Dana Priest on significance of Blair Memo: "Am I missing something?"

My question to her in the Post's on-line forum:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/discussion/2005/04/28/DI2005042800984.html

New York, N.Y.: Will the July 23, 2002 memo citing the "inevitability" of the Iraq war and the need to "fix the intelligence" that roiled the British election have any repercussions in the U.S.?

Dana Priest: Not that's I've seen so far. Am I missing something?


I sent this reply. I doubt it will be answered:


Re: the Blair memo, and your question "Am I missing something?"

It's interesting that this is front page news in Britain (which is, of course, in the middle of an election), which has only lost 87 service men and women in combat compared to the US's 1500. The anti-war movement was right: the hawks lied to get the US into war, and they lied about lying, and they're still lying. But there's a memo that shows that these are in fact lies.

That's what you're missing Dana. But don't feel alone. So are virtually all of your colleagues in the media. And you'll just go on missing it, I'm sure.

Thanks for telling her what she's missing..even though she's probably too dull to respond.

We need to keep up the pace writing these poor excuses for reporters, journalists, talkingheads..because someday it's going to turn around.

Washington Post intelligence reporter Dana Priest will be online Thursday, May 5, at 12:30 p.m. ET to discuss the latest developments in national security and intelligence.

Dana Priest covers intelligence and wrote "The Mission: Waging War and Keeping Peace With America's Military" (W.W. Norton). The book chronicles the increasing frequency with which the military is called upon to solve political and economic problems.


:eyes:

I don't see anything wrong with that question, that it deserves such a dismissive answer.

Dana Priest: The question wasn't about the substance of the memo. It was about the reaction it's getting here.




Thanks for the clarification. :eyes:

Dana's a little defensive, I wonder why. :-)

It's her whole class of professionals. The media elite. :eyes:

Ask her how she feels about the fact that Bush** betrayed her trust as a professional journalist.

NGU.

I don't know. They seem so fucking clueless about everything. Would they actually care about their own need to have accurate information, to not be used by the government when it wants to build a phony case? I don't know.

good at being a totally ignorant (rhymes with) NUT!

The only way the memo can "get a reaction" here is if the press does an accurate analysis of it and points out the obvious implications. Uninformed people cannot have a reaction.

Given that it's the responsibility of the WaPo and other print and broadcast media to do this careful analysis, what Dana is "missing" is that they're not doing their damn JOB. Instead, we're being flooded with fluff and nonsense, like runaway brides, American Idol scandals, Michael Jackson, and a firecracker someone exploded in a planter that's being hyped as "Blasts in Midtown".

"What am I missing?" Oh, this just makes me want to scream.

She can be quite brusque, but at least she takes some difficult questions.

Just paraphrasing here, but I asked her last June whether Tenet's resignation meant that he had lost Executive Priviledge protection. I wanted to know whether Priest thought that the former CIA Director might be compelled to answer questions about his apparent perjury to the 9/11 Commission. Tenet had testified repeatedly under oath that he had no meetings with Bush in the month and a half between the August 6 PDB and the date of the attack. Within hours of his testimony, the Agency called a press conference and announced that Tenet "misspoke." Tenet had in fact had eight face to face meetings with Bush in the weeks leading up to 9/11, according to the CIA spokespersons.

Dana's response was something to the effect that "It's now a bit late for Tenet to tell all he knows." I thought that was a bit trite, considering the importance that Tenet's perjury might have.

Oh, the CIA omitted to mention the Bush-Tenet meeting of August 24th that was reported on the White House website that day. I later wrote several article that got picked up on the topic. See, eg,: http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0406/S00153.htm

Nonetheless, no one in the major media, except Ms. Dowd, even tried to connect the dots. As Dowd points out, the FBI arrested the so-called 20th hijacker, Zacarias Moussaoui on August 17, the first of the dates Tenet "forgot". But, even that isn't the whole truth. In a previously overlooked August 25 White House transcript, the President referenced meeting with Tenet "yesterday" to discuss "a very important subject" at Bush's Crawford, TX ranch. < http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/08/20010825-2.html >

The fact is, Tenet, Rumsfeld, Rice, and and the newly appointed Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Myers were all present with the President on August 24. http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/08/20010824.html >

Here's the kicker: the Flt. 77 hijackers had been watchlisted on 8/23, the day before Bush had the previously undisclosed 6-hour roundtable with his national security team in Crawford. In a verbatim transcript, the President is quoted during an impromptu walking tour of Bush's Crawford, TX ranch that he had met the day before with CIA Director and newly appointed members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Defense Secretary Rumsfeld and National Security Advisor Rice were also present at a Presidential press conference in Crawford on the 24th, according to the White House press notice issued that day.

Tenet was never called to account for his misrepresention under oath. I'm afraid that Priest's matter of fact treatment of the former CIA Director's commission of a felony offense may have been well-founded in the ways of Washington under the Bush Administration. No accountability. They get away with murder every day.

:bounce:

than trite, ordinarily. But you do want to have a sense that the Post's intelligence reporter thinks deeply about intelligence. Is that too much to ask? :shrug:

By the way, she's no fool. She knows which side of the bread is buttered, and who owns the loaf.

One thing I'll say for the WP, their on-line Q&As are fairly assessible. Ask a decent question, and they'll respond. Briefly, and very much in their own way.

It is a great forum to interface with the media. Sometimes though I wonder if they just get sick of it, considering all the abuse they take. Not to excuse them, but to note the asymmetry of the exchanges.

everything. I selectively follow-up with an e-mail (press release length and style), if I think the reporter has the slightest real interest in the topic.

A couple months ago, I sent a long e-mail to Dan Froomkin, WP "White House Briefings" columnist. That got him interested enough that the next day he devoted an entire column and an on-line Q&A to the subject of Bush's Idiot remarks about "worthless" Treasury bills in the SS Trust Fund. He included part of my e-mail as one of the first questions in his Q&A, so I know he read it.

That e-mail to him started as a DU posting.

Of course, there was a buzz going on that led some other reporters to pick up on the story, but I hit him early in the game, and he picked up the ball and produced some good work.

The people working for the MSM aren't all entirely hopeless and hostile. Some are bloggers just like you or me, but get paid for it. Glad I don't have their editors and publishers looking over my shoulder.

His answers made me more of a skeptic about Gannongate than I was inclined to be. He seems like an unusually sympathetic reporter.

Yes, I think he was picked as their link to the bloggers because he really is interested in what we're saying. I worry for his future with The WaPo.

with the registery system. It probably didn't log him out. Now the way to double check it is to see how frequently other people's cards failed to log them out. Has anyone done that?

We could ask: http://www.conyersblog.us

Do you want to do this or should I?

:toast:

I'll explain to Conyer's office that you have been in communication with Froomkin and that's the info he wants. Can I give the staffers your contact info, if they ask for it?

Froomkin did not specifically say he wanted this info, by the way, and he didn't say it in conversation or correspondence with me. It was in one of his columns or on the chat very recently. Probably this week's chat, now that I think of it. He was asked the same question essentially that you asked me, and he speculated on the reason.

I asked him when the Gannon story broke about the procedure for getting a day pass. I was expecting him to say it was very elaborate and difficult (which, I'd heard, the Congressional day pass procedure was). He surprised me by saying it was a matter of supplying your name, your Soc. Sec. # and the name of your media organization, then showing up the next day and seeing if you were on the list.

Anyway, if they want to contact me I can PM you the contact info, or I'll just go to their site myself.

But, if you didn't actually have talk to Froomkin on that specific question, I'll just say you've had contact with him on Gannon, and that you know he's looking for that info. Is that fair enough?

Thanks for the offer.

New York, N.Y.: Will the July 23, 2002 memo citing the "inevitability" of the Iraq war and the need to "fix the intelligence" that roiled the British election have any repercussions in the U.S.?

Dana Priest: Not that's I've seen so far. Am I missing something?

What? Are you stupid? Duh! Proof that the war was just bushit and you lousy reporters want to ignore it? Do your job. I hope you people are found guilty of crimes against humanity for your failure to report the truth throughout the bush Occupation of the US white house.

As a matter of fact, I am going to make sure that suits will be filed. You should be ashamed for deliberately keeping info from the American people. People like you and the bush cartel are destroying the greatest country in the world.

Probably. But if the media can pump up the case of Jennifer Wilbanks into a nine days' wonder, I don't see why lying the country into a wasteful, fraudulent war can't garner at least SOME attention from the larger news outlets.

If there's going to be any public row over this, Dana, it seems to me that the Washington Post might be interested in helping it along. I'm so old, I remember a time when news like this would be put on the front page with a banner headline by newspapers that thought the government shouldn't lie to the people.

But I suppose those quaint and curious days are gone forever. Enjoy your next cocktail party with the movers and shakers, Dana. Don't worry your head about thousands and thousands wrongfully dead or the wasted billions. I'm sure it's all about nothing for you and your class of people.

I asked you the question about the Blair memo and wrote the snarky reply to your question "Am I missing something?" I apologize if the remark offended you. I can only offer as an excuse my frustration with the American media in general in its reporting on the Iraq war and its prelude in particular. Perhaps it was unfair to take it out on you.

I once thought that the press was on the people's side when it came down to a choice between them or the government, and that this division of loyalties was the planned result of the First Amendment as well as its natural consequence. I've come to see that the American press is not on the people's side but on its own. I've come to see that while we most assuredly can't expect vindication or justice from a political system firmly in the grip of the party that planned and made this war, only a fool would expect a similucrum of vindication or justice from the media that report on it.

I was holding out some hope that you would answer my first question in a certain way. I wasn't expecting you to tell me that yes, there would be repercussions and justice would be served. I was expecting an answer that reflected awareness of the significance of the memo. Frankly, I was sure you would say: "No, because the Bush administration and the Republicans have no interest in revisiting the period before the war, and because the Democrats don't have the power to revisit it." That's probably the truth, isn't it? Of course it would also have been nice to hear that the Democrats were discussing what to do about this information. It would be have been nice to know that Americans in the government and the media had some recognition that what is newsworthy in Britain might also be newsworthy here, especially when it concerns the US government's machinations behind the drive to war.

I think this is a subject that deserves closer inspection from the Washington Post and the media in general. But then, I'm just a member of the public. What do I know?

That was great!

But it wasn't for publication anywhere but here. :blush:

correctly! :thumbsup:

Thanks, Wizards of the Coast! All that money wasn't completely wasted, it seems.

It's a fun word to use.

Even try to use it heer . . . usually.

:hi:

I suspect she won't answer it, but if she does, her answer will be illogical, rambling, and circular.

The Professor

Jeebus Fricking Cripes.

There is nothing to say in response, really. That's putting a person in checkmate on the opening move.

daughters, and over 100,000 Iraqis are missing their mothers, fathers, sons, daughters.

Does that help you Dana, you whorish, RW enabling, warmongering piece of hyena shit?

A conscience, ethics, and her duty as a "journalist.