a news story than ‘derived from classified sources.’

It’s pretty clear that the stuff Cheney ordered leaked was from classified sources.
[/QUOTE]

Just to get caught up. Did the WH specifically ask the Times not to run the story? I haven’t slogged through every post since I last visited this love-fest, so just a concise recap would be appreciated. It would seem that if the WH actually asked the paper not to run the story, there’s something to debate. Or was it just posturing after someone leaked it to cover their asses?

337

The reports were that the White House lobbied both the NYT and the LA Times to suppress the story for several weeks prior to running the story. On the other hand, the Wall Street Journal indicates that they were never approached by the White House to suppress the story. All three papers released the story on the same day.

It has been a contention of at least one person on the NYT staff that they could have published the story sooner, but that they delayed while the White House lobbied them, letting the WSJ “catch up” and print their version on the same day.

338

I have a question; how did the government know that the various newspapers were planning to publish the story?

339

Thanks, tomndebb.

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[QUOTE=duffer]
Just to get caught up. Did the WH specifically ask the Times not to run the story? I haven’t slogged through every post since I last visited this love-fest, so just a concise recap would be appreciated. It would seem that if the WH actually asked the paper not to run the story, there’s something to debate. Or was it just posturing after someone leaked it to cover their asses?
[/QUOTE]

Yes. The White House asked them to not run the story. The NY Times claims that that they heard the WH out, evaluated their reasoning, and came to a different conclusion. (Thereby, in my opinion, usurping the power of directing a war effort from the President). As far as your last sentence, of course it was after the information was leaked. If it hadn’t been leaked they certainly wouldn’t have called the NYTimes to discuss the information that hadn’t been leaked.

On preview, I noticed the post from tomndebb and would just lijke to add that it appears that the NY Times are the ones who broke the story, and that the other ones got wind of it afterwards. That does leave the question, though, as to why the WSJ was not contacted. One possible explanation is that as soon as they new the NY Times was going to run with it that they wanted the WSJ to publish, as well, thinking they might get a fairer shake iout of them. As it turned out, the NY Times article seemed pretty fair as far as the facts went, not alleging any illegality or wrongdoing through the program. Their man beef seemed to be that the program existed.