I’m putting together some of my favorite Greenwaldianisms.
Unusually, Mika Brzezinski was on point:
“Quickly, I just want an answer yes or no,” Brzezinski began. “Isn’t it the case that reviewing of emails or any wiretapping cannot take place without an additional warrant from a judge and a review? It’s not like there’s haphazard probing into all of our personal emails. Can we put this into context so we understand exactly what’s going on?”
And what she said was absolutely correct. However the breathless Raw Story “reporter” can hardly wait to type out Greenwald’s “smackown” (my bold added)
Greenwald didn’t even hesitate, blowing past Mika’s request for a one-word response.
“Yeah, I’ll put it into context for you: the White House talking points that you’re using are completely misleading and false. The whole point of what the Bush administration did when it disregarded and violated the FISA law, and then when Congress on a bipartisan basis enacted a new surveillance law in 2008 was to enable the NSA to read emails between people in the United States and people outside of the United States without having to first go to a FISA court and get a warrant. The only time individual warrants are needed is when two people are both within the United States and are both American citizens.”
You see a Judge’s permission is needed, but in some cases the FISA law allows for wide surveillance without individual warrants. Of course, Mika Brzezinski did not use the word “individual” that was a Greenwald special addition. In the current case, the Judge allowed NSA to take all of Verizon’s call record “meta data” over a three month period. That order does not include “reviewing of emails or any wiretapping”. So Greenwald is asked whether a warrant is needed to review emails or wiretapping" and his response is essentially “no, you hack, FISA permits the government to get information without individual warrants”, cleverly slipping in that “individual” and sidestepping what information was covered. You could make the case that these Judge reviewed orders are too broad or intrusive, but what Greenwald did there is just blatantly lie. Just for the record, phone call records like those described in the Verizon order have available to even ordinary police without “probable cause” since 1979 under the Supreme Court’s Smith v Maryland decision (see this for a summary) .
By the way, this is what Al Franken said:
“"I think there should be enough transparency that the American people understand what is happening…But I can assure you that this isn’t about spying on the American people.”
The Demise of Bin Ladin
Here’s an example of how Greenwald argues in this choleric response to the killing of Osama bin Ladin:
Beyond that, the formal position of the Democratic Party for years — since John Kerry enunciated it when running against Bush — has been that Terrorism should be primarily dealt with within a law enforcement rather than war paradigm, and that Terrorists should be viewed as criminals, not warriors; and yet many of the same people who once rejected the war paradigm now turn around and cite war theories to justify bin Laden’s killing as a “proper military target”
This argument by Greenwald is a tower of lies combined with a very weird idea of how the political process works. Why would any think that John Kerry’s instructions from 2004 would have some binding effect on all future Democratic Presidential candidates? In any case, Kerry never “enunciated” a “formal position” that terrorists should be viewed as criminals, not warriors. That’s just something Greenwald invented. In fact Kerry specifically called for military action against Bin Ladin.
“I regret that when George Bush had the opportunity in Afghanistan at Tora Bora, he didn’t choose to use American forces to hunt down and kill Osama bin Laden.” [cite]
That’s from the 2004 campaign. The formal position of the Democratic Party in 2004 is given in its platform:
We will double the capacity of our Special Forces, the troops who took the fight to the Taliban with remarkable creativity after September 11th. These troops conduct counter-terrorism operations, perform reconnaissance missions, and gather intelligence. They also train local forces and build the relationships that are vital for our victory in the war on terror.[cite]
But what about the links that Greenwald provides in an effort to produce the appearance of research and documentation? The first link goes to an opinion piece written by George Will –far from an authority on the formal position of the Democratic Party- but it turns out that the quote Greenwald took from Will was deceptively edited by Greenwald.
During the 2004 presidential campaign, Sen. John Kerry received much derision for his belief (as expressed in a Jan. 29 debate in South Carolina) that although the war on terror will be “occasionally military,” it is “primarily an intelligence and law enforcement operation that requires cooperation around the world.”
[cite][ my bold]
But one surmise seems reasonable: Bin Laden was brought down by intelligence gathering that more resembles excellent police work than a military operation.
And if we turn to the transcript of the debate that Will references, we find that Kerry is contrasting a special forces and intelligence based campaign against AQ to the Bush administration’s tactics of large scale wars justified by lies.
BROKAW: Where has the exaggeration been in the threat on terrorism?
KERRY: Well, 45 minutes deployment of weapons of mass destruction, number one. Aerial vehicles to be able to deliver materials of mass destruction, number two. I mean, I — nuclear weapons, number three. I could run a long list of clear misleading, clear exaggeration. The linkage to Al Qaida, number four. That said, they are really misleading all of America, Tom, in a profound way. The war on terror is less — it is occasionally military, and it will be, and it will continue to be for a long time. And we will need the best-trained and the most well-equipped and the most capable military, such as we have today. But it’s primarily an intelligence and law enforcement operation that requires cooperation around the world — the very thing this administration is worst at [cite]
So the hypocritical abandonment of principle that Greenwald decries in his opponents is actually a complete fiction created by a deliberate deception on Greenwald’s part.
Al Awlaqi
Or consider this argument about Al-Awlaqi
But what’s most notable here is that one of the arguments the Obama DOJ raises to demand dismissal of this lawsuit is “state secrets”: in other words, not only does the President have the right to sentence Americans to death with no due process or charges of any kind, but his decisions as to who will be killed and why he wants them dead are “state secrets,” and thus no court may adjudicate their legality.[cite]
In real life the DOJ argument is that due process has been observed and that Mr. Awlaki could be targeted because he is indisputably a commander in an armed conflict with the United States. The justifications for that judgement were then made available to the Court. The “state secrets” argument is raised by DOJ to justify keeping operational details of the US military mission secret. That is, DOJ argues that tactical military decisions of where when and how are not within the purview of civilian courts if the mission itself is legally justified. This is the DOJ brief:
Plaintiff Nasser al-Aulaqi is a citizen of Yemen and Anwar al-Aulaqi’s father. Plaintiff does not seek to challenge the Government’s determination that his son is an operational leader of AQAP and does not seek to categorically stop the United States from using lethal force against his son under all circumstances. Rather, plaintiff seeks to enjoin the President of the United States, the Secretary of Defense, and the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, from “intentionally killing U.S. citizen Anwar Al-Aulaqi” outside an armed conflict “unless he is found to present a concrete, specific, and imminent threat to life or physical safety, and there are no means other than lethal force that could reasonably be employed to neutralize the threat[.]”
So the argument is that (1) everyone agrees that Al-Aulaqi is an operational leader of a hostile military force and the US has the right to take military action against that military force and (2) the dispute is over whether the courts should set conditions on when and how the US military can proceed.
That requested injunction would necessarily and improperly inject the courts into decisions of the President and his advisors about how to protect the American people from the threat of armed attacks, including imminent threats, posed by a foreign organization against which the political branches have authorized the use of necessary and appropriate force.
That is, DOJ argues Congress authorized military action (via the AUMF), the President then engages the military against hostile forces, and if we have no dispute that Aulaqi is a member of the hostile forces, then the Courts have no further role. Greenwald’s presentation of this as an argument that the President can assassinate who he wants for reasons beyond the purview of the courts is simply a lie. Whether one agrees with the DOJ argument or not, “the President have the right to sentence Americans to death with no due process or charges of any kind, but his decisions as to who will be killed and why he wants them dead are “state secrets,” and thus no court may adjudicate their legality" is not what the Department of Justice argued.
Ron Paul
Whatever else one wants to say, it is indisputably true that Ron Paul is the only political figure with any sort of a national platform — certainly the only major presidential candidate in either party — who advocates policy views on issues that liberals and progressives have long flamboyantly claimed are both compelling and crucial. The converse is equally true: the candidate supported by liberals and progressives and for whom most will vote — Barack Obama — advocates views on these issues (indeed, has taken action on these issues) that liberals and progressives have long claimed to find repellent, even evil. [..] He has institutionalized the power of Presidents — in secret and with no checks — to target American citizens for assassination-by-CIA, far from any battlefield. [cite]
Ron Paul, of course, voted for the original crazily broad AUMF. The only member of Congress to have the principles and courage to vote against it was Barbara Lee who- as a black woman, a truly courageous and principled person, and a strong supporter of President Obama is not visible to Mr. Greenwald. Esq. By the way, here’s what the principled and oh so honorable Mr. Paul proposed at the time:
The President of the United States is authorized to place a money bounty, drawn in his discretion from the $40,000,000,000 appropriated on September 14, 2001, in the Emergency Supplemental Appropriations Act for Recovery from and Response to Terrorists Attacks on the United States or from private sources, for the capture, alive or dead, of Osama bin Laden or any other al Qaeda conspirator responsible for the act of air piracy upon the United States on September 11, 2001, under the authority of any letter of marque or reprisal issued under this Act. [cite]
Who knew that those principles "liberals and progressives have long flamboyantly claimed are both compelling and crucial” include mercenaries and privateered assassins chartered at the discretion of the President. And President Bush! He wanted to give Bush authority to charter freelance assassins Principled, flamboyantly.
Journalism
Greenwald v. Greenwald.
I once thought that Politico would be a pernicious new addition to our rotted media culture. Instead, it actually provides a valuable service by packing every destructive and corrupt journalistic attribute, in its most vivid form, into one single cesspool.
And yet is there a single figure on the media landscape who resells Politico’s garbage more than Greenwald?
In case that wasn’t clear enough, the White House – yet again – expressed its contempt for progressives when a cowardly “senior White House official” hid behind Politico’s blanket of anonymity to mock unions for having “just flushed $10 million of their members’ money down the toilet on a pointless exercise.” That comment was far more serious than mere derision. It was an attempt to exacerbate the tensions which unions have with their members over union spending on political races
That’s a heavy analysis to hang on an anonymous quote. Who was the person Politico quoted? Anonymous. Was he or she an important person reflecting real WH opinion or was he or she some disgruntled hack or even totally imaginary? We don’t know which is why Glenn Greenwald slammed Politico for using anonymous quotes.
I also criticized Allen’s use of anonymity both here and on Twitter. At his Washington Post blog, Greg Sargent then printed an email from Allen answering Sargent’s request for a response to the criticisms. That response revealed what has long been clear: most establishment journalists do not even pretend any more to have any standards for when anonymity is granted; they’ll give it to whoever wants it without needing any real reason for doing so, especially if the person wanting it is politically influential.
Unless coming from a super trustworthy source, anonymous “quotes” are dangerous nonsense. Here’s Greenwald on Politico’s trustworthyness.
Still, even amidst the endless sea of sleaze and whoredom, Politico always manages to stand out. There is no limit on their willingness, their eagerness, to write down what GOP operatives tell them and then construct articles and screaming headlines based on it. It’s what they exist to do. And one can’t really overstate the influence its gossipy, simple-minded headlines have on cable news chatter and the political narrative of the day.
And yet
Just this weekend, a “top gay Democrat close to Obama” was granted anonymity by Politico to dismiss administration critics on gay issues as “naive.”
Apparently, anonymous quotes from Politico are trustworthy when they support attacks on the Obama administration. Although to be fair to Greenwald, he will take anybody’s anonymous quotes as long as they are attacking Obama. The Politico “quote” above appeared in a story about the terrible indifference of the WH to gay rights – a story based on this:
About those [gay rights: ed] protests – and Democratic and progressive criticisms of Obama generally – NBC’s John Harwood “reported” the following last night: Sure but if you look at the polling, Barack Obama is doing well with 90% or more of Democrats so the White House views this opposition as really part of the “internet left fringe” Lester. And for a sign of how seriously the White House does or doesn’t take this opposition, one adviser told me today those bloggers need to take off their pajamas, get dressed and realize that governing a closely divided country is complicated and difficult.
From the same article:
UPDATE III: Greg Sargent reports that the White House, on the record, is denying that the anonymous comment reflects their view of blogs and the gay protesters. Did anyone expect them to do anything else?
Of course,on the record quotes by actual WH officials cannot be trusted to refute anonymous “quotes” from Politico and RW “journalists.” But then, uh-oh
UPDATE IV: Digby documents that Harwood himself, on numerous occasions, has expressed very similar sentiments about the fringe losers on the Left without even bothering to claim it was from a White House source.
Fortunately, it turns out, just as the Republicans pointed out about Whitewater, the falsity of individual assertions does not refute the “pattern”:
But all of that underscores the real point here. This has nothing to do with whether some anonymous Obama aide disparaged bloggers. That’s irrelevant.
And then as a surreal coda
Harwood clarified today that the scorn from the Obama adviser wasn’t directed to the gay protest per se,
The entire article wasn’t garbage,per se, just in sum. Let’s go back to the Labor story
The news cycle of the last two days has been driven by an attack on organized labor from a “senior White House official” who was willing to express these views only while hiding behind the fetal wall of anonymity extended by Politico.
This calls for a requote of Greenwald
Still, even amidst the endless sea of sleaze and whoredom, Politico always manages to stand out. There is no limit on their willingness, their eagerness, to write down what GOP operatives tell them and then construct articles and screaming headlines based on it. It’s what they exist to do. And one can’t really overstate the influence its gossipy, simple-minded headlines have on cable news chatter and the political narrative of the day.
Exactly. But of course, Greenwald, whose advocates insist on his strong research skills and extensive footnoting must have some other sources on the WH relationship with labor than an anonymous quote from Politico? Right? Well, if you track back all the stories you can find on Google about the Arkansas dispute between the White House and organized labor, they all track back to the Politico article – almost as if Politico was trying to split the WH from its labor allies. Of course to suppose that was possible, you’d have to believe “no limit on their willingness, their eagerness, to write down what GOP operatives tell them and then construct articles and screaming headlines based on it.” What about other information on the WH and labor? I know that Salon covered the recess appointment of Labor candidate Craig Becker to the NLRB, but I don’t see any indication that Greenwald has mentioned it. In fact, google doesn’t show me a single mention of Labor Secretary Solis by Mr. Greenwald, or of the Department of Labor under her administration. Solid reporting, indeed.
krebscycle 
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