The anonymous source in the original Politico piece was the first thing I noticed.

pmorlan#14

Apr. 16, 2009 - 7:30 PM EST updated

A former top official in the administration of President George W. Bush called the publication of the memos unbelievable.

"It's damaging because these are techniques that work, and by Obama's action today, we are telling the terrorists what they are," the official said. We have laid it all out for our enemies. This is totally unnecessary. Publicizing the techniques does grave damage to our national security by ensuring they can never be used again even in a ticking-time- bomb scenario where thousands or even millions of American lives are at stake."

I wonder which former official made this fear mongering statement while cowardly hiding behind the cloak of anonymity? And why in the world did Politico quote them as an "anonymous" source?

pmorlan

http://wwwdemocracity.blogspot.com/

After I posted my comment I then noticed that someone beat me to it. So Mr. Allen was on notice about his shoddy journalism early on by his own readers. It was so glaring that two people noticed it in the first 15 comments. Pitiful

Working American#5

Apr. 16, 2009 - 7:03 PM EST

Who is "the former top official in the administration of George W. Bush"? Without an identity the comment is meaningless to me. Is it someone who has something to gain or lose by this decision? Some unnamed sources add insight, others are just trying to cover their butts.

I just read the Sullivan piece and noticed that it wasn't Sullivan who was the first to notice and comment on the anonymous source in Allen's piece. It was a Politico reader named Working American (see my previous post)

Sullivan wrote his piece on 4/16 at 9:44 p.m. and Working American wrote his/her comment on 4/16 @ 7:03 p.m. Unless Sullivan is on the West Coast and the 9:44 is west coast time??

I know it really doesn't matter much in the scheme of things but if Working American was first he/she should get credit.

Does anyone know if Sullivan is on the west coast?

You're right, Glenn. They ARE using the "looking forward" BS as a mantra. It reminds me of the Bush people saying over and over again...we don't torture. I wonder when they print the bumper sticker version of it?

I didn't find out about the Emanuel statement made on Sunday until later this morning. I even had to apologize to Rivkin and Casey on my blog today because I'd knocked them in a blog post for saying in their WSJ piece that the Obama administration concluded that they wouldn't prosecute Justice Dept. Officials. THAT was a tough apology to make and really ruined my day.

Seeing as how the Obama administration let us all down so badly today I ended up sending an email to Holder where I requested that he follow the rule of law...I then posted a 2nd blog entry to highlight my email to Holder and a request for everyone to send their own emails to him (link at sig)

It's been a very frustrating day to say the least. Who are these people who have stolen our country and how can we get rid of them? Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhh!

Am I correct that either the President or the Atty. Gen. can appoint a special prosecutor or is it just one or the other that may do this?

LOL, LOL, LOL, LOL

I just about spit my coffee out reading this post! Unbelievable!

Very interesting discussion, Glenn. Thanks for posting it. And by the way the Gregory video you linked to on Twitter was stunning in it's ignorance.

Our establishment media is unfortunately determined to cover torture as a conservative vs. liberal issue. I was watching MSNBC a few moments ago and they had two political strategists on to discuss torture - one left and one right. Political strategists for crying out loud. It's so infuriating that they just don't get it.

I did a post on my blog where I link to a number of rank and file conservative blog posts where the person who wrote the post was condemning torture and advocating for accountability but we never hear those conservative voices in our establishment media. I think once we do this issue will take off big time. But as long as the establishment media can continue to paint it as a political fight between Republicans and Democrats it will only inch along as each new bit of evidence is revealed.

A link to my blog post is at my sig. By the way one of the social conservatives whose post I link to in my blog calls the Republicans who advocate for torture - Rubber Hose Republicans. I thought that was a great description and I've begun using it.

Thanks for the great links, Glenn. And thanks for complimenting Marcy. She has done a fantastic job! If I wasn't unemployed I'd donate myself.

I think the establishment media has been particularly disgraceful covering the torture issue. I posted several blog posts lately about the media. One of them was about how they've ignored conservatives against torture in their effort to paint this a conservative vs. liberal issue.

http://democracity.blogspot.com/2009/04/best-kept-secret-in-washington.html

An earlier one tagged onto Glenn's post about Gregory's Meet the Press show from this past Sunday.

http://democracity.blogspot.com/2009/04/hiding-truth-from-public.html

I also posted a video yesterday from Morning Joe where Scarborough, Deutsch and Meacham sat around giving out wrong information and all agreeing multiple times that there should be no prosecutions. This is just one of the quotes from Meacham.

Meacham: I don't think we should be prosecuting people, uh, but I do think we should be finding out exactly what happened and why.

I titled that post - PATHETIC (for obvious reasons)

http://democracity.blogspot.com/2009/04/delusional-inside-beltway-torture.html