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Commentary Magazine - Contentions
Blaming Bush for Somalia
11.18.08 | Permalink | Comments Off

Martin Fletcher was feeling a terrible emptiness. With little more than a month left in George W. Bush’s presidency, opportunities to blame further global crises on the most accommodating scapegoat in history were growing thin. Then inspiration struck:
One other debacle should feature prominently . . .
I am referring to the Bush Administration’s intervention in Somalia [...]
Commentary Magazine - Contentions
Sanity Prevails
11.18.08 | Permalink | Comments Off

The netroots will love this:
Barack Obama’s incoming administration is unlikely to bring criminal charges against government workers who authorized or used harsh interrogation techniques during the George W. Bush presidency. Obama, who has criticized the use of torture, is being urged by some constitutional scholars and humans rights groups to investigate possible war crimes by [...]
Commentary Magazine - Contentions
Nukes for Easter!
11.18.08 | Permalink | Comments Off

Speaking at a MILCOM symposium in San Diego (MILCOM is a long-running policy conference on military and security issues), Director of National Intelligence Michael McConnell had this to say about Iran:
Let me close by just mentioning Iran. Iran is currently pursuing fissile material. We suspect - although we cannot prove - that Iran secretly desires [...]
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Another Hamas-Linked Islamic Charity
11.13.08 | Permalink | Comments Off

At some point, we might want to ask if there are any Islamic charities who aren’t financing Hamas: US cracks down on Islamic charity.

WASHINGTON – The Bush administration acted Wednesday against an Islamic charity suspected of helping to bankroll Hamas, the militant Palestinian group that the United States considers an international terrorist organization.

The Treasury Department’s action against the Union of Good means that any bank accounts or other financial assets belonging to the charity found in the United States will be frozen. Americans also are barred from making donations to the group, which the U.S. government alleged was created by leaders of Hamas to transfer money to Hamas.
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CBS to Rather: ‘Defies Logic and Common Sense’
11.07.08 | Permalink | Comments Off

CBS lawyers are scoffing at Dan Rather’s idiotic lawsuit, which claims that CBS’s independent investigation was a “sham.”

Dan Rather’s conspiracy theories about CBS make about as much sense as a two-story outhouse, the network says.

Rather and his old bosses were facing off in Manhattan Supreme Court yesterday, where the former Evening News anchor was seeking documents he says will prove his storied career there was sacrificed to appease the Bush administration. …

“We allege this was a sham investigation on be half of CBS so they could mollify the right” and get rid of Rather, who’d been a thorn in Bush’s side, Gold said.

In their court filings, CBS states, “Rather’s position defies logic and common sense.”

“Rather’s theory is that CBS News commissioned a costly panel, in order to criticize itself, exonerate Dan Rather, and give themselves cover for doing something that it had a contractual right to do anyway,” which is remove Rather from his anchor seat, the filing says. CBS lawyer Jim Quinn said that while the report found Rather did nothing wrong, it “excoriated CBS.”

“If that’s a sham, it’s the dumbest sham I’ve ever heard of,” Quinn said.

I actually agree partially with Rather here. It was something of a “sham,” but not because they were trying to “mollify the right.” It was a sham because it didn’t conclude what any objective observer could see was the truth—that the documents in question were obvious frauds. To admit that would have opened a bigger can of worms, and called into question CBS’s basic journalistic integrity.

Instead they issued a sort of “graywash,” that came to no firm conclusion about the veracity of the documents. This left the door open for other news media to continue pushing the falsehood that the memos were never really proven to be fakes — and saved them all from confronting the ugly truth, that these documents were intended to skew a presidential election at the last minute. It was nothing less than an attempted media coup.