Blue Crab Boulevard

Wow, Journalism At It’s Best

Writing in the San Jose Mercury News, Warren P. Strobel and Ron Hutcheson inform us that the revelation that Scooter Libby testified that President Bush authorized the "leak" of "classified information" "fits a pattern of selective leaks of secret intelligence to further the administration's political agenda".

The entire tone is disapproving and implies that this allowance of certain leaks, while clamping down on unauthorized leaks is somehow sordid.

Then comes this:

But secret information that supports their policies, particularly about the Iraq war, has surfaced everywhere from the U.N. Security Council to major newspapers and magazines. Much of the information that the administration leaked or declassified, however, has proved to be incomplete, exaggerated, incorrect or fabricated. (Note, the article never provides evidence that this statement is true, it's just kind of tossed out there for atmosphere).

I am in awe of the High Journalistic Standards™ on display by these two writers.

News Flash! The sky is blue! The Pope has revealed that he is Roman Catholic! Bears have been found to, well, you get the picture.

Politicians selectively leak information to reporters to impart spin on a story. The information tends to support whatever spin the person providing the information wants to impart and they don't always release information that would negate the spin. In other words, business as usual in Washington. I doubt there is one single politician in Washington who has not provided "leaks". Sometimes they leak classified information, too. Reporters rely on these leaks because otherwise they'd have to actually dig some of this stuff up on their own.

Why is this hit piece being published at all? Oh, answered myself there, didn't I.

UPDATE: To clarify this sentence: (Note, the article never provides evidence that this statement is true, it's just kind of tossed out there for atmosphere). The article provides some incidents where information turned out later to have been incorrect, as a commenter points out. However, this sentence by the authors: "Much of the information that the administration leaked or declassified, however, has proved to be incomplete, exaggerated, incorrect or fabricated." is a subjective judgment and is not quantified or supported objectively within the article. Hopefully, that makes my point more clear.

Media, Politics | Gaius Saturday, 8 April , 2006

By maha, Saturday, 8 April , 2006 @ 7:41 am

I notice you leave out the several paragraphs of the Strobel-Hutcheson story that documented instances in which the Administration declassified “intelligence” that later turned out to be false. I guess if you delete it you don’t have to admit it’s there, huh? But for the record, here it is –

Libby’s allegation, which the White House hasn’t disputed, isn’t the first time that the Bush administration has declassified secrets in an effort to bolster its case for a pre-emptive war against Iraq.

The White House declassified a range of material, including spy satellite photographs and highly sensitive intercepts of Iraqi military communications, when former Secretary of State Colin Powell went before the U.N. Security Council in February 2003 to argue that Iraq was an international threat.

Powell’s presentation, it’s now known, came after he and his State Department team spent several days at CIA headquarters going over the intelligence on Iraq and tossing out dozens of pages of questionable material that Cheney’s office pressed him to include.

In September 2002, unnamed Bush administration officials told The New York Times that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was trying to acquire specially designed aluminum tubes for use in centrifuges to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons. Experts in the Energy Department and elsewhere, however, didn’t think that the tubes were designed for nuclear weapons, and it’s now known that they weren’t.

Nevertheless, Cheney, then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and Powell took to the Sunday television talk shows on the morning that the report was published to warn of a growing threat from Saddam. Rice used some of the same language that appeared in the newspaper story, warning that, “We don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.”

As the war approached, the White House released other documents and statements containing allegations about Saddam’s weapons and ties to terrorism, many of which included information from Iraqi defectors and other sources that already had been discredited.

Among those was a document published in October 2002, titled “Iraq’s Weapons of Mass Destruction Programs,” which was a public version of the National Intelligence Estimate’s main points - but with doubts and dissents stripped out.
By Gauis Arbo, Saturday, 8 April , 2006 @ 8:20 am

The link is there, draw your own conclusions (as you already have, judging by the comment).

At the time, everyone believed Iraq had WMDs. That some of the intellegence was incorrect is not at all remarkable.

Leaking is a way of life in Washington. Slanting information is as well. Pretending outrage over it when it is done by someone from the other side of your particular belief set is acting as a demagogue, not a reporter.
By Tano, Saturday, 8 April , 2006 @ 9:48 am

Not everyone believed Iraq had WMD. Most people did. And most people did because most people had some underlying respect for, and willingness to give the benefit of the doubt to, the strongly-asserted statements of a president of the united states. That is a mistake that aint gonna happen again very soon.

As to our larger point. Yes, politicians spin all the time. Glad to hear you admit that. Glad to know that you will never believe anything that the Bush administration says, because you understand that it is, inherently, a cherry-picked, distorted, one-sided version of the truth.

‘Scuse me, and others, for holding to the quaint notion that when politicians actually manage to get themselves elected to high office, they take on certain responsibilities to we the citizens - including a responsibility to restrict their spinning to the margins of an underlying honest assessment of the reality of situations. Do you really want a world in which decisions about the most important matters - like going to war - are made in a context in which we, the citizens, can have no trust whatsoever that our government is presenting us with a realistic picture of situation?
By Black Jack, Saturday, 8 April , 2006 @ 10:09 am

What a load of nonsense:

Saddam had WMD and used them. Just prior to the invasion, the WMD’s were secretly moved to Syria and subsequently hidden. Tape recordings, documents from Baghdad, and reports from former Iraqi military officers confirm the existence and transfer of Saddam’s WMD.

Additionally, there was an ongoing relationship between Iraq and Al Qaeda. Saddam provided funds, training, health care, and protection for the terrorists, as well as cash payments to the families of homicide bombers.

The Left, including MSM, tries to deny the facts so they can undermine GWB, but the truth will come out.
By Gauis Arbo, Saturday, 8 April , 2006 @ 10:25 am

Tano,

I’m glad you’re glad. Tell me how you’ll do it differently.

Let me clue you in, Dems will not do it one bit differently, if you think otherwise, you are deluding yourself.

Everyone, including the Democrats at the time were convinced that there were WMDs. The anti-war crowd predicted massive US casualties from WMDs.

There are details coming out now that some quantity of something was shipped into Syria. There are documents coming out now that show there was a closer relationship between Saddam and al Qaeda. The full story has not been written yet.
By Buddy Saleeby, Saturday, 8 April , 2006 @ 11:23 am

yadda yadda yadda.
EVERYONE believed thet there were WMD.
Maybe.
But who believed that invading Iraq was the correct thing in March of 2003?
Virtually no one in the civilized world.
Just two brain dead politicians: Bush with half a brain to start with, and Blair who willed his brain into numbness because he felt it necessary to follow along with an idiot.
As for the caolition of the willing… well let’s get that bedraggled group to back us in Iran. Even they would not be so corrupt as to succumb yet another time on the whim of the US Leader.
What exactly do the Bsh defenders think they are defending?
Take a trip to where the war wounded lie and say it to them with a straight face.
By Gauis Arbo, Saturday, 8 April , 2006 @ 11:35 am

Buddy,

Repeating the same stuff over and over doesn’t make it true.
By Tano, Saturday, 8 April , 2006 @ 12:44 pm

Gaius,

Sorry, but I did not believe that iraq had WMD. I thought that they probably did, because I did not really grasp how wrong our government could be, but I did not _believe_ it. That is why I supported sabre-rattling and forcing the issue of imposing inspectors into Iraq.

There were no consistent views from “the anti-war crowd”. Some accepted the governments word about WMD and then put forth reasonable speculations about how they may have been used if we were to invade. Others never believed the government’s case. There was no monolithic view of the matter. And there were people, Scott Ritter comes immediatly to mind, who claimed that there were most likely no WMD there, and he turned out to be right. If there were any position that could have been seen as the most common amongst “the anti-war crowd”, it was that we didn’t know what had become of the old WMD stockpiles - maybe they were still there (although probably degraded). maybe they were not there anymore - lets go find out.

And let me clue you in to something about politicians. It is not a partisan point I make. There are Democrats, and Republicans as well who I think have a greater sense of integrity and honesty - who would certainly try to spin things in their favor to some degree - but only to some degree. You seem to have lost all sense of principle here, and have regressed to a cynicism that it ultimately self-defeating.

I get the sense that you support the Iraq war - and that you probably believe that there will be times in the future when America will need to engage militarily overseas to resolve some imminent threat to our security. Do you not realize that this will be IMPOSSIBLE if your cynical view were to become the established attitude of the American people? Who amongst us will send our children into battle, perhaps to die, on the word of a political leader who we know, deep down, is not telling us the truth? Of all people, it is you who should be most upset at this administration - for undermining the latent credibility that comes with the office of the presidency, and making it very difficult for future presidents, of either party, to rally the American people around missions that might be necessary.
By Gauis Arbo, Saturday, 8 April , 2006 @ 1:18 pm

I understand that there is no monolithic anti-war movement. It probably would have been better worded as “many” rather than “every”.

Regardless, you call it cynicism, I think it’s more like realism. It’s a fact of life and you learn to expect it. It’s harder to be misled that way.

The main reasons for going to war are not important any longer. I was always of the opinion that we already had ample reason to invade because Iraq was in violation of the cease-fire terms, so most of this focus on WMD is moot anyway.

I reiterate, trying to elevate the release of information (use the word leak if you like) into something unique to Bush is nonsense. Even the NYT today admitted that it has been common throughout our history.

Why don’t you take a bit of time and read my profile, OK?
By Black Jack, Sunday, 9 April , 2006 @ 3:36 am

Investor’s Business Daily has a timely article on Saddam’s WMD and Iraqi Cooperation with Al Qaeda, among other similar topics. As the trove of documents captured in Iraq are reliably translated from Arabic to English, a better understanding of actual prewar circumstances is emerging. So far, it supports GWB and contradicts conventional wisdom as proffered by the Left. Click on the link and judge for yourself.

http://www.investors.com/editorial/IBDArticles.asp?artsec=20&artnum=1&issue=20060407
By Gauis Arbo, Sunday, 9 April , 2006 @ 6:04 am

Already posted on that article