NYTimes says it has learned hard way that Bush cannot be trusted

[kentuck]

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/18/opinion/18sun1.html

<snip>
President Bush defended the program yesterday, saying it was saving lives, hotly insisting that he was working within the Constitution and the law, and denouncing The Times for disclosing the program's existence. We don't know if he was right on the first count; this White House has cried wolf so many times on the urgency of national security threats that it has lost all credibility. But we have learned the hard way that Mr. Bush's team cannot be trusted to find the boundaries of the law, much less respect them.

Mr. Bush said he would not retract his secret directive or halt the illegal spying, so Congress should find a way to force him to do it. Perhaps the Congressional leaders who were told about the program could get the ball rolling.

[lala_rawraw]

1. No, it learned that it could make money...

I am so livid that I have been throwing things all day. The heard way... how many bodies is that, the hard way?

[Maven]

2. Oh, boohoo, and mea culpa. Mea culpa. Mea cu--(zzzziiippp)

Didn't they pull the same crap when, *somehow*, the media establishment acknowledged after a certain point that there were never any WMDs? "Woops!"

And when Judith Miller turned out to be a--gasp--neocon shill? "Sorry!"

Just how long does it take them to learn? Sorry, apology not accepted.

[ray of light]

5. apology will NEVER be accepted. They pissed on democracy

They played with election results by not giving people the TRUTH before 04 elections.

This is a call to IMPEACH the whole gang of dirty rotten scoundrels. WEAR ORANGE!

[in_cog_ni_to]

23. HEAR! HEAR! ray of light! The NYT is now a RAG IMCPO.

:grr:

[ray of light]

6. apology will NEVER be accepted. They pissed on democracy

They played with election results by not giving people the TRUTH before 04 elections.

This is a call to IMPEACH the whole gang of dirty rotten scoundrels. WEAR ORANGE!

[FreedomAngel82]

31. And don't forget

that Jayson Blair guy. Didn't he print a lot of false stories too?

[pennylane100]

3. The New York Times has come a long way

since the days of Judy Miller and her pro-administration propaganda.

[Al-CIAda]

16. You type as if that was ancient history.

If you are so eager and willing to forgive and forget, so will they. This is far too forgiving and far too soon to be aking a judgement such as this.

[pennylane100]

28. I never said I would forgive them.

You can come a long way and still be in the gutter, just not down the drain.

[mike_c]

4. this is rubicon time for congress....

Bush has gone too far. If congress fails to act against a concerted secret domestic spying program-- a presidential directive that thumbs it's nose at the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution-- it will never be able to rein in the headlong rush to fascism. If it does act, it cannot act lightly. Bush has crossed the line not only by breaking international law, but now by utterly disregarding U.S. law. Congress must now cross the line too, either with him, or against him.

[ray of light]

7. Look everyone it's time to WEAR ORANGE, PROTEST in front of

the MEDIA and it's time to lay down in front of the Congressman's doorsteps.

IT'S time to SAY NO MORE!!!

Share the facts of fascism around and keep the LTE's and the emails going. If you only change 2 people's minds that's two people we didn't have before.

[seafan]

14. You nailed it, mike_c. There is nothing more to add. n/t

[Justice Is Comin]

8. Strike two!! NO balls.

[rodeodance]

9. ah--Mr Yoo is at it again!!

But Mr. Bush secretly decided that he was going to allow the agency to spy on American citizens without obtaining a warrant - just as he had earlier decided to scrap the Geneva Conventions, American law and Army regulations when it came to handling prisoners in the war on terror. Indeed, the same Justice Department lawyer, John Yoo, who helped write the twisted memo on legalizing torture, wrote briefs supporting the idea that the president could ignore the law once again when it came to the intelligence agency's eavesdropping on telephone calls and e-mail messages.

"The government may be justified in taking measures which in less troubled conditions could be seen as infringements of individual liberties," he wrote.

Let's be clear about this: illegal government spying on Americans is a violation of individual liberties, whether conditions are troubled or not. Nobody with a real regard for the rule of law and the Constitution would have difficulty seeing that. The law governing the National Security Agency was written after the Vietnam War because the government had made lists of people it considered national security threats and spied on them. All the same empty points about effective intelligence gathering were offered then, just as they are now, and the Congress, the courts and the American people rejected them.

This particular end run around civil liberties is also unnecessary. The intelligence agency already had the capacity to read your mail and your e-mail and listen to your telephone conversations. All it had to do was obtain a warrant from a special court created for this purpose. The burden of proof for obtaining a warrant was relaxed a bit after 9/11, but even before the attacks the court hardly ever rejected requests.

[Zinfandel]

10. Gee, not a fucking moment too soon, wouldn't you say?

[rodeodance]

11. other things that Yoo has helped jr with!!

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/17/politics/17legal.html?th=&emc=th&pagewanted=print

December 17, 2005
News Analysis
Behind Power, One Principle as Bush Pushes Prerogatives
By SCOTT SHANE
WASHINGTON, Dec. 16 - .........

The administration's legal experts, including David S. Addington, the vice president's former counsel and now his chief of staff, and John C. Yoo, deputy assistant attorney general in the Office of Legal Counsel of the Justice Department from 2001 to 2003, have pointed to several sources of presidential authority.

The bedrock source is Article 2 of the Constitution, which describes the "executive power" of the president, including his authority as commander in chief of the armed forces. Several landmark court decisions have elaborated the extent of the powers.

Another key recent document cited by the administration is the joint resolution passed by Congress on Sept. 14, 2001, authorizing the president to "use all necessary and appropriate force" against those responsible for Sept. 11 in order to prevent further attacks.

Mr. Yoo, who is believed to have helped write a legal justification for the National Security Agency's secret domestic eavesdropping, first laid out the basis for the war on terror in a Sept. 25, 2001, memorandum that said no statute passed by Congress "can place any limits on the president's determinations as to any terrorist threat, the amount of military force to be used in response, or the method, timing and nature of the response."

[emulatorloo]

12. Um, I have learned the hard way that the NYT cannot be trusted

They should have reported this in 04 before the election. They should have pursued the Bush Black Box on his shoulder story. And then there is the Judy debacle.

[petgoat]

20. And they should have treated the Ohio election irregularities

story with the respect it deserves.

[killbotfactory]

13. Policitians can't be trusted?

Golly, who would have thought?!

[pinto]

15. I liked this one.. Many Times readers may also be learning the hard way.

There's probably thousands of NYT readers who have routinely trusted the government in matters of national security without second thoughts. There may also be many who view 9/11 as an unbroachable divide in the political timeline - there's "before" and there's "after". We saw VietNam that way once.

For them, the editorial may provide some context to the historical background - the Vietnam era abuses and the legal limits placed on the NSA then - and the shady legal ground Bush claims as justification in abrogating them today. If they haven't connected the dots on this one, it serves as a primer of sorts.


<snip>

But Mr. Bush secretly decided that he was going to allow the agency to spy on American citizens without obtaining a warrant - just as he had earlier decided to scrap the Geneva Conventions, American law and Army regulations when it came to handling prisoners in the war on terror. Indeed, the same Justice Department lawyer, John Yoo, who helped write the twisted memo on legalizing torture, wrote briefs supporting the idea that the president could ignore the law once again when it came to the intelligence agency's eavesdropping on telephone calls and e-mail messages.

"The government may be justified in taking measures which in less troubled conditions could be seen as infringements of individual liberties," he wrote.

Let's be clear about this: illegal government spying on Americans is a violation of individual liberties, whether conditions are troubled or not. Nobody with a real regard for the rule of law and the Constitution would have difficulty seeing that. The law governing the National Security Agency was written after the Vietnam War because the government had made lists of people it considered national security threats and spied on them. All the same empty points about effective intelligence gathering were offered then, just as they are now, and the Congress, the courts and the American people rejected them.

<end snip>

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/18/opinion/18sun1.html

[tgnyc]

17. The Times is full ofI shit. If the administration "has lost all

credibilty," then why did the editors accept the adminstration's assurances that there were no legal issues in deciding not to report the story for a year?

The Times got caught in bed with BushCo, again. They trying to backtrack; it is not working.

More thoughts at http://intelligencesquad.blogspot.com/2005/12/all-news-thats-cleared-by-george-bush.html

[dutchdemocrat]

18. delete... wrong thread

n/t

[DELUSIONAL]

oh well duh -- any sane person should have known not to trust bushie

[Protagoras]

19. Some people have known this about the NYT

and WP for a long time now. They don't serve the public. They aren't a "liberal media outlet" they are an arm of corporate industry. They do what they do for the almighty dollar. They do what they do to provide aid and comfort to those who sponsor them. But those saying this prior to Blair, Miller, and now an Election skewing year long stifling of the truth were labelled nuts and extremists.

NC and HZ probably wish they were wrong on this but they ain't.

[FredStembottom]

21. They could have saved THOUSANDS of LIVES!

Corrupt, compromised, infiltrated, evil bastards - with access to everything and more that we have here at DU - and, yet, the NYT wouldn't simply publish enough truth to save those lives!

The NYT should be e-mailed a barrage of pictures of the bomb-mutilated little children of Iraq - over and over. They should then be asked if they think that feigning child-like innocence and surprise at the evil ways of the Bush admin. is enough to make up for enabling the events that blew apart the real, live children of Iraq!

:mad:

[tinfoilinfor2005]

22. OK, NYT. If you really want to make amends, take the last sentence

in the second paragraph off of your opinion page, and make it your headline tomorrow, with bright and big letters:

WE HAVE LEARNED THE HARD WAY THAT BUSH'S TEAM CANNOT BE TRUSTED TO FIND THE BOUNDARIES OF THE LAW, MUCH LESS RESPECT THEM.

Then maybe we'll talk.

[Peace Patriot]

24. This is very strong language from the Times, in effect calling for Bush

to back down or be impeached, and I think it would be a good idea to carefully consider what is going on here--and not just react with "apology not accepted" or whatever--anger at the Time's role in the war. I myself am infuriated at what the Times has done to us and to the Iraqis; also at their collusion with other news organizations in doctoring of the exit polls late on election day 2004 (which hid strong evidence of a Kerry win). (In effect, they committed the crime of preventing change.)

Anyway, consider this language:

"...this White House has cried wolf so many times on the urgency of national security threats that it has LOST ALL CREDIBILITY." (emphasis added)

"...Mr. Bush's team CANNOT BE TRUSTED to find the boundaries of the law, much less respect them." (emphasis added - I mean, this is just an incredible statement.)

"...(Bush won't) halt the illegal spying, so Congress should find a way TO FORCE HIM TO DO it." (emphasis added)

This editorial may have been long planned, as a followup to their release of the Bush-spying-on-the-US information. Both things--the release of that info, and the followup editorial--have a mysterious edge to them--like, why now? (The spy info is a year old.)

Why would the NYT suddenly lose faith in the Bush junta's ability to prosecute a war in the Middle East that is as much the NYT's war as it is Bush's? I suspect that's what may be behind the NYT getting all huffy about their Neo-Con buds spying on war protesters and Democrats (surely that's what the Bushites were/are up to--with maybe some personal enemies thrown, enemies/whistleblowers re Cheney, or Chevron, who knows? We can be certain, though, that it was NOT for the "safety of the American people.").

If they want Bush impeached, they have therefore lost faith in the junta about the war--or they have some other even more ulterior motive.

I have several more cynical, possible interpretations of this startling editorial than that the NYT is merely trying to regain some credibility with the public.

Scenario 1. Judith Miller spied for Israel and her bosses at the NYT are implicated. Cheney, Rumsfeld, Bolton, somebody has the goods on them. The NYT wants to discredit and get rid of Bush & Co. so that Bush & Co. cannot use whatever goods they have on the NYT with any credibility themselves. (Who would believe, say, an impeached Bush or Cheney, or their cohorts, if they tried to further smear the Times?)

Scenario 2. Judith Miller had something to do with David Kelly's death (the Brits chief WMD expert who was whistle-blowing to the BBC about the "sexed up" pre-war intel in late May 2003 and turned up dead, under highly suspicious circumstances, four days after Plame was outed; then, four days after his death, after his computers and offices were searched, Novak went on to out the entire Brewster-Jennings counter-proliferation network--I am fairly convinced there is a connection). Miller's bosses know about this; so do the Bushites. Same thing: fear, blackmail, extortion are at work; NYT trying to head them off at the pass.

Scenario 3. And other scenarios involving Miller, whom the Times recently dumped. She may wish to retaliate, and, as resident Neo-Con and "Mati Hari," and Bush Cartel/Pentagon propagandist, until recently, she has likely developed a dossier on the Times.

Scenario 4. Some other scenario of the same kind; the NYT trying to head something off, cover themselves in some way. (There are also the AIPAC/Franklin spy case (spying for Israel), possibly connected to Treasongate (in fact very likely connected to it); dirty connections to Chalabi (Miller's "source"); dirty connections to whatever the "Rome group" was up to (not just forging nuke docs, but planning to plant actual nukes in Iraq--to be "found" by Miller?; etc.)

Scenario 5. Continuing and expanding the war in the Middle East. Bush & co. were good as "the hammer" (completely unscrupulous about lying, and other crimes, including torture and mass murder), but NOT good as administrators of the new US Roman Empire. For that, they need the Democrats, to get costs under control, to get a military Draft (Bush can't do it), and to get things ready for "Gulf of Tonkin II" (the manufactured incident that will draw the US into Iran and Syria). The Bush Cartel may not want to be booted out of power (ahem). So the Times has to get them impeached.

In none of these scenarios is the NYT operating above-board and with any honesty, in the current circumstance. They are all devious. And we have no reason to believe anything else of them--except perhaps the reporters' rebellion against the owners/editors on the Miller matter (if the stories we read about it are true). Is the NYT under a reforming influence of reporters who want to do their jobs? Trying to regain their rep from their "Pentagon Papers" days? That could be part of it, I guess. But the Miller thing was so bad, it is nearly impossible not to interpret their current actions as underhanded.

Several of the scenarios could be true at once: they're covering something up or trying to head something off, AND they are in cahoots with the War Democrats to reconfigure things in Iraq, get more troops over there, and proceed to Iran and Syria--after a brief period to calm things down a bit on the home front (before they propose the Draft). These are things Bush and the Repubs cannot do, they are so discredited in every way (financial scandals, competence scandals, treason, trillion dollar deficit, you name it).

Unfortunately, that's how I read the recent Murtha event. He wants to pullback to Kuwait or Qatar, where we wait for what? For the Shias and Kurds to wipe out the Sunnis, THEN we make our move? I don't trust the War Democrats any more than I trust the NYT. And, let me tell you, that comes from long experience--from way back in 1964, when I cast my first vote for president for the "peace candidate," LBJ--and got upwards of 2 million slaughtered Southeast Asians and over 55,000 dead US soldiers in exchange for my faith in the Democratic Party and their word.

And they're already grooming Hillary Clinton to be their chosen candidate (and our only choice). I've seen that coming for a while. No true peace candidate or populist will be permitted to be the Dem candidate. We can put up a noble fight about it, as we should. But we cannot win. It's becoming pretty clear that the corporate-run electronic voting system, with its 'trade secret,' proprietary programming code, and lack of audit/recount controls, was put into place with the complicity of the War Democrats because it favors them, as well as Bushites, not to have transparent elections. And they both wanted this war.

Do I think we should split the Party over this? Absolutely not. I prefer them cozening the American people, rather than putting us in concentration camps, and secret torture chambers in Poland. Call me a sissy. But that's about what our 'choice' amounts to. I still have hope that we can reform the election system under Hillary. Let's hope I'm right. I don't think she's all bad, just after the main chance. With peace and its brother, populism, ruled out, she can't get into the White House unless she favors large military budgets and war. And we have no hope of election reform under the Republicans (unless the Repub Party does a one-eighty.) I think we should support Hillary to the hilt, once she's 'chosen,' appeal to her progressive roots for election reform, and keep working on it at the state/local level, until we get our country back.

As for the NYT, in the hope that they are a mixed bag, and not just hopeless warmongers and traitors, write them an LTE. It can't hurt.

-----

Note: Rep. Russ Holt has a very good bill in the House, HR 550, that would bring the corporate privatization of our election system to a halt, and reverse it. It's because of Democrats like him that I'm still a Democrat, lo these 40 years. Sign his petition at: http://www.rushholt.com/petition.html

[Cleita]

25. It's seems to me Bush has committed crimes against US citizens

on their own land. I say he should be arrested by the police or sheriff like any other criminal. Who would have jurisdiction over the White House or Capitol Hill? Maybe US Marshalls? Impeachment would be nice too.

[kentuck]

26. And Bush has accused them of leaking top secret information....

that will hurt the war on terror and make us less safe. They could not have liked those charges?

[RazzleDazzle]

27. One problem, an appalling one:

their JOB as the 4th Estate was to never ever think Bush could be trusted in the first place. Thus this is only an admission of their further, deeper failing.

[FreedomAngel82]

29. What I want to know

is why did the NYTimes not report this when they first found out?! What the hell were they thinking?!

[Ouabache]

32. It appears they found out in the run up to the election

There seems to have been a DEAL to sit on it for a year.

[Marr]

30. Real journalists don't need to "learn" not to trust politicians.

But the NYT no longer employs journalists.

[newspeak]

33. It's amazing it took the Times so long

since Sen. Jeffers knew exactly who and what Bush is when Bush was selected. That's why Jeffers went Independent, he knew.