Correspondence with a "Journalist", or "Does this Crucifix Make Me Look Fat?"

Okay, Atrios posted some content on this article by Anna Marie Slaughter today. It's a puff piece about how we all need to eschew partisanship and make everything work together, because, you know, the country really needs to pull together.

FLIP is not just one of Mrs. Wilson's boys.

Ms. Slaughter writes:

It's time, then, for a bipartisan backlash. Politicians who think we need bargaining to fix the crises we face should appear side by side with a friend from the other party -- the consistent policy of the admirably bipartisan co-chairmen of the 9/11 commission, Thomas H. Kean and Lee H. Hamilton. Candidates who accept that the winner of the 2008 election is going to need a lot of friends across the aisle -- not least to get out of Iraq -- should make a point of finding something to praise in the other party's platform. And as for the rest of us, the consumers of a steady diet of political vitriol, every time we read a partisan attack, we should shoot -- or at least spam -- the messenger.

Ms. Slaughter wrote this today. I am tired of the naive fixation on "bi-partisanship" that many of our journalists foster today. I wrote her back:

Subject: I'm sorry to disagree


But "partisanship" is not a problem. It is
bi-partisanship that got us into the quagmire in Iraq.
Everybody voted to give George Bush authorization to
make war on Iraq, and it was well known at the time
that war was his intention. Perhaps if Democrats had
been a little more partisan at the time, we would not
be in the position we are today.

I am an American person. I favor the Democrats
standing up to the GOP and their corporate welfare
programs. I am not tired of partisanship. Please do
not deign to speak for me in this matter.

Ms. Slaughter replied:

Subject: Your message

Thank you for your message. I do not disagree that we needed more partisanship in 2003. But today the only way out of the mess that Bush et al have gotten us into is not to play his game. We're going to have to stop finger-pointing and pull together.
Thanks for writing,
AMS

Gee whiz, Ms. Slaughter! That's a great ideer! If only we would all just quit acting so special, we could all get together and put on a show!! Here's my actual reply:

Subject: Re: Your message
I respectfully disagree with you, Ms. Slaughter.

Also, I do not expect us to become long time pen pals,
so I do appreciate you taking time to read and answer
my email.

I do not understand your answer, however. You do
realize that any piece of legislation or funding bill
that doesn't get filibustered by the GOP in the Senate
gets vetoed by the president, right? Your article
doesn't seem to call on the GOP to stop the
destructive tactics of demanding that the Senate and
House Democrats drop all attempts at oversight over an
administration that has proven itself inept at
everything except corruption.

That would leave one alternative, and that is for the
Dems to stop resisting the president, and give him
what he wants, because you know the president will not
budge.

If you accept this premise, then I do not see any
other avenue for the Dems to pursue than pressure the
GOP and president by giving them progressively harder
legislation and options. You don't raise a child by
getting on their side and negotiating a solution to
the question of what's bedtime. Conversely, you don't
treat an administration who has consistently lied and
ignored the law as if they are starting from the
center and a position of power.

It is incumbent upon the GOP to oppose the president.
If they choose his side, George Bush, Katrina, the
failed Iraq war, GOP lies, and Osama bin Laden will
all be running on the Republican side of the ticket in
every single congressional race next year.

Giving George Bush what he wants is George Bush's
game.

Enjoy the rest of your weekend.

johng

I thought I was being nice, and respectful of a busy journalist with an opinion. Apparently, I was merely keeping her from the next cocktail party, and cramping her style. Her reply:

Subject: Out Of Office AutoReply: Your Reply:

I am on sabbatical for the year in China. If you are writing on business relating to the Woodrow Wilson School please contact Acting Dean Nolan McCarty at [e-mail].  If you need to contact me on an important matter please write or call my assistant, Nancy Everett, at [e-mail] or 609/258-2492.

Oh, so that's how it's going to be, Ms. Slaughter? You post a piece of shit to the Washington Post, answer a few emails in a condescending tone, and whisk off to China? Well, here's my reply to the out of office reply:

Re: Out of Office AutoReply: Your Reply

I, too, am on sabbatical. Except I am on sabbatical
here in the America that alot of irresponsible
journalists have vacated their jobs from, and have
allowed democracy to die while they go to DC parties
and hope to make friends in the administration.  I am
only reading people that make sense. If you have
written a column that is bullshit, and only "wishes we
could all get along" because that is what our country
needs right now, please stop writing these columns
because you are wrong and destructive to our
democratic system.

Could you please throw your immense weight on the side
of good? thanks.

I don't expect her to listen to little old me. After all, I do not throw DC cocktail parties.

Peace.

•  Wrap the "Post" around your fist

  and punch me in the face.

  by JohnGor0 on Sun Jul 29, 2007 at 02:17:45 AM PDT

  •  You really are out of touch

    With the time - trusted and scienterrifc principles of modern day Professional Journalism.

    Take for example, the oncept of Balance,

    This is a tool whereby any Professional Journalist can create the much needed appearance of actually doing some work, without moving his/her poor sensitive derriere out of the ofic chair.

    This is how it works:

    If you have a full lede that shows evidence that one side or the other has facts on their side, bury at least half the lede. Facts take up too much space. Nasty things.

    Example: A big story is that an officer of the government diresctly lied to Congress, and Congress is investigating. This story is unbalanced and needs help. One side is clearly winning. This may make good reality, but its bad journalism.

    Write your headline and lede paragraph to concentrate on the process of investigation and how nasty it is. Substitute "Democrats" for Congress whenever you can.

    Important: DO NOT MENTION that the government official actually did lie from all appaerances. Don't list the details. Details take time, work, and column inches and would serve to give an unfair real picture.

    Using this and other modern journalism technique, almost anyone can be  journalist (cf: Murdoch owned media)!

    Understand now? Good,

    DFooK

    by deepfish on Sun Jul 29, 2007 at 03:34:22 AM PDT

•  Bipartisanship is BS

  You'll notice that the Republicans have only been whining about bipartisanship since the Dems took over Congress.
  Good letters, John.

  by skohayes on Sun Jul 29, 2007 at 05:09:27 AM PDT

•  As you've pointed out,

  the recent Establishment love for bipartisanship is designed to enable the Bush/Cheney regime to get away with their crimes and diss the Democrats for exercizing Congressional prerogatives.

  Recommended, for going to the source of Establishment propaganda and not giving in an inch to it.

  Now, if only all the Democrats in Congress had such backbones.  

  by devtob on Sun Jul 29, 2007 at 05:44:32 AM PDT

•  Moderates???

  From the WAPO article
  "above all with its choice of three seasoned moderates for important positions: Robert M. Gates as defense secretary, John D. Negroponte as deputy secretary of state and Robert B. Zoellick as World Bank president."

  Look at the Wikipedia entry for John Negroponte for his time as US Ambassador to Honduras under Reaganhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Negroponte
  The previous U.S. ambassador to Honduras, Jack Binns (who was appointed by President Jimmy Carter) made numerous complaints about human rights abuses by the Honduran military under the government of Policarpo Paz García. Following the inauguration of Ronald Reagan, Binns was replaced by Negroponte, who has denied having knowledge of any wrongdoing by Honduran military forces.

  In 1995, The Baltimore Sun published an extensive investigation of U.S. activities in Honduras. Speaking of Negroponte and other senior U.S. officials, an ex-Honduran congressman, Efraín Díaz, was quoted as saying:

     Their attitude was one of tolerance and silence. They needed Honduras to loan its territory more than they were concerned about innocent people being killed.

  Substantial evidence subsequently emerged to support the contention that Negroponte was aware that serious violations of human rights were carried out by the Honduran government, but despite this did not recommend ending U.S. military aid to the country. Senator Christopher Dodd of Connecticut, on September 14, 2001, as reported in the Congressional Record, aired his suspicions on the occasion of Negroponte's nomination to the position of UN ambassador:

     Based upon the Committee's review of State Department and CIA documents, it would seem that Ambassador Negroponte knew far more about government perpetrated human rights abuses than he chose to share with the committee in 1989 or in Embassy contributions at the time to annual State Department Human Rights reports.[2]

  Among other evidence, Dodd cited a cable sent by Negroponte, in 1985, that made it clear that Negroponte was aware of the threat of "future human rights abuses" by "secret operating cells" left over by General Gustavo Álvarez Martinez, the chief of the Honduran armed forces, after he was forcibly removed from his post by fellow military commanders in 1984.

  In April 2005, as the Senate confirmation hearings for the National Intelligence post took place, hundreds of documents were released by the State Department in response to a FOIA request by The Washington Post. The documents, cables that Negroponte sent to Washington while serving as ambassador to Honduras, indicated that he played a more active role than previously known in managing US efforts against the leftist Sandinistas. According to the Post, the image of Negroponte that emerges from the cables is that of an

     exceptionally energetic, action-oriented ambassador whose anti-communist convictions led him to play down human rights abuses in Honduras, the most reliable U.S. ally in the region. There is little in the documents the State Department has released so far to support his assertion that he used "quiet diplomacy" to persuade the Honduran authorities to investigate the most egregious violations, including the mysterious disappearance of dozens of government opponents.[3]

  The New York Times wrote that the documents revealed

     a tough cold warrior who enthusiastically carried out President Ronald Reagan's strategy. They show he sent admiring reports to Washington about the Honduran military chief, who was blamed for human rights violations, warned that peace talks with the Nicaraguan regime might be a dangerous "Trojan horse" and pleaded with officials in Washington to impose greater secrecy on the Honduran role in aiding the contras.

     The cables show that Mr. Negroponte worked closely with William J. Casey, then director of central intelligence, on the Reagan administration's anti-Communist offensive in Central America. He helped word a secret 1983 presidential "finding" authorizing support for the Contras, as the Nicaraguan rebels were known, and met regularly with Honduran military officials to win and retain their backing for the covert action.[4]

  Both papers based their stories on cables obtained by a Post FOIA request. George Washington University's National Security Archive writes of

     dozens of cables in which the Ambassador sought to undermine regional peace efforts such as the Contadora initiative that ultimately won Costa Rican president Oscar Arias a Nobel Prize, as well as multiple reports of meetings and conversations with Honduran military officers who were instrumental in providing logistical support and infrastructure for CIA covert operations in support of the contras against Nicaragua -"our special project" as Negroponte refers to the contra war in the cable traffic.[5]

  Robert Zoelick
  Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/...
  Two years earlier, Zoellick was one of the signatories (who also included Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Elliott Abrams, Zalmay Khalilzad, John R. Bolton, Richard Armitage, and Bill Kristol) of a January 26, 1998 letter to President Bill Clinton drafted by the Project for the New American Century calling for "removing Saddam [Hussein]'s regime from power."[25]

  An article written in December 2002 by Oxfam head of research, Kevin Watkins, titled Trade Hypocrisy: The Problem with Robert Zoellick [26], observed:

     Another area of trade policy in which the Bush administration exercises global leadership, superbly captured by the Zoellick manifesto, can be summarised in a single word, `hypocrisy'. Like the British colonialists that attracted the ire of the Boston tea party fraternity, the United States is a good old-fashioned mercantilist power, combining protectionism at home with a commitment to free trade overseas.
  Robert Gates
  http://en.wikipedia.org/...
  The final report of the Independent Counsel for Iran/Contra Matters, issued on August 4, 1993, said that Gates "was close to many figures who played significant roles in the Iran/contra affair and was in a position to have known of their activities. The evidence developed by Independent Counsel did not warrant indictment..." [7]

  [edit] Level of involvement in the Iran-Contra scandal

  Because of his senior status in the CIA, Gates was close to many figures who played significant roles in the Iran-Contra Affair and was in a position to have known of their activities. In 1984, as deputy director of CIA, Gates advocated that the U.S. initiate a bombing campaign against Nicaragua and that the U.S. do everything in its power short of direct military invasion of the country to remove the democratically-elected Sandinista government [8]. The evidence developed by Independent Counsel did not warrant indictment of Gates for his Iran-Contra activities or his responses to official inquiries.

  Gates was an early subject of Independent Counsel's investigation, but the investigation of Gates intensified in the spring of 1991 as part of a larger inquiry into the Iran/contra activities of CIA officials. This investigation received an additional impetus in May 1991, when President George H.W. Bush nominated Gates to be Director of Central Intelligence (DCI). The chairman and vice chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) requested, in a letter to the Independent Counsel on May 15, 1991, any information that would "significantly bear on the fitness" of Gates for the CIA post.

  Gates consistently testified that he first heard on October 1, 1986, from Charles E. Allen, the national intelligence officer who was closest to the Iran initiative, that proceeds from the Iran arms sales may have been diverted to support the Contras. Other evidence proves, however, that Gates received a report on the diversion during the summer of 1986 from DDI Richard Kerr.[9] The issue was whether the Independent Counsel could prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Gates was deliberately not telling the truth when he later claimed not to have remembered any reference to the diversion before meeting with Allen in October.

  Grand Jury secrecy rules hampered Independent Counsel's response. Nevertheless, in order to answer questions about Gates' prior testimony, Independent Counsel accelerated his investigation of Gates in the summer of 1991. This investigation was substantially completed by September 3, 1991, at which time Independent Counsel determined that Gates' Iran-Contra activities and testimony did not warrant prosecution.

  Independent Counsel made this decision subject to developments that could have warranted reopening his inquiry, including testimony by Clair E. George, the CIA's former deputy director for operations. At the time Independent Counsel reached this decision, the possibility remained that George could have provided information warranting reconsideration of Gates's status in the investigation. George refused to cooperate with Independent Counsel and was indicted on September 19, 1991. George subpoenaed Gates to testify as a defense witness at George's first trial in the summer of 1992, but Gates was never called.

  by danmac on Sun Jul 29, 2007 at 06:00:02 AM PDT

•  Tag correction

  "Slaughter" changed to "Anna Marie Slaughter"

  Tag guidelines instruct that when names are used both the first and last names should be included (with no titles), and in cases like the George Bushes - the middle initials are essential.

  Many people share the same last name.

  by SarahLee on Sun Jul 29, 2007 at 10:31:30 AM PDT