Letters to the Editor
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So make the call ...
Glenn, have you sought comment from Mukasey, DOJ, or anyone else in the White House?
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Who could have imagined...
... that Bush would appoint another liar as attorney general?
Nice job, Congressional Democrats.
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Congratulations, Glenn.
Getting Hamilton to come out with a clear statement is a big breakthrough. Let's hope that the press outside of Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann picks it up.
Have you considered something as straightforward as a press release through one of the services like PR Newswire? It's a few hundred bucks, but they send it directly to the major press outlets and maybe some of the lazier scribes will pick it up at that point. You could couple the Mukasey quote with the Hamilton quote and then offer a few sentences from your post framing the question of how the conflicting statements can be resolved.
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Imagine it was Janet Reno...
Imagine the firestorm that would have erupted if, several years after Waco, Janet Reno had suddenly brought up incriminating phone calls made by David Koresh, and, teary eyed, used those calls as justification for the siege.
She would have been eviscerated by the Old Media outlets and the Limbaugh Brigade alike. She would have been forced to resign in shame.
Nothing like that will happen to Mukasey. He will slide right on through the next eight months, along with his boss, and will never be called to task for his despicable attempt to re-write history.
The media have utterly failed in their duty.
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Time to Crank It Up
We got to start building some momentum on the airwaves. To achieve MSM coverage requires starting with the reliable sources: Olbermann (who has given some time but needs to take it up a notch), Maher (who I was disappointed didn't mention it last Friday), Stewart and Colbert.
I'm posting on all their blogs, as well as Clinton and Obama. High profile people (no disrespect to Glenn or Rachel Maddow) have to start putting this issue up front and center. I'm going to start challenging all of the above to invite Glenn on their shows as well.
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This may be going out on a limb...
I think its obvious what Mukasey was up to. His statement fits in neatly with the Bush admin's crap about how FISA needs to be revised because it couldn't prevent 9-11. But there is a danger in pursuing this one statement too passionately.
If you look at the quote, it seems reasonable that Mukasey could argue, in his defense that he was speaking figuratively. The previous statement about Iraq is hypothetical, "the call we really want to know about." Then "that's the call we didn't know about." before 9-11. He could mean in all of the years before 9-11--of course, he would argue that anyway. thea call. Its obvious that he's making the whole thing out of whole cloth, but he could argue that he was speaking in figurative terms. I don't think his comment is blatant enough, or that your argument is strong enough to keep pursuing it like this. It was certainly very misleading. But I think he could argue quite well that he referred to a hypothetical situation in the past, just as he was referring to a hypothetical situation in the present.
Officials "shouldn't need a warrant when somebody with a phone in Iraq picks up a phone and calls somebody in the United States because that's the call that we may really want to know about. And before 9/11, that's the call that we didn't know about. We knew that there has been a call from someplace that was known to be a safe house in Afghanistan and we knew that it came to the United States. We didn't know precisely where it went."
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Whoa did I get my tags mixed up...
sorry
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Nominate a Journalist
Good Going! This is the type of straight answer we need and I'm glad you didn't give up until you got one Glenn.
Now to find a journalist. Any journalist? Are there any real ones left? With some degree of guts, credibility and an editor that will let them run this story no matter how it turns out?
Is there one that we could all jointly pester *nicely* of course, to pursue this story?
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It is clear that journalists now have both a clear cause & clear path to report on...
...Obama's bowling skills.
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Thank you Glenn, Mr. Greenwald. Thank you for holding Mukasey accountable.
These so called leaders walk around lying and claiming to speak for Americans when just the opposite is true but seldom does anyone in the media refuse to let them get away with it. Therefore they continue doing it with no regard as to consequences. Thanks to you Mukasey has been outed in a public manner which should bring to him all the disrespect he so richly deserves. Made my day and week and month. Thanks again. You are much appreciated.
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There's a very good reason not to report this
It's about something that happened in the past. Reporters only concern themselves with the future, or something like that. That's if I understood my colleague Dan Drezner correctly.
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That's what I love about 9-11
So here's this tremendous terrorist attack which takes place on a clear day (cause you can see forever then) in the middle of the biggest city in a country with the most advanced forensic technology, and the most highly developed forensic powers in the world, and after this many years, we still don't know enough about it to have any but fruitless, bootless discussions.
Just shows what quick action at the crime scene can do. It means everything to success.
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And...
...it's pretty obvious that public officials feel free to use, and keep using the "fantasy 9-11" in their heads as a basis for policy. Or are facets of the cinematic treatment of 9-11 leaking back into the discourse, having become fact?
Was that "call from the safe house" in the film version?
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isn't it rather urgent that this be resolved?
I'm not so sure.
I have it on good authority that Mukasey is capable of breaking 100 bowling lefty even though he normally right handed. Obviously someone who clearly resembles so many other average American bowlers could not be expected to remember whether that story he heard regarding the phone call from Afghanistan appeared in a NIE or the National Enquirer.
There is, after all, only so much time in a day.
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Apples and Oranges
"We knew that there has been a call from someplace that was known to be a safe house in Afghanistan and we knew that it came to the United States. We didn't know precisely where it went."
I see nothing figurative in the above statement, which is declarative. The prior statement about "the" call was in regards to not needing a warrant (which you don't) when someone in Iraq calls someone in the U.S. To recap:
Officials "shouldn't need a warrant when somebody with a phone in Iraq picks up a phone and calls somebody in the United States because that's the call that we may really want to know about. And before 9/11, that's the call that we didn't know about.
I see these statements as addressing two separate issues. How can you not know about a call (the figurative example) while also knowing about a call (the declarative example) and say they are the same thing?
He may be trying to link the two, but saying he meant a declarative statement was figurative is ludicrous, especially for a highly respected judge who is now THE TOP ATTORNEY IN THE COUNTRY.