But seriously... when are people going to learn that all this administration ever does is lie? Like Nixon's crew, its reflexive for them.
Laura Rozen really breaks it down:
| Does something about this story line that Goss suddenly left because of his long-standing tension with Negroponte, his fraternity brother from Yale, over Goss fighting to hold CIA turf seem a bit canned to you?
Think back to yesterday morning. The top news after the Patrick Kennedy crash was that Bush's poll numbers were at an all time low, and that he was starting to see a real erosion of support from conservatives. Gas prices and immigration and Iraq. So Bush gets briefed by his staff that day, and decides: hey, let's fire Porter Goss. He's killing morale at the Agency. He's just seen as far too political. And John Negroponte is threatening to quit if he stays. He's given me an absolute ultimatum. Let's get this out today. Come on. That's just not how this White House has responded to these sorts of tensions in the past. They never move fast. They withstand criticism of appointments for months. They resist criticisms of unpopular agency heads for weeks (Michael "heckuva job" Brown), months (Snow), years (Rumsfeld). Think how much speculation there was in the press before Card's and McClellan's announced retirements, and how warm and friendly were those departures. It's hard not to believe that something moved very quickly on the radar this week that prompted an unusually quick decision. One that took a lot of people who would normally have been advised by surprise. (It's my understanding that the heads of Congressional intel committees were not informed in advance). |
Be sure to check out her update with comments from a "knowledgeable Hill staffer" as well.
UPDATE: Heh. Glenn Greenwald is pissed!
| Why is CNN allowing "senior administration officials" to pass along the official White House version of events while hiding behind a cloak of anonymity? All that does is enable the White House to use CNN as a venue to voice its propaganda while casting the appearance that it is the by-product of investigative journalism and therefore bestowed with credibility (as in: "CNN learned this from its secret leaking sources so it must be true"). The whole article does nothing but repeat White House spin as though it is established fact, relying exclusively on White House sources to do so, and never once even suggests, let alone details, that there are other possibilities to explain the resignation aside from the one the White House is giving.
By definition, that is not journalism. That is stenography. And the affinity which our national media has for the letter, and their equally intense aversion to the former, is so pervasive that it is hard to hold out hope that this will change. |
Although I agree with most of what he has to say here, one thing to keep in mind. Stenography passed off as journalism is as old as the republic itself. For god's sake, the media hid FDR's handicap and JFK's mistresses for years. I agree with Glenn - its wrong. But its important to remember that its not new.
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