Published Here: http://politicsdecoded.com/...
Washington is a very confusing place.
In the past week, the public has seen the story of waterboarding explode into literately hundreds of pieces. President Barack Obama and his cabinet have almost fatally contradicted themselves and the main stream media’s supposed unbiased analysis of the waterboardings have flown hand in hand — and in some cases have assumed the form of — their own talking heads. And of course, this all comes in great time of President Obama’s 100 day celebration.
So how can this all be politically interpreted? In some ways, it can’t.
As John Dickerson writes. we will never know exactly what Obama’s true position on torture is — what information he has given has been spun by the press — and what hasn’t will be surly kept inside the White House doors or spun again in his inevitable clean up speech.
And then there is the main stream media — the saga starting with former Vice President Dick Cheney’s interview with Fox News’s Sean Hannity. Cheney, calling for the release of Pentagon memos of the information received from torture, was covered in drastically different ways on both sides of the Main Steam Media. MSNBC ran the story with an obviously liberal slant, calling Cheney “unrestrained and unapologetic” as Fox News seemed to take it in stride, bypassing their customarily varying amount of slant to deliver an eerily bipartisan report. Talking heads on both sides then entered themselves into the torture saga, Hannity offering somewhat voluntarily to be waterboarded for charity, then MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann offering $1,000 for every second of footage.
So what does this all mean? Essentially, the public won’t be getting much truth until the CIA releases a full, unbiased report on exactly what happened — and, yes — contradictory to the President’s previous remarks, including names and much needed interviews of the people giving out these waterboardings.
What President Obama says in his clean up press conference (if he chooses to try one) will be very hard to politically dissect, as it will contain a careful amount of fluff that can be eaten up by the press and well as the public mixed in with limited amounts of truth. The press can choose to slant his remarks any way that they want, and that is exactly why they can’t be looked at directly for a final answer to the torture saga.
And thus, in a very rare instance, Washington won’t be the answer for the mass truth dig that is currently taking place — it will lie deep down in Langley, Virginia for as much time as Barack Obama wants it to.