Letters to the Editor
Elephantman
Published Letters: 1087 Editor's Choice: 15
-
Still waiting, Professor Cole...
[Read the article: George Tenet on the staircase with the neocons]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]You apparently wrote this paragraph before learning that the central premise (that Tenet and Perle would have encountered each other on September 12)could not possibly be true;
Tenet has revealed for the first time that he encountered Pentagon advisor Richard Perle on the day after the Sept. 11 attacks. As Tenet recounted the story on "60 Minutes," Perle "said to me, 'Iraq has to pay a price for what happened yesterday; they bear responsibility.'" Tenet told interviewer Scott Pelley that he was startled at the allegation. "It's September the 12th," said Tenet. "I've got the manifest with me that tells me al-Qaida did this. Nothing in my head that says there is any Iraqi involvement in this in any way, shape or form, and I remember thinking to myself, as I'm about to go brief the president, 'What the hell is he talking about?'"
Now that you know that Perle was in France at the time, and did not/could not fly back to the US until several days later, don't you think you need to reassess this central thesis in your article?
-
Nonsense, Salonistas!
[Read the article: The attorney general's secret memo]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]You all keep imagining all of the 'crimes' that you THINK were committed by Rove and/or Gonzalez and/or others.
And none of you can come up with a single instance of a prosecution that was undertaken for politcal reasons, or a proseuction that was stopped for political reasons, or an investigation in which one of the fired US Attorneys has said, "My superiors in the DoJ told me to do x-y-z, and I refused, so I was fired."
This is all b.s.
-
Aww, hell...
[Read the article: "Brothers"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I thought this story was going to be about cozy political corruption involving the President and the Attorney General. Did they have that kind of thing in 1962?
-
3rd Notice...
[Read the article: George Tenet on the staircase with the neocons]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Still waiting for some word on Professor Cole's credulous repetition of the "story" that Tenet quotes Richard Perle 'on the day after' 9/11 as saying that we needed to attack Iraq.
The story was refuted by Perle in a column written by Bill Kristol, and in response, Tenet admits he might have gotten some details wrong in recalling the story himself. Some details? Tenet claimed specifically that it was on the day after the attacks, and that the conversation was a passing, hallway conversation at the White House. Tenet says that he had his working dossier on the matter with him. Tenet exclaimed that it was 'the day after.'
What the hell?
And Professor Cole makes that story the centerpiece, the leading anecdote, in his own column?
Come on, where is the integrity in this kind of reporting?
-
From Glenn Greenwald / To Glenn Greenwald
[Read the article: The right's explicit and candid rejection of "the rule of law"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Glenn Greenwald wrote:
UPDATE: I just want to add one related point here. Much of the intense dissatisfaction I have with the American media arises out of the fact that these extraordinary developments -- the dominant political movement advocating lawlessness and tyranny out in the open in The Wall St. Journal and Weekly Standard -- receive almost no attention.
While the Bush administration expressly adopts these theories to detain American citizens without charges, engage in domestic surveillance on Americans in clear violation of the laws we enacted to limit that power, and asserts a general right to disregard laws which interfere with the President's will, our media still barely discusses those issues.
They write about John Edwards' haircut and John Kerry's windsurfing and which political consultant has whispered what gossip to them about some painfully petty matter, but the extraordinary fact that our nation's dominant political movement is openly advocating the most radical theories of tyranny -- that "liberties are dangerous and law does not apply" -- is barely noticed by our most prestigious and self-loving national journalists. Merely to take note of that failure is to demonstrate how profoundly dysfunctional our political press is.
Mr. Greenwald; Yes, I agree there are a great many things that the dysfunctional national political press does a poor job of covering. The completely bogus, and utterly hypocritical nature of, the charges against World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz. The stupid and pointless objections to the Dubai Ports World deal. The tort litigation fiasco(es). The flaccid, corrupt uselessness of bodies like the U.N. and the World Bank, and the real cost of their uselessness on the poor nations who truly need an international market system that is not skewed against them. All of these stories are ones in which the Wall Street Journal and the Weekly Standard have been more or less lone voices of reason on stories about which there can be little factual dispute.
"Profoundly dysfunctional political press" indeed. But not as you think of it.
-
"Mishandling" the election...
[Read the article: Buying the silence of the U.S. attorneys]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]For the most part, there was no great investigation and/or prosecution arising out of the Washington state gubernatorial fiasco.
Most Republicans on the national scene looked on that election as just that; a "fiasco."
Many Washingtonians also felt that their election was a fiasco. There was lots and lots of well-warranted press scrutiny on that election. And some very serious charges raised.
What we do know for sure is that no one in Washington state was subjected to a witch-hunt on that election. And we also know that no one in the White House, and no one in the DoJ, ever foiled a valid investigation or prompted a bogus investigation. In Seattle, or anywhere else.
Now, as to whether that USA did indeed do a bad job of handling many of the details of the USA's office in Washington is a matter of judgment. And a person was elected to exercise that judgment. President Bush. The same guy who was elected to select an Attorney General to run the DoJ.
The allegations of illegality just keep getting more and more strained as time goes on in this phony, over-sold, trumped-up 'scandal.'
Is this really the best that Salon can come up with?
If I were a Republican in Seattle who was angry about Christine Gregoire's probably-stolen election, I'd be glad that there was a new USA.