Must be an attack of cognitive dissonance. He got it in the right thread, then 10 minutes later posted it here.
Partly a long day, and partly a senior moment.
Post #39:
OK, you got me.
But see clarification in post #57.
OK, so you’ve backed off on “blame” and reduced it to “not going to come out looking good”.
My points in post #44 are valid towards explaining why I do not think they aren’t even going to look bad, too. Care to address them?
I wonder how many currently pissed off people were also highly skeptical of past terror alerts?
Because, you see, the WH wouldn’t have felt ANY pressure to provide background if the public actually accepted the alerts as honest efforts to protect the nation. Note SteveG1’s comment at the top of this page.
They are in a bit of a catch-22. You don’t provide any background, and a large segment of the public will label the alert a transparent political ploy designed to jerk the populace around. You do provide background, and you jeopardize your intelligence community, potentially allowing terrorists to escape.
Could they have walked the fine line, and given us JUST enough information to satisfy our skepticism and not enough to screw things up? I don’t know. They actually put out MORE info than they should have, and half the country still thinks the terror alerts were driven by poll numbers.
The WH certainly screwed the pooch, but let’s not act like we (the public) didn’t put them in that position in the first place.
If they can’t find a way to explain a terror alert without compromising security, then the ONLY valid option is to not say anything, even if it means taking some political damage.
The people questioning the gov’t share ZERO blame for this. It is the job of the press and the duty of the people to question the motives of their leadership.
If we start assigning blame to the people asking questions of the gov’t because the gov’t is too politically motivated to not simply look bad instead of compromising national security, that’s a big chilling step towards removing gov’t accountability.
Your image of press simply asking a question and WH blurting compromising answer is simply disingenuous.
I don’t believe you haven’t learned by now how the process really works: media types focus exclusively on a potential controversial issue, make up a short list of stupid questions and repeat them ad nauseam at every opportunity; press conference, visit of a foreign dignitary, disaster relief announcements, anything is a good venue to yell, “What about <Monica, WMD, terror hype, etc>, true or not?” WH always “stonewalls” for days. During those days more and more ridiculous bullshit speculations are in all papers, on TV and radio. Sooner or later, there is a “leak”.
Why media refuses to do research and offer the public their findings, based on facts and analysis? Why do they go and yell at WH for days trying to pry out a loose word or name?
What happened this time? Dean said something stupid. Schumer said it was baseless accusation. Schumer also said no Congressman he knows agreed with Dean. Why did media disregard all those reasonable elected people and went to the WH demanding answers to incediary conjecture offered by political nobody, “former governor of Vermont”?
This didn’t start with Bush and it won’t end with him. Bush will be out in three years, but stupid controversies hype by the media, inter-agency politics in DC and governing by leaks will not go away so soon.
You like to insist media shares no blame. I say, watch their actions regarding this issue. They know they are guilty. Not guilty for this particular leak, but guilty of their pompous stupidity and sensationalim at all costs. I predict this story will never be hyped even remotely close to Rove/Plame story. Which is another disgrace. Because this story is really serious. People’s lives could have been saved. So expect it to slide off the media radar in few days.
So the media is supposed to simply give up when trying to pursue a story, if they don’t immediately get an answer, because the WH might be stupid enough to give up data that damages national security? With this attitude we might as well not have a free press, as useless as they’d be.
No need to go to extremes. Simple rule to follow: when majority of opposition Congressmen tell you one boring thing, while some mentally unstable political maverik peddles sensational conspiracy theory, stay on the safe side.
Ratings be damned!
The “mentally unstable political maverik” is Dean, I suppose? Explain to me again how Dean forced the WH to do anything.
And…what does this have to do with the White House leaking top secret intelligence information? Was the White House’s announcement a product of “unstable political maveriks [sic] peddling sensational conspiracy theories” and to be safe, the media should have ignored it? I don’t THINK that’s what you’re trying to say.
It was a Jedi mind trick. On the other hand, just because a “majority” says something doesn’t mean it’s worth a tinker’s dam. That’s called argumentum ad populum. Like ya know, when everyone kew the world was flat.
I said majority of opposition Congressmen.
Refer to post # 45.
Ah, so if you have a classified reason behind a certain action, and I ask what your reason was for that action, I share the blame when you are too idiotic to just tell me you can’t say because it’s classified. Gotcha.
No, you didn’t.
Well, that’s him told.
New Iskander, I’ll agree with your argument then. I mean, can we blame Berkowitz[sup]1[/sup] for the murders[sup]2[/sup], when it was the neighbor dog Sam[sup]3[/sup] hounding him day in and day out to commit them?
[sup]1[/sup]insert “White House”
[sup]2[/sup]insert “leaks”
[sup]3[/sup]insert “press”