|
Banned
|
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by stevo
|
stevo, I have not read the article you submitted above without any accompanying comment, but I have read the following two articles penned by the same author, George Neumayr, and I've posted links to better familiarize other members regarding his contributions to mainstream American political discourse. Other members here can read my post, with my intended point, supported by comments posted on the Bush government's own websites, in two it's designated speakers' (State Dept.'s Dr. Rice and DOD's Mr. Di Rita) own public statements, that illustrate that the two government branches cannot even publicly project a coherent, non-contradictory account of the Bush government's response to the now two year old allegations that U.S. Gitmo prison and military prison guards "flushed the Koran", yet the Bush government and it's chorus want us to believe that this is a new, Newsweek generated, baseless accusation.........and, in comparison, other TFP members can draw their own conclusion as to the weight and the relevance of the content of your posted article and the bias of it's author.
<a href="http://www.spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=7893">LAWLESS JUDGES By George Neumayr 3/16/2005</a>
<a href="http://www.spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=7841">CONSTITUTION KILLERS By George Neumayr 3/3/2005</a>
<a href="http://www.spectator.org/dsp_brass.asp">George Neumayr is the EXECUTIVE EDITOR of the American Spectator</a>
Quote:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Spectator
The American Spectator is a conservative-leaning American monthly magazine covering news and politics, edited by R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr. and published by the non-profit American Alternative Foundation. From its founding in the late 1960s until the late 1980s, the small-circulation magazine featured the writings of authors such as Thomas Sowell, Tom Wolfe, P.J. O'Rourke, George F. Will, Patrick J. Buchanan, and Malcolm Muggeridge, <h4>although today the magazine is best known for its attacks in the 1990s on Bill Clinton and its "Arkansas Project" to discredit the president, funded by billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife and the Bradley Foundation.</h4>
|
stevo, I have more Bush spokeperson "blather" for you to consider, and more commentary from less biased sources than your George Neumayr/American Spectator. The press is apparently wising up to the "set up" and the "knock down" that the government treated Newsweek to, via it's frequently employed policy of issuing statements that may only be attributed to "unnamed government sources" as they pass of these communiques as "disclosure".
Quote:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/relea...0050517-2.html
Office of the Press Secretary
May 17, 2005
.....Q With respect, who made you the editor of Newsweek? Do you think it's appropriate for you, at that podium, speaking with the authority of the President of the United States, to tell an American magazine what they should print?
MR. McCLELLAN: I'm not telling them. I'm saying that we would encourage them to help --
Q You're pressuring them.
MR. McCLELLAN: No, I'm saying that we would encourage them --
Q It's not pressure?
MR. McCLELLAN: Look, this report caused serious damage to the image of the United States abroad. And Newsweek has said that they got it wrong. I think Newsweek recognizes the responsibility they have. We appreciate the step that they took by retracting the story. Now we would encourage them to move forward and do all that they can to help repair the damage that has been done by this report. And that's all I'm saying. But, no, you're absolutely right, it's not my position to get into telling people what they can and cannot report.
***
Q: In context of the Newsweek situation, I think we hear the caution you're giving us about reporting things based on a single anonymous source. What, then, are we supposed to do with information that this White House gives us under the conditions that it comes from a single anonymous source?
MR. McCLELLAN: I'm not sure what exactly you're referring to.
Q: Frequent briefings by senior administration officials in which the ground rules are we can only identify them as a single anonymous source.
MR. McCLELLAN: Ken, I know that there is an issue when it comes to the media in terms of the use of anonymous sources, but the issue is not related to background briefings. But I do believe that we should work to move away from those kind of background briefings. ...
But there is a credibility problem in the media regarding the use of anonymous sources, but it's because of fabricated stories, and it's because of situations like this one over the weekend. It's not because of the background briefings that you may be referring to.
Q: What prevents this administration from just saying from this point forward, you will identify who it is that's talking to us?
MR. McCLELLAN: Well, in terms of background briefings, if that's what you're asking about, which I assume it is, let me point out that what I'm talking about there are officials who are helping to provide context to on-the-record comments made by people like the President or the Secretary of State or others. ... And as I said, one of the concerns is that some media organizations have used anonymous sources that are hiding behind that anonymity in order to generate negative attacks.
Q: But to our readers, viewers and listeners, I think it's all the same.
MR. McCLELLAN: And then you have a situation -- you have a situation where we found out later that quotes were attributed to people that they didn't make. Or you have a situation where you now learn that a single source was used for verifying this allegation -- and that source, himself, said he could not personally verify the accuracy of the report. ...
Q: With all due respect, though, it sounds like you're saying your single anonymous sources are OK and everyone else's aren't.
MR. McCLELLAN: No, I'm not saying that at all. In fact, I think you may have missed what I said. I think that we should move away from the use of -- the long-used practice of the background briefings, and we've taken steps to do that. ...
Q We also have incidents, like most recently with the energy speech, where it was before the president made his comments, it was all we had -- and we had to make the decision of whether to report this from anonymous sources who, frankly, in that case, we didn't even know who they were.
MR. McCLELLAN: In terms of that one, I mean, that was simply done because the president was making the announcement the next day. But, anyway, we've taken steps to address that matter..........
|
Quote:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6210240
• May 16, 2005 | 9:45 p.m. ET
The resignation of Scott McClellan (Keith Olbermann)
SECAUCUS — I smell something — and it ain’t a copy of the Qu’ran sopping wet from being stuck in a toilet in Guantanamo Bay. It’s the ink drying on Scott McClellan’s resignation, and in an only partly imperfect world, it would be drifting out over Washington, and imminently..........
......................Firstly, the principal reporter on the Gitmo story was Michael Isikoff — “Spikey” in a different lifetime; Linda Tripp’s favorite journalist, and one of the ten people most responsible (intentionally or otherwise) for the impeachment of Bill Clinton. Spikey isn’t just a hero to the Right — the Right owes him.
And larger still, in terms of politics, this isn't well-defined, is it? I mean Conservatives might parrot McClellan and say ‘Newsweek put this country in a bad light.’ But they could just as easily thump their chests and say ‘See, this is what we do to those prisoners at Gitmo! You guys better watch your asses!’
Ultimately, though, the administration may have effected its biggest mistake over this saga, in making the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs look like a liar or naïf, just to draw a little blood out of Newsweek’s hide. Either way — and also for that tasteless, soul-less conclusion that deaths in Afghanistan should be lain at the magazine’s doorstep — Scott McClellan should resign. The expiration on his carton full of blank-eyed bully-collaborator act passed this afternoon as he sat reeling off those holier-than-thou remarks. Ah, that’s what I smelled.
|
Quote:
http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/observer...ve_anyone.html
.....................Let me get this straight. Newsweek ran an allegation that the Pentagon had uncovered evidence supporting earlier allegations by detainees that Korans had been desecrated. It turns out that this specific allegation could not be stood up. So US officials cannot, after all, confirm that Korans were desecrated by other US officials in Guantanamo Bay.
The Pentagon however is quite prepared to accept that Korans were damaged in Guantanamo Bay, but suggests that the detainees themselves may have been tearing out pages for some unknown reason. This is what Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defence Lawrence Di Rita said in a briefing yesterday:
And as I said, the chairman has talked about instances here and there, about -- where there may have been the detainees themselves -- we've found several instances in logs -- again, these are not corroborated, either -- in detainee logs that suggest that detainees have, for whatever reason, torn pages from the Koran, et cetera.
And again, later in the same briefing.
We've found nothing that would substantiate precisely -- anything that you just said about the treatment of a Koran. We have -- other than what we've seen, that it's possible detainees themselves have done with pages of the Koran -- and I don't want to overstate that either because it's based on log entries that have to be corroborated.
Are we to suppose that the detainees also subject themselves to beatings, deprive themselves of sleep and force themselves to stand or kneel in sensory deprivation for hours on end?......................
|
|