Jack Kelly Sunday

In this week's Post-Gazette, there's another column by Jack Kelly that clearly shows, yet again, that no one over there on the Boulevard of the Allies adequately fact-checks Jack Kelly.

But then again, we've known this for years.

It's made all the more delicious when the smaller headline below the main headline (I'd love to thus call it a "neckline" but I've been told it's called a subhead) reads:

They’re lying about GOP foreign policy

Yea but Jack's got some credulity issues of his own in this column.  For example, his first paragraph:

Rand Paul, who will likely run for president as a stay-at-home Republican, went to Guatemala recently and performed eye surgeries as a means of displaying his foreign-policy bona fides,” wrote New Yorker editor and Barack Obama hagiographer David Remnick. “Was Bashar al-Assad, Syria’s ophthalmologist-in-chief, impressed?”

Now about that term, "hagiographer" - what does Jack mean by saying that David Remnick is an "Obama hagiographer"?  Merriam Webster defines hagiography as:

a book about someone's life that makes it seem better than it really is or was : a biography that praises someone too much

If that's the case, then I suppose Jack hasn't actually read the Remnick piece he so dutifully quotes. It begins with this:

Even the most forgiving judge of Barack Obama, one willing to overlook his preference for chipping onto the sunlit greens of Martha’s Vineyard rather than brooding in the fluorescent glare of the Situation Room, must admit that the President has sometimes been a thick-tongued steward of his own foreign policy.

Yea, that's hagiography, alright.

But once you dig deeper into Jack's main complaint in this section of his column, you'll see the extent of his awkward relationship with the truth.  Jack's complaint:

It’s kosher to criticize Sen. Paul’s foreign policy views, to suspect expediency motivated the recent shift in them and to consider his inexperience in foreign affairs a handicap. (I have, I do and I do.) But to attack him for his charitable work is vile.

I'm not exactly sure that Remnick is attacking Paul simply for his charitable work.  Looks more like he's pointing out Paul's use of the charitable eye-surgeries as some sort of political photo-op (in this case, to bolster some sort of foreign policy credibility).  And that is something to at the very least be cynical about.

But if the trip wasn't about politics then why did Senator Paul travel to Guatemala with a political entourage?  From the Washington Post:

The doctor and his patients greeted each other beneath the gaze of three television cameras, three photographers, six reporters, a political aide, two press secretaries, conservative activist David Bossie...

And:

...Bossie’s presence cast aside any doubt that the trip was merely an opportunity for the senator to reconnect with his medical roots. Bossie is the founder of Citizens United, the group whose lawsuit led the U.S. Supreme Court to rule that corporations and labor unions can spend unlimited funds on direct advocacy for or against political candidates. A documentary filmmaker who has shadowed Paul before, he traveled here with his daughter and a film crew equipped with lights, cameras and an unmanned aerial drone for overhead shots. Bossie said little about his plans, other than that his footage would appear in a film either about Paul or an issue of importance to him.

Paul’s entourage included family members and friends; his top political aide, Doug Stafford; and political ad makers Rex Elsass and Rick Tyler, the latter a former close aide to Newt Gingrich. The ad team was joined by a Spanish-speaking colleague who was responsible for trailing behind another film crew with legal release forms that needed to be signed by anyone interviewed or appearing in their footage. It wasn't clear whether Guatemalans presented with the release forms understood what they were signing.

So it wasn't a purely charitable trip then, was it?  Now go back and look at how Jack Kelly characterized Remnick's description of the trip.  Wouldn't it have been much better to know more of the details before reading that it was "vile"?  That's the set of facts that Jack left out - the stuff he doesn't think you need to know about before reading his opinion.

Then there's this:

Mr. Remnick also mocked New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie for saying Russian President Vladimir Putin wouldn’t push him around the way he has President Obama and snarked at former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s prediction that the invasion of Iraq would be a “cakewalk.” [Emphasis added.]

Mr. Remnick’s snark is sustained only by his ignorance of or disregard for facts.

And:

The invasion of Iraq was a cakewalk. Saddam Hussein’s regime was ousted 21 days after the U.S. coalition attacked. Just 172 coalition soldiers were killed. The Six Day War between Israel and Arab states in 1967 probably was the only victory in the history of warfare won more swiftly or easily.

The troubles came during the occupation afterward, which Mr. Rumsfeld — who wanted the United States to set up a coalition government and then leave — had opposed.

So Jack is saying that Rumsfeld wasn't wrong to say that the invasion would be "a cakewalk" right? Jack then foils that with Rumsfeld's opposition to the Iraq occupation.  So Remnick must be wrong, right?

But this is what Remnick actually wrote:

Chris Christie insists on the efficacy of big men and tough talk—the Great Jersey Guy theory of history. Recently, he suggested that Vladimir Putin would not dare sponsor the bloody destabilization of Ukraine were Christie in charge. “I don’t believe, given who I am, that he would make the same judgment,” Christie said at a meeting of Republican activists. “Let’s leave it at that.” Christie is trying to bone up on world affairs by reading Kenneth Adelman’s book on Ronald Reagan. Adelman was the cheerful adviser to Donald Rumsfeld who insisted that the U.S. invasion of Iraq, in 2003, would be a “cakewalk.” [Emphasis added.]

But let's be sure.  Was it Rumsfeld or Adelman who said the invasion would be "a cakewalk"?

Guess.  From The New Yorker:

More than a year ago, Kenneth Adelman, a prominent national-security official in the Reagan Administration who now serves part time, with Richard Perle, on the Pentagon’s Defense Policy Board, wrote a piece for the Washington Post. Its title was “Cakewalk in Iraq,” and its payoff went like this: “I believe demolishing Hussein’s military power and liberating Iraq would be a cakewalk. Let me give simple, responsible reasons: (1) It was a cakewalk last time; (2) they’ve become much weaker; (3) we’ve become much stronger; and (4) now we’re playing for keeps.” [Emphasis added.]

So whose "ignorance of or disregard for facts" are we talking about when Jack said (incorrectly) that Rumsfeld said the invasion of Iraq was (and Jack even used the quotation marks) "a cakewalk"?

Doesn't anyone at the Post-Gazette fact-check Jack Kelly? Evidently not.

When Scaife News Sources Collide

First there's the Scaife-Funded Heritage Foundation on the "connection" between the killing of Osama bin Laden and the "enhanced interrogations" of the Bush Administration:

A senior official who briefed the press early this morning explained that “detainees in the post-9/11 period flagged for us individuals who may have been providing direct support to bin Laden and his deputy, [Ayman al-] Zawahiri, after their escape from Afghanistan.”

He continued: “One courier in particular had our constant attention. Detainees gave us his nom de guerre, or his nickname, and identified him as both a protégé of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of September 11, and a trusted assistant of Abu Faraj al-Libbi, the former number three of al-Qaeda who was captured in 2005.” The United States obtained this information four years ago, the official stated.

One more crucial fact: According to the “detainees” (note the plural), this individual was “one of the few al-Qaeda couriers trusted by bin Laden.”

Think about that: This lead was developed during the Bush Administration, most likely from al-Qaeda associates picked up and transferred to Guantanamo and subject to interrogations that critics have repeatedly deemed to be pointless in terms of intelligence value. Whether these detainees remain at Guantanamo is an open question.

And then, a paragraph later:

For years, we have heard that strategic interrogation of detainees at Guantanamo was worthless, that the information is (at best) stale and almost certainly of dubious reliability. The most strident call such interrogations illegal.

So, yes. Torture led to the intel that led to the bullets that killed Osama bin Laden.

Then there's Salena Zito, columnist at the Scaife-owned Tribune-Review:

Commandos killed bin Laden in a raid in Abbottabad, Pakistan, that began with the intelligence community identifying his courier last year and tracking his movements in the months leading up to Sunday.

In the past decade, critics assailed the CIA for not connecting the dots before the 9/11 terror attacks, for failing to capture bin Laden and for using enhanced interrogation techniques.

Remember, the "enhanced interrogation" was water boarding. Though Zito is unsure what connection there is between Abbottabad and waterboarding:

It is unclear whether interrogations played a role in identifying the bin Laden courier whose trail led to the terror leader's door.

Then there's the Scaife-owned Newsmax, interviewing none other than Don Rumsfeld himself:

Asked if harsh interrogation techniques at Guantanamo Bay played a role in obtaining intelligence on bin Laden’s whereabouts, Rumsfeld declares: “First of all, no one was waterboarded at Guantanamo Bay. That’s a myth that’s been perpetrated around the country by critics.

“The United States Department of Defense did not do waterboarding for interrogation purposes to anyone. It is true that some information that came from normal interrogation approaches at Guantanamo did lead to information that was beneficial in this instance. But it was not harsh treatment and it was not waterboarding.”

So which is it? Waterboarding led to Abbottabad or didn't it? They really should get their stories straight.

Waterboarding's still illegal, though.

File this under: Things We Already Knew

A new report says that the Bush Administration let Osama bin Laden slip from our grasp in Tora Bora.


How Bush escaped criticism for so long is explained here.
.

Uh-Oh.

From Time:

...top Bush administration officials could soon face legal jeopardy for prisoner abuse committed under their watch in the war on terror.

In early December, in a highly unusual move, a federal court in New York agreed to rehear a lawsuit against former Attorney General John Ashcroft brought by a Canadian citizen, Maher Arar. (Arar was a victim of the administration's extraordinary rendition program: he was seized by U.S. officials in 2002 while in transit through Kennedy Airport and deported to Syria, where he was tortured.) Then, on Dec. 15, the Supreme Court revived a lawsuit against Donald Rumsfeld by four Guantánamo detainees alleging abuse there—a reminder that the court, unlike the White House, will extend Constitutional protections to foreigners at Gitmo. Finally, in the same week the Senate Armed Service Committee, led by Carl Levin and John McCain, released a blistering report specifically blaming key administration figures for prisoner mistreatment and interrogation techniques that broke the law. The bipartisan report reads like a brief for the prosecution—calling, for example, Rumsfeld's behavior a "direct cause" of abuse. Analysts say it gives a green light to prosecutors, and supplies them with political cover and factual ammunition.

While it would be SO NICE to see the "Donald Rumsfeld per-walk", however:

Constitutionally, Bush could pardon everyone involved in formulating and executing the administration's interrogation techniques without providing specifics or naming names. And the pardon could apply to himself. Such a step, however, would seem like an admission of guilt and thus be politically awkward.

We'll see.

Questions? Comments? Remarks? Drop me a line.

In Case You Missed It

Yes, there was torture and no, it wasn't just a few "bad apples."

The path leads all the way back to Donald Rumsfeld.

From the NYTimes:

A report released Thursday by leaders of the Senate Armed Services Committee said top Bush administration officials, including Donald H. Rumsfeld, the former defense secretary, bore major responsibility for the abuses committed by American troops in interrogations at Abu Ghraib in Iraq; Guantánamo Bay, Cuba; and other military detention centers.

Here's the report, by the way. The first conclusion (p. 16) says:

On February 7, 2002, President George W. Bush made a written determination that Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions, which would have afforded minimum standards for humane treatment, did not apply to al Qaeda or Taliban detainees. Following the President’s determination, techniques such as waterboarding, nudity, and stress positions, used in SERE training to simulate tactics used by enemies that refuse to follow the Geneva Conventions, were authorized for use in interrogations of detainees in U.S. custody.

Waterboarding, my friends, is torture.

Conclusion 19 (p. 19) says:

The abuse of detainees at Abu Ghraib in late 2003 was not simply the result of a few soldiers acting on their own. Interrogation techniques such as stripping detainees of their clothes, placing them in stress positions, and using military working dogs to intimidate them appeared in Iraq only after they had been approved for use in Afghanistan and at GTMO. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s December 2, 2002 authorization of aggressive interrogation techniques and subsequent interrogation policies and plans approved by senior military and civilian officials conveyed the message that physical pressures and degradation were appropriate treatment for detainees in U.S. military custody. What followed was an erosion in standards dictating that detainees be treated humanely.

Torture approved by Rumsfeld.

Tell me again how the Bush Administration made everything better?