On my way out for a walk with the tyke, but before I go, I figured I’d point you to this latest in a string of defensive NYT pieces attempting to justify the leaking of classified info they knew to be legal, subject to appropriate oversight, and, importantly, effective — information that, once divulged, the vast majority of Americans (the Dems are split evenly; perhaps Townhouse needs to expand its to guarantee that “unified message”) believe helped the terrorists more than it served the Times‘ arrogant pretensions to guardianship of a “public good” that it itself presumes to define and assert.
Of course, the NYT’s refusal to simply admit its error in judgment and show contrition is not much of a story (see Rather, Dan, and Mapes, Mary), but that editorial staff’s dogged defensiveness does provide a bit of insight into the depth of their arrogance, as well as reveals a pattern that is perhaps even more deadly than we (the shrieking hysterics who complain about national security leaks but who don’t find the fictional outing of a CIA agent whose husband was engaging in Dem agitprop a capital offense) had previously imagined.
To wit: in the course of a long piece on the media’s propensity for leaking, AJ Strata points to this bit in the Times article:
[…] in a 1986 speech, [former WaPo publisher Katharine Graham, who died in 2001] warned that the media sometimes made “tragic†mistakes.
Her example was the disclosure, after the bombing of the American embassy in Beirut in 1983, that American intelligence was reading coded radio traffic between terrorist plotters in Syria and their overseers in Iran. The communications stopped, and five months later they struck again, destroying the Marine barracks in Beirut and killing 241 Americans.
“This kind of result, albeit unintentional, points up the necessity for full cooperation wherever possible between the media and the authorities,†Ms. Graham said.
I admit to having never heard this before, so allow me to get my bearings here: the WaPo’s “scoop”—that our intelligence services were reading coded terrorist radio transmissions—alerted the Syrian terrorists and their Iranian task masters that we’d cracked their communication chain, and convinced them to find other means of communication, which they then used in the run-up to the Marine barracks bombing? Is this common knowledge?
And was it really a “tragic mistake”? Surely the terrorists must have known we were listening in on them. That’s what our spy agencies do, after all. But what they didn’t know, evidently, is that we had broken their code (cf Enigma), and so it mattered not if they suspected we were listening to their transmissions (or their phone calls, or looking at their financial records). What matters is that they were able to pick out specifics in the report (we were listening to coded radio transmissions—which we knew to be coded, and that, given our interest in them, we either had broken the code or were at work on breaking the code), and from there, they were able to adjust. Yield: 241 dead.
I don’t blame certain press organs for their zealousness. I blame them for irresponsibility and violation of the public trust when their self-evident ideological leanings cloud their editorial judgment, putting all of us—regardless of political affiliation—in danger. In short, I despise the kind of arrogance that presumes to speak on behalf of “the public good” when it comes from those whose understanding of the classified military and intelligence programs on which they are “reporting” is so tenuous as to barely be able to hold the weight of their own self-serving pronouncements, and whose idea of the “public good” is aligned almost entirely to their very specific ideological worldviews.
The press may not think we are at war. But they should respect that the President—and a majority of the citizens of this country, who twice now elected him—believe that we are, and that it is the administration’s job to decide on a national security posture, not the job of malcontents within the intelligence services, or politicians looking to score partisan points, or the editors of the New York Times—all of whose actions have the practical effect of undermining that national security posture.
And the excuse that the enemy (such as it is) has, in effect, already scooped them—making their revelations titilating to the American public but toothless with respect to the terrorists—is, frankly, insulting and cynical.
Which is why those news outlets that print classified information on programs they either know or suspect to be lawful—against the pleadings of both the administration and others in Congress that doing so will harm our security posture—should be treated with disdain.
By their logic, they would have told the world (and the nazis) that Patton’s cardboard force, across from the Pas de Calais, was a diversion and they should look at Normandy instead. After all the Germans knew that the Allies would be invading SOMEWHERE on the continent, didn’t they?
>Which is why those news outlets that print classified information on programs they either know or suspect to be lawfulâ€â€against the pleadings of both the administration and others in Congress that doing so will harm our security postureâ€â€should be treated with disdain.<
Yeah, but that’s not going far enough. The leakers have to be prosecuted.
A common mstake among people is that they think bad guys are smart.
They aren’t for the most part. they don’t think very far ahead, they don’t know much outside of their narrow worlds, and they don’t have a helluva lot of interest in fixing that sort of knowledge gap.
“The terrorists know we’re monitoring banks.”
Well, no, they don’t. They might know, in general, that we do that sort of thing, but there’s a big tendency among assholes like that to assume that their particular choice of action is completely invulnerable to any sort of obvious counter-action.
The Times and the others are like someone standing behind a chess player and kibitzing.
“Oh, you’re going after his rook, then, so you can take out his queen. What are you getting mad for, it’s obvious to everyone.”
And the excuse that the enemy (such as it is) has, in effect, already scooped themâ€â€making their revelations titilating to the American public but toothless with respect to the terrorists
No. The point is that the Administration scooped the NY Times, by taking reporters on puff tours of the Treasury Dept 3 years ago to show everyone what a great job the US was doing of monitoring the world’s financial transactions. At that time, the Administration was confident that public opinion supported such surveillance. Now that the public mood has changed, and people are beginning to feel that many of the ways in which our rights are being eroded have nothing to do with fighting terrorists, the Administration doesn’t want these kinds of stories coming out. Especially from the NYT, which has turned from a slavish Administration booster in 2003 to a strong Administration critic over the last year.
The hoopla over this story is simply an attempt to browbeat the press into obeying the President when he tells them not to publish due to “national security” concerns. The President is livid because he has lost the moral authority and credibility which used to weigh on his side in such situations. But he is the one who lost it, through the deceptiveness, arrogance, and incompetence his administration has displayed over the last 3 years. The NYT swallowed every red herring he fed them through 2002 and 2003. Forgive me for not being surprised that they’ve become skeptical.
I saw that article, and was horrified when I read that passage. This was news to me, too. It physically sickens me to know that some journalists actually think it’s appropriate to publish codebreaking intel. Did they do it out of concern for Syrian citizen privacy rights? To hurt President Reagan? To win a Pulitzer? What? I just cannot fathom these people.
Vague generalities which you cannot back up. Does it bother you that you are so easily led?
The people are pissed about this action taken by the NY Times. What does that tell you?
The NYT skeptical? Let’s see, they weren’t skeptical of Mary Mapes, they weren’t skeptical of the bogus unguarded Iraqi explosives story. They still aren’t skeptical about anything Joe Wilson has ever said. They weren’t skeptical about haditha. They weren’t skeptical of the anonymous sources that said Karl Rove would be indicted. They weren’t skeptical of Time’s Koran in the crapper story. That’s some pretty selective skepticism.
I have to be honest bf, it’s becuase of reasoning like this that you’re the only one on this site that makes Actus look good by comparison.
241 Marines killed for 5 cents/word.
Such depravity.
Well, not bad for being completely wrong. Majorities still support the NSA and this SWIFT program, which, you know, brooksfoe, directly contradicts your point. Per usual.
Coded terrorist radio signals not emails (1983), but otherwise yeah. I’d never heard this one before either, but this kind of thing is why I got so bent out of shape about the NSA phone-tapping story when it came out. The assumption that surely they know we’re watching their finances pisses me off to no end for the same reason.
Even if terrorists in general are aware of our intel activities and practice good opsec some of them are going to less aware of them or less security concious than others and end up doing something we can exploit. It’s just human nature to assume that your communications are more secure than they actually may be, especially when the collector has technology you’ve never dreamed of before.
Of course, then when the media goes widely publicizing what, exactly, we’re collecting they guarantee that specific hole in terrorists’ security won’t be there to exploit. There’s a world of difference in they way most people react to being generally aware an enemy could, maybe, collect your signal and being told an enemy is, indeed, collecting those specific communications right now.
I find it hard to believe the Times paid that little, even in 1982.
Because it wasn’t bogus. Where exactly do YOU think the IEDs are coming from? Think the insurgents are all boiling down bat guano?
That depends on whose story you’re being skeptical towards. And what information exactly has emerged to change that story in the last 2 weeks?
Yes they were. They never reported he would be indicted.
Korans were desecrated at Guantanamo. No one has beena able to substantiate that they were flushed down the toilet, but they were stood on and rubbed on the ground. The NYT treated the story appropriately, citing it as one reported by Time. Time is a respectable news organ; if it is not, there are no respectable news organs, and no one can ever cite a story they haven’t themselves reported again. Which means all the blogs will have to shut down. I am sure the public would not mourn that much, either.
No, no, the journalistic ideologues know we are at war, and hate it.
The journalistic purists don’t care that we’re at war. They’re the press equivalent of the ‘information must be free’ assholes on the internet who think they have the right to scan’n’post authors’ entire novels online, or who haunt the bit-torrent sites looking for blackmarket downloads.
I wrote a piece of satire on today’s New York Times reporting on Enigma in 1944. When I did, I had not heard about the 1983 Beirut story of the WaPo blowing the whistle on codebreaking. That’s despicable.
And Brooksfoe, there’s a big difference in saying “we’re tracing their finances” (what the Administration has said since 9/12/01) and “we trace their finances using transmissions through THIS system using THIS precise method involving THESE bankers,” which is what the NYTimes felt the need to disclose.
“The point is that the Administration scooped the NY Times, by taking reporters on puff tours of the Treasury Dept 3 years ago to show everyone what a great job the US was doing of monitoring the world’s financial transactions.”
Wrong. The spin was that we were “working with Banks” to analyse transaction data. Instead, what we had was access to practically EVERY international bank-to-bank transaction.
Meaning that stuff routed through small, obscure, and ideologically-friendly-to-the-terrorists banks was just as vulnerable as stuff going through JPMorgan-Chase or Deutchbank.
Big difference, that.
And of course, characterizing our efforts as a bank-by-bank process may just have been a teensy bit of misdirection on the Administration’s part. But hey, as someone who lives downwind from Ground Zero, I have no interest in having the terrorists worrying about the wrong problems. Not if it means I can’t send a wire transfer to an orphanage in Malaysia without ChimpyMcHallibushHitler knowing about it.
Brooksfoe,
Brooksfoe, the unguarded explosives story was revealed to be absolute crap. The NYT was the main mover in getting the Plame Gate investigation started. They reported dubious material (from un-named sources)linking Rove to nonexistence leaks from the very beginning. The Times retracted the Koran in the toilet story, you seem to be implying they didn’t. Which means I suppose that you believe Mary Mapes was right too. The overwhelming dishonesty with which you comment is beyond stunning.
When smacked on the fact that the public mood hasn’t changed, jump into nitpicking the per word rate of the WashingPost.
Where exactly do YOU think the IEDs are coming from?
Iran. And there’s nothing Improvised about them.
Korans were desecrated at Guantanamo. No one has been able to substantiate that they were flushed down the toilet, but they were stood on and rubbed on the ground. The NYT treated the story appropriately, citing it as one reported by Time.
Or Newsweek, who retracted the story. (set of links)
The Dead Tree journos once prided themselves on corroboration, now they’ll publish any rumor. Double-quick if it will hurt a Republican President, and consequences for the nation be damned. This is “Bush’s War” on Terrorism, after all.
What part of “improvised”—the “I” in “IED”—don’t you understand?
Dang it, eLarson! I like your answer better. Wish it had been there before I hit “submit.”
Brooksfoe, weird that your name indicates a desire to repudiate Brooks (my assumption)…which is really the first clue as to how clueless you are. Brooks has almost zero influence among conservatives or even Republicans.
I stopped reading the NYT even for amusement when they twisted the computer entry of a dead soldier for their own purposes. Did you approve of that tactic? If you did you are scum.
OOps, sorry, Newsweek retracted the Koran story. My error.
Been working for them long, have you?
The President hasn’t lost any moral authority, Brooksfoe. In point of fact, it is the Times that is backpedalling. Their own articles described these as “secret” programs, which now they claim were common knowledge. Their sources, who have access to the information thanks to their security clearances, have broken their oaths. We have become quite accustomed to these kinds of leaks, and they are disgusting, appalling, and dangerous.
I recall that the administration did say that they were going to go after the financing of terrorist organizations, and I can’t think of anyone who doesn’t think that that’s essential. There’s something of a difference, however, in saying:
Police: 70 terror probes under way in Britain
3 plots foiled since London attacks, head of anti-terrorist unit says
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13686078
Which probably wouldn’t surprise the terrorists, and on the other hand designating exactly what kinds of information those investigations hinged on. Your promotion of the Zeitgeist defense is absurd, though. I mean, the law is the law, unless it reproves the Zeitgeist? Y’all are weird.
The Times can’t even maintain a semblance of logical consistency in their pleadings. Initially they described anguished deliberations over their intent to publish the story and their meetings with senior administration officials who tried to talk them out of it.
Now, faced with heavy blowback they tell us that all of this information is nothing new and the terrorists knew the details of these operations all along.
Well, which one is it? If the NYT knew that the terrorists already knew then why didn’t they just relate that fact to the administration in their pre-publication meetings, and also mention it in their reporting/editorializing of those meetings?
When the admin asked them not to publish the story all the NYT had to do is tell the admin that the cat was already out of the bag – and provide some semblance of reliable sourcing to support that claim. Now that would have been a real scoop.
But then the entire story would have been different. the lede would have been all about how a terrorist tracking effort was already hopelessly compromised and the government was wasting its time. But they didn’t have that information, and the only way they can claim that now is because the info stream has already been hopelessly polluted by their own leaking of the story.
What do you expect when the Time’s top story right now is that there is an Ex-GI charged for a rape and 4 murders, yet they don’t even mention on thier front page that N. Korea threatens U.S. with ‘nuclear war’.
Call me silly, but the people on the western seaboard might want to know that a they are under threat of being nuked. If I remember correctly, that ‘possibilty of a hypothetical’ was enough to consitute the hysteria of the Cuban Missile Crisis in the past.
“Korans were desecrated at Guantanamo….”
Of course, to a Muslim, if an infidel as much as TOUCHES a Koran it is unclean and therefore “desecrated” so your bar is set pretty low to begin with, isn’t it?
“ No one has beena able to substantiate that they were flushed down the toilet…”
Because flushing a big thick book down a toilet is an impossibility but you believe it anyway, right?
“… they were stood on and rubbed on the ground…”
THE HORROR…THE HORROR!
You’re quite the apologist for these finders-of-justification-in-the-Koran-for-hating-and-murdering-non-Muslims, aren’t you?
“… they were stood on and rubbed on the ground…â€Â
And that’s seared, SEARED! into his memory.
Lemme get this straight – your boxers are in a knot because the NYT leaked information that threatens the security of the US?
Are you COMPLETELY out of your mind? Do you really not understand that George Dubya Bush threatens the security of the US a trillion times more than the NYT by continuing to order the occupation of Iraq?
Got neurons?
“ANTI-ISRAEL-is that the new dwefinition?
TW: WILL. you mooks should have one.
And the required scrolling down to get to a place where I have to do it again?
Die, hippie. And say “Hello!” to Mr. Show.
Well, got it. Iraq = one TRILLION 911s. No problems there.
I look so foward to the day when the NYT can only sell ad space to the sellers of sequined man bags and oatmeal candles.
It’s not too far off.
Well, that’s another funny thing, SWP, because bin Laden seems to think Baghdad is where it’s at (he’s concerned about a democratic domino effect), and I seem to recall something about World Trade Towers and Marine barracks and African embassies the USS Cole, and a number of other upsetting incidents prior to the US having gotten involved in Iraq this time around.
Yeah, I got neurons. I even have memory.
It’s surprising to me, although I’m not sure why, that Keller’s decision on the Swift disclosure is devoid of common sense and common decency.
Let’s grant that the Chimpster is evil incarnate and that he lies when his lips move.
Let’s grant that the great free press walks with God, and that they are the last best protectors of our civil liberties.
Now for some common sense. It’s a bit of a stretch, but I presume Keller believes most of what he printed. Swift was legal, effective, and, despite silly subsequent protests to the contrary, secret. That word appears as a modifier to the program repeatedly in the article.
If the program were illegal, not effective, or if it’s cover had been blown, all those might be good justifications for running a story. But those arguments aren’t made.
And common decency. Given that the program was apparently effective, legal, and secret, wouldn’t the reasonable and decent man want to give the good guys (America) at least the benefit of the doubt agaist the bad guys (terrorists)? Even if he hated and mistrusted the Chimpster?
Naahh. In the inimitable words of the great Kos–screw’em.
Frank Rich, who exists behind their firewall has as his column title for the day, ‘Can’t win the war on terror? bomb the press.’
They live on another planet entirely, where every action they take is seen as justifiable because they simply know they are in the right. That this action did hurt the effort is now swept under the rug in Rich’s response. It is nothing short of another slap in the face by the Times of every person who has ever sacrificed in service of this country. They should be ashamed, but of course, they are not.
Bronson Arroyo is the Kevin Spacey character.
Really. You think we let that idiot Spitzer control the conversation? What are we: JERSEY?
SWP got no neurons = moron.
southwestpaw sums up a certain position pretty nicely: hurting bush is more important than hurting terrorists.
Got perspective?
I, for one, welcome our trillion 9-11 Armageddon.
Legal, historical precendents found…
Nope.
We also don’t realize that we all live in a test tube in a lab on the planet Gorflak.
Silly, ignorant us.
Which, by the way, is the original homeworld of Janenane Gorfafalo! Talk about a coincidence!
I’m convinced that they (NYT) could be made to feel something, though.
I hate to channel Bill O’Reilly, but if a huge organization, that represents a majority of the American people, hmmm…..I know there’s one…..
Well, if they told the world that they all were going to buy a copy of the NYT sometime in the next 2 months and they would boycott all advertisers in that issue for the next year…….
It’s just crazy enough to work!
Folks: brooksfoe and swp are a complete waste of your irreplaceable time. All their arguments are predicated on a deep distrust and hatred of the United States that they were brainwashed into in college and which you aren’t going to change here. They’re going to have to age another 20 years or so before they realize the depth of their folly. I’d starve them of oxygen if I were you. It’s a holiday. Go kiss your kids or smell the roses.
Outta here.
Though it’s tempting to troll here, you guys are such nutcases it’s not cost-effective to hang out. It would be like a frog hanging out in a mucky pond full of horse-dung.
Before I go, here’s a poem to read tomorrow:
I pledge defiance to the flag
Of the sorry states of america.
And to the republicrats
Who defile its strands
One nation, blind to god
With liberty and justice for none.
Happy indy pen dance day!
Oooooohh, alppuccino, the NYT is feeling it right now, where it hurts most….
Seriously, I wonder how many advertisers are deciding that enough is enough? It’s not just readers who can vote with their feet….
Which brings me to suggest that anyone who reads this, and who has influence in ad buy decisions, make it a point to steer dollars away from media that seems to be on the wrong side in the War on Terror.
On that note, I thing ahem has the right idea. Hasta la vista, babies!
swp proclaimeth:
Any bets on how long he’ll wait before posting again?
Cripes, now they’re sending in the third string.
quitter
>It would be like a frog hanging out in a mucky pond full of horse-dung<
Y’know, it was kind of like that.
SWP = 12 years old.
You mean that Southwestpaw was being serious?
That was so over the top, I thought he was a fake troll, like Aisha over on LGF.
You better get off the computer and start on that book report for summer school this instant, young man! I will NOT have you repeating eighth grade again!
So did I.
OOps, sorry, Newsweek retracted the Koran story. My error.
No worries. Time and Newsweek tend to cover the same ground most of the time.
Hey Paw,
Do you need the dentures while yer on the Commodore 2000?
We wanted to have some lunch and we could sher use ‘em.
Anyone know where I can get a list of current NYT’s advertisers? I’d like to write them to tell them why I won’t be buying their products.
Lieberman fights for political life http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/5140778.stm
The Democratic challenger?
“a little-known millionaire cable television executive”
Yummy. I like him already
>When Howard Dean was running for the presidency two years ago, the mainstream media leapt at the net-roots’ activism that it spawned, before helping to bury the candidate, after the celebrated “Dean scream” in Iowa.
A Connecticut primary is a far more manageable field, and after attending a Lamont rally in a trendy New York bar, it is clear that hundreds of liberals from out-of-state will be donating both money and time to the cause, over the coming weeks.
Mr Lieberman, who is an Orthodox Jew, has no choice but to take this first primary challenge of his long senate career, very seriously.
He has repeatedly hinted that he will run as an independent if he fails to secure the Democrat nomination, where conservative support across party lines may well be enough to send him back to Washington.<
Y’know, that third party thing might just happen.
Looks like you enjoyed my poem – here’s another:
I’m a cranky doodle dandy
Cranky doodle dan am I
A pissed off offspring of a dude named Sam
Here on this Fourth of July.
It looks like I’ve landed in a pond full of dittoheads – isn’t that what you rightwing nutcases call yourselves? Dittoheads – you got that right!
You guys need to enter a twelve step program for recovering right wing nutcases – you might could be on Oprah if y’all play your cards right!
American taxpayers have spent a trillion dollars occupying eye-rack. Every one of the 2500 soldiers who died, died for NOTHING. Every one of the 10 (20?) thousand soldiers who was permanently injured got hurt for NOTHING.
And you guys are happy as clams to send more of our best and brightest to be targets for pissed off Iraqis.
What a waste – Thomas Tucker from Madras, OR – tortured and murdered because he trusted a sick, twisted, lying guvmint.
And you guys still have your heads buried in the sand….or elsewhere.
Wake up, dittoheads! Quick!!!!
I thought SouthWestPaw was Witheld.
tw: age, as in when were you born?
SWP–
If you don’t like our pond, why don’t you go back to your great dismal swamp? Also, if you’re going to use exclamation marks that way, I suggest that you buy them in bulk, you weirdo.
I buried six friends or contemporaries out of Beirut.
And I’d never heard of the message traffic angle before either. I had heard of the didimau of the Iranian Embassy staff the morning of the bombing though; by all accounts it was a genuine Keystone- cops- stuff- clowns- in- little- cars evolution.
Being serious killers, the Iranians were pretty sure that a serious nation would take off the gloves and go to the mat in response to the bombing that Hizbollah was about to execute on their (the Iranians’
behalf.
Here it is 2006 and the Newspaper of Record, along with a sizeable minority of Americans (in name only, and only by happenstance of birth) still doesn’t see a war. They see a game. The prize is the ability to dictate pet political agendas. The rules are written in crayon, are above and independent of the world we must live in, and accountability is never an issue.
All a fucking game. Because they think their big cities with lights and trains and nine a.m. lattes and stock options and summer homes and parties are some sort of fucking normalcy. Something that just happened.
Boys and girls, on this plantet it’s not normal at all for the vast majority of a national population of hundreds of millions of people to have flush toilets and jobs and cars and satellite tv’s and college funds and doctors and lawyers and binding contracts and personal property and real estate. It’s not normal for most citizens of the world to sojourn out of the house with a reasonable certainty that their day won’t involve a cop with a club or exposure to criminal violence.
Western civ is not an accident. To pretend that this wealth, stability, and shining potential for better things to come is some mere random event might be forgiven on the part of those sad people whose lives are built on shoddy education leavened by apathy. We are rich enough that there surely exists those who never do see beyond their own personal existence and are happiest that way.
Such insularity is inexcusable when seen in figures whose very profession is supposed to be based on an understanding of the world they live in and an ongoing quest to cover the events that shape it.
The people who think it’s all a game are the ones who are going to get more of us killed. Lots more.
I rage and ramble; my apologies… don’t exist.
When will the administration prosecute the leakers? What’s it going to take?
TW=”pay”. Someone must pay.
I would rather it not be the Marines again – or anyone else just doing their job.
How dare you question your patriotism!
Wow, Jeff, the troll quality is, like, WAY down. Is it the holiday? Where’s actus?
The hoopla over this story is simply an attempt to browbeat the press into obeying the President when he tells them not to publish due to “national security†concerns. murthakeanhamilton murthakeanhamilton stop it stop it stop it stop it stop it make the voices stop murthakeanhamilton The President is livid because he has lost the moral authority and credibility which used to weigh on his side in such situations. forgot to put *echo**echo**echo* on “moral authority and credibility”; feh, some of those double-digit bushtards will get it anyway But he is the one who lost it, through the deceptiveness, arrogance, and incompetence his administration has displayed over the last 3 years. As always: IT’S ALL BUSH’S FAULT!!! Ooops, better turn off the caps lock; I’m about to type again. The NYT swallowed every red herring he fed them through 2002 and 2003. Forgive me for not being surprised that they’ve become skeptical. Red herring: Chum for the bushirts. Ha, I’m on a roll with the helmets. Ohhh, will THAT stir ‘em up. Wait: Bushirts? Me likes! Hmmmm, I wonder if Al Gore’s hired a blogger yet….
Oh, that explains it. She’s from Eugene.
Why don’t you just go to the the Wayne Morse Free Speech Plaza (WMFSP) (where Eugene has a place where people can say whatever they want, as long as it doesn’t upset any protected species of identity; where I live, that space is called “everywhere”). She’s even met the former limo driver for Wayne Morse, so she’s got the cred, man.
This part of the NYT article is also vile:
But such cooperation can prove problematic, as her newspaper’s former editor, Benjamin C. Bradlee, has recounted.
In 1986, after holding for weeks at government request a scoop about an N.S.A. tap on a Soviet undersea communications cable, The Post learned that the Russians knew all about it already from an N.S.A. turncoat named Ronald Pelton. NBC beat The Post on its own report.
We’re supposed to feel sorry for the WaPo because they lost their scoop. But there’s more to the story.
Yes, Pelton had tipped the Soviets, but he only knew about the Pacific taps, and for some reason it was two years before the Soviets followed up on the tip and found the tap. We were also tapping cables in the Barents, and attempting to in the Mediterranean for our showdown with Ghaddafi.
The WaPo’s story could have blown the whole program, as well as gotten the men on the subs killed. They published a very watered down version only because Reagan begged them, and the CIA threatened them with prosecution. I don’t know what NBC finally reported, but, no I don’t feel sorry for the WaPo losing their scoop.
Fuck them and their fucking scoops.
This is like troll heaven – tons of people with nothing better to do than blather here and a good percentage of them willing to play with me!
You rightwing looneytunes are great – you’re multisyllabic and sometimes even funny!
Icing on the cake would be a couple of kooky kristians who believe:
There’s this guy.
His name is god.
He lives in the sky.
He had a son named Jesus by a virgin named Mary.
Jesus died for YOUR sins but he lives for ever.
What a guy.
Of course, what would you expect from the Son of GOD!
Come on, I know you’re out there kooky kristians – doncha wanna play?
SWP–
You amuse me, so here goes: it’s really probably a lot less ridiculous than whatever it is you believe. Question Reality, man.
yep, i’m thinking it’s the holiday….
Right on, sister. Fight the theopatriarcholigarchy!
Slavish, come on this must be a joke. The NYT hasn’t endorsed a Republican Presidential candidate in over 50 years. They preferred Walter Mondale to Ronald Reagan. MONDALE. How many states did Mondale carry again in that election?
T/W: find, as in find a clue
Dig it. Shake that thing.
You look hot in Tyvek.
BECAUSE OF THE TOLERANCE
I am crying inside because you insulted my God. If it weren’t so illegal I might chop off your head, you meanie.
The LATimes and NYTimes also blew the cover on the whole Glomar Explorer thing way back when. At least we got SOME data out of that before it was blown.
If it weren’t so illegal I might chop off your head, you meanie.
Not just illegal, but so out-of-fashion.
In the West, at least……
You rightwing looneytunes are great – you’re multisyllabic and sometimes even funny!
Icing on the cake would be a couple of kooky kristians who believe:
There’s this guy.
His name is god.
He lives in the sky.
He had a son named Jesus by a virgin named Mary.
Jesus died for YOUR sins but he lives for ever.
You must be the latest representative of the Party of Tolerance. Funny how you reduce your own beliefs & their defense to the aspect of playing, while belittling the beliefs of others.
Okay, who had 32 minutes?
May Tang also be deemed “multisyllabic and funny?” Because that would make Tang’s day.
“Kooky Kristians” is a delightful formulation – it sounds like a half-remembered favorite breakfast cereal from the early Seventies, or perhaps one of the lesser efforts of Hanna-Barbera.
Really more the latter – there would have been some type of adorable critter thrown into the mix, with something approaching human intelligence and the ability to manifest something close to speech. They’d travel the country, solving mysteries in between gigs as a warm-up band for Stryper, and invariably the unamsked villain would mutter, as he was frog-marched away, “And I would have gotten away with it too, if it wasn’t for you multisyllabic Kooky Kristians!”
Deb Frisch / southwestpaw —
I don’t think you’ve landed in the pond you think you’ve landed in.
But it might do you good to go back through your posts and count the number of assumptions you’ve made about me and the people who comment here. And then remember them the next time you are about to accuse anyone of some overbroad -ism that you pretend to find disturbing.
I mean, Christ: “Dittoheads”? “Kooky Kristians”? Are you <i>serious<?i>? What are you, fifteen?
Somewhere, a “friendship collage” sits unfinished.
Hey, careful there with all the history! The Brainless Lefty Meme can only bear fruit in precise soil conditions:
1) complete ignorance of all pre-Florida 2000 history
2) uncompromising gullibility
3) arrogant assumptions of intellectual superiority, despite all evidence
4) loads and loads of cannibis
Wow. Deb, enjoy the Fourth. I don’t know what’s happened in your life to lead you to the kind of things you’re posting, but I hope you have more peace and joy than is evident.
Or, to quote Dave Chapelle, “Get help bitch!”
T/W: aid—how apropos. (Not only multisyllabic, but French!)
Sorry to be so long-winded, but my 2:05 post also speaks to larger themes at work here. The Soviets knew that we were tapping their Pacific cable because a paid traitor told them in the early 1980s.
But even though they knew we had a cable-tapping program, they never did find the Barents tap, and we collected useful intelligence from it until the USSR fell in the early 90s. Just like AQ knew we were tracking bank transfers, but they didn’t know how or where.
I’ll bite:
There was a gal name southwestpaw
Her pubes concealed a gaping maw
The stench from years without a douche
Could straighten out the Nike swoosh
If Wayne Morse were here, he’d speech-a-fy
“Wash that thing before we die!”
…of funk inhilation
I see we have some very smart cookies here – Dan Collins is the only einstein to get my sex right so far (way to go Dan! u da man!) and PMain is accusing me of being a hypocritical lefty by making fun of kooky kristians and moron dittoheads.
You see, PMain, I don’t buy into the idea of tolerance. We make you want to puke and you do the same to us! Why should either one of us pretend that we have anything but revulsion, contempt, disgust for each other? Really – what’s the point?
You wouldn’t tolerate it if your neighbors’ kids defecated in your back yard, would you? Some things are too disgusting to be “tolerated” – that’s how I feel about you and I reckon, that’s how you feel about me.
But very clever attempt to diss me, PMain – keep trying!
I see I got the attention of the main man – one Jeff Goldstein who wrote the original post. Like I said, I think it’s pretty stupid to get your boxers or panties in a knot over what the NYT printed.
Is the “more censorship of the media” really that high on your list of what America needs?
Yikes.
overboard?
yup alppuccino – it’s overboard.
i could retaliate by making jokes about your flaccid attempt at humor and how you probably haven’t been humped in a decade, etc. but why bother?
SWP’s blog has a category called “911 Conspiracy.”
And no, it’s not about al Qaeda’s conspiracy to fly jetliners into the WTC and the Pentagon.
Sorry Jeff, but I think OHNOES’ age estimate is probably closer than yours.
OK, I have a confession; it’s necessary to set up the point I wish to make.
Erm. Ulp. I subscribe to the New York Times. There, it’s out.
Honest. It’s for the centerfolds. I don’t read the articles.
My Sunday-only subscription fulfills my decadent desire to sit on the porch on a Sunday morning, pot-o-brew and mug at hand; nothing on my mind except ink on dead trees. Ahh. But, I only look at the centerfolds. Honest.
Anyway, done with confession; on to the point.
My better half got a phone call from the business side of the terrorist information network (NYT,) asking me to keep my subscription in exchange for the next two months – free. Damn, they’ve read my mind and my capitalist soul again. How did they know I was thinking of canceling? My apparently too-loud thoughts: I’m not sending my money to support these people any more.
Playboy doesn’t seem right for Sunday mornings. What’m I gonna do?
I think we’re going to need a crowbar to get her outta that thong.
Or, OHNOES, was that really an age estimate, or an IQ estimate?
Either way…
My poem’s are funnier than yours. Deal with it.
Cranky doodle dandy? You’re kidding right?
I left this on another thread, but I’ll leave it here for our new visitor: the First Amendment and attendant case law.
Don’t just pretend you know it, Deb. Read it. Then come back when you have a handle on it.
I’d also ask you to see if you can find the irony in writing this
on another person’s site, but you don’t strike me as the sharpest cheddar in the fondue pot, so I’ll help you out: I am not on your site taking dumps.
And for further irony? By asking why anyone should tolerate such repulsive behavior, you’ve argued for your own banning.
Not that I want to ban you just yet. You’re too useful just now. So keep it coming, love!
Sorry guys – gotta run now. I’ll check in later to read the latest gibberish from Jeff and I promise to reply!
Well, for the record? The First Amendment stuff is not mine—though it is a bunch of dead white men who would’ve most definitely wanted to control your uterus.
See you soon. But on your way back, you might want to look up the meaning of “gibberish.” So that you don’t make the same embarrassing mistake twice. Just sayin’.
Don’t stop it now, don’t stop it now, don’t stop it now, don’t stop it!
some other paper maybe? I mean, i get the local paper, and while most national news i get online, the paper is still good for things closer to home.
TW: radio, as if.
Guys I’m gonna have to run too. Deb told me that I probably haven’t been humped in a decade, and she’s right. I had my humpectomy in ‘97 after many years of finger-pointing and awkward stares.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad the hump’s gone. The painful memories just rushed back after Deb mentioned it.
Yo, Deb!
Does this about sum up who you are? I found that here:
http://www.counterpunch.org/frisch02122005.html
Sanctuary