The Political Whore

With a h/t to Tampa Bay political consultant Gregory Wilson, here’s a contrarian view on scoring yesterday’s pseudo-debate on terror, Gitmo and national security. I agree with Congressional Quarterly’s assessment of Barack Obama on conventional political terms. It is a truism: When you’re ’splaining, you’re losing. And I believe Obama made no headway with the crazy left who wants to shutter Guantanamo immediately and just cut loose the terrorists or bring them on down to circuit court for good ol’ U.S. justice system trials.

But Obama won the day, make no mistake about it. He was historic, clear in his ethics, determined in his purpose that we can win against terror without becoming terrorists ourselves. He may have lost in terms of short-term public opinion but he wins the longer war. And that is what CQ, in its traditional wisdom, fails to grasp.

Having said that, reading the full CQ article makes ya think…

Excerpts from the article after the jump:

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It may have been the worst news conference performance by a sitting Speaker of the House ever. Yesterday, Nancy Pelosi harmed her own cause and ratcheted up the torture debate in a newser in which she parsed her knowledge of CIA waterboarding briefings and accused the spy agency of lying to Congress.

Even Florida’s former Sen. Bob Graham (and his infamous lil’ notebooks) has leapt to her side, telling HuffPo that he, too, was lied to by the CIA about torture tactics and use. From that interview:

“When this issue started to resurface I called the appropriate people in the agency and said I would like to know the dates from your records that briefings were held,” Graham recalled. “And they contacted me and gave me four dates — two in April ‘02 and two in September ‘02. Now, one of the things I do, and for which I have taken some flack, is keep a spiral notebook of what I do throughout the day. And so I went through my records and through a combination of my daily schedule, which I keep, and my notebooks, I confirmed and the CIA agreed that my notes were accurate; that three of those four dates there had been no briefing. There was only one day that I had been briefed, which was September the 27th of 2002.”

Video of the full Pelosi news conference after the jump.
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Has anyone else noticed that Dick Cheney just won’t go away?  Maureen Dowd of The New York Times has.  Her take on Cheney as the new “Rogue Diva of Doom” after the jump.

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President Barack Obama has reveresed himself on how open his Administration will be on the torture approved by the previous George W. Bush Administration of Horrors, refusing to release Abu Ghraib torture photos. Daily Dish reports:

In what can only be seen as a stunning reversal, the president is now refusing to release photographs that would help prove that the abuse and torture techniques revealed at Abu Ghraib were endemic in the Bush military. I can’t help but wonder if this is related to his decision to appoint Stanley McChrystal as the commander of his Afghanistan war and occupation. There is solid evidence that McChrystal played an active part in enabling torture in Iraq, and his activities in charge of many secret special operations almost certainly involved condoning acts that might be illustrated by these photos. The MSM has, of course, failed to mention this in their fawning profiles of McChrystal.

The news story that helped set the tone for the public discussion about torture and waterboarding during the Bush Administration was (you guessed it) bullshit, as it turns out.

A high-profile 2007 story by ABC News and correspondent Brian Ross was wrong when it reported that an Al-Quaeda suspect broke after a brief waterboarding.

The Plum Line reports:

The original 2007 story aired former CIA officer John Kiriakou’s unverified and second-hand claims that suspected terrorist Abu Zubaydah broke after being waterboarded for “probably 30, 35 seconds.” The story was suddenly the focus of renewed attention when The New York Times ran a big story earlier this week pointing out that the extensive waterboarding detailed in the torture memos sharply contradicted ABC’s widely-cited tale.

ABC News’ correction appears almost in passing in the network’s new story. It mentions that the new memos show that waterboarding was used far more often than originally thought, adding that Zubaydah was waterboarded “at least 83 times.” It continues:

That contradicts what former CIA officer John Kiriakou, who led the Zubaydah capture team, told ABC News in 2007 when he first revealed publicly that waterboarding had been used.

ABC doesn’t mention the huge role played by original story in shaping the subsequent debate, and to my knowledge the network hasn’t said it regrets the error. While it’s good that ABC corrected the record, the damage of the original story has long since been done.

Anchor Shepard Smith, Fox News’ lone quasi-sane newsperson melted down on the air last night during a discussion of torture and the government’s role in authorizing it. Shep’s T-shirt worthy quote:

“We are America! I don’t give a rats ass if it helps! We do not fucking torture!”

Can you really blame Shep for losing his cool? He’s surrounded by sycophants and morons of the worst kind. (Hello, Hannity!) I couldn’t take the studio tour at Fox News without losing my cool and getting Tazered by security.

On a side note, the banging on the desk was a nice touch. Video after the break …

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