The news this morning that former Department of Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge believed that President Bush and his top advisers manipulated the terror threat alert system for their political gain is really -- and it ought to be -- a major story. Ridge was in a position to know, for certain, whether this was the case. And though he's hinted at it before, he now says, in his soon-to-be-released book, that he was pressured into raising the alert level before the 2004 election. Let's see what Ridge actually writes before making too many conclusions. Let's talk to other Bush officials and try to figure out whether we need to exercise caution about Ridge's own perspective. For one thing, Ridge didn't immediately resign. He resigned after the election. If he believed at the time that manipulating the terror alert system was damaging to the country, and he said nothing, and when he did resign, he said nothing, then he doesn't come off as a particularly sympathetic figure. Ridge left the White House in 2005. He's joined several corporate boards, has made a lot of money consulting on homeland security, and has been mostly silent. He's probably been saving it for the book.
Journalists, including myself, were very skeptical when anti-Bush liberals insisted that what Ridge now says is true, was true. We were wrong. Our skepticism about the activists' conclusions was warranted because these folks based their assumption on gut hatred for President Bush, and not on any evaluation of the raw intelligence. [Addition: That's a hasty generalization. Many of the loudest voices were reflexively anti-Bush, but I can't accurately describe the motivations of everyone, much less a majority, of those who were skeptical. There were plenty of non-liberals who believed that the terror threats were exaggerated.] But journalists should have been even more skeptical about the administration's pronouncements. And yet -- we, too, weren't privy to the intelligence. Information asymmetry is always going to exist, and, living as we do in a Democratic system, most journalists are going to give the government the benefit of some doubt, even having learned lessons about giving the government that benefit.
My colleague Justin Miller adds this caution:
The question that needs to be asked of the raising the threat level before the election matter is whether there was a) any intelligence that led people to believing there was a greater risk of attack. If not, then raising the threat level was unquestionably a political move. B) If there was intelligence - and different people had different judgments on whether it was credible or spoke of an imminent threat - and Ridge landed on the side that said it was not so dangerous, that's another matter. Maybe "pressure" in that sense was the pressure of an abundance of caution, the "one-percent doctrine" and the example of the pre-election attacks in Madrid several months before our presidential. It's not as if the idea that al Qaeda may try to throw the U.S. election or wreak havoc was implausible.
We'll have a better picture once Ridge's book is directly quoted. Rest assured the Cheney team will come out swinging against this too.
Shorter: Everybody's covering their ass. Including the media.
Strange, you Americans pretend to be so holier than others, and pretend to be a nation of laws and this and that, you are fast to put a man away for a single murder, killing him in most states, but then let George Bush & his evil minions who is/are responsible for hundreds and thousands of deaths directly because of his/their lies is/are let go?
What kind of people are you? What kind of nation is this? Its rubbish.
You have not earned the right to question US. However, if you let me and a bunch of others threaten and racially slur you, then unlawfully raid your home and steal your files, falsely accuse and defame you thereafter for daring to continue to expose these crimes being covered up, then let me and those same people selectively arrest you, do a little torture on you, fly you into an area wherein the entire district is against you for your lawful speech, deny you any conditions of bail, keep you without a "speedy" trial for almost two years, then force conflicted counsel on you over your objections, deny you the right to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation, deny you any due process in a secret hearing, and thereafter use this secret hearing to justify sending you off to see a doctor to mentally "treat" you, let me force more counsel when you finally learn of the secret hearing many months later, then for good measure I'll deny you any assistance of counsel when he learns about what happened and quits, then I'll hold a kangaroo court to find you guilty, then give you an illegal sentence, then let me deny you due process at the sentencing hearing, let me steer your only appeal to a good perverted friend with bad judgement just to make sure it's rigged good and plenty, whom will in turn then force more conflicted counsel on you on your only appeal, while we sit back and put words into his conflicted mouth and watch him admit you're guiilty, which we all know, and he knows, you've denied for 5 years,. then you will be allowed to complain, but it will be futile because we will say it is all far too complex and too complicated to understand what you are saying without an expert to translate for us. After all, who knows where these things are routed.
If you care to submit to that jurisdiction, then maybe, just maybe, you have earned the right to sit in judgment of US.
And for the record, I am not a bitter American. This is what bitter looks like...
"You have not earned the right to question US."
Dumbest statement ever. As a human EVERYONE has a right to question the US. This is why we are digging ourselves out of an international hole created by eight years of isolationism and Imperialism.
Well, for a girl who's not bitter, you sure do a pretty good imitation of one. You are just the sort of woman who makes me ashamed to be a member of your race. The human race, I mean.
Honey, take your crying elsewhere. And stop it with all the phony links to an attack website, too.
Ignore the two comments above to you, I enjoyed your articles. Especially about the Disinformation. Example: The previous comment that you are a girl. Or calling your website an "attack website." Watch out they don't label you a gang member! LOL For the record, I really enjoyed the COINTEL from the other comment, that "EVERYONE has a right to question the US." Well, you can ask a question alright, but they will ignore you, just like they ignore the law and their Oaths.Sorry to read about what Tom and his cronies in the Department of Injustice did to you and your family. Great site!
Clicking on any of the links in the message I'm replying to produce:
Reported Attack Site!
This web site at www.killercop.com has been reported as an attack site and has been blocked based on your security preferences.
Attack sites try to install programs that steal private information, use your computer to attack others, or damage your system.
Some attack sites intentionally distribute harmful software, but many are compromised without the knowledge or permission of their owners.
It was reported at an "attack website" because the U.S. government will stop at next to nothing to silence the voices of the site. The site has already being through a full investigation by the L.A.P.D., the Sheriff's Department High Tech Crime Division, the F.B.I. and the Justice Department. No crimes by the owner...but lots of crimes done to him.
You said, and I quote, "Attack sites try to install programs that steal private information, use your computer to attack others, or damage your system."
"Some attack sites intentionally distribute harmful software, but many are compromised without the knowledge or permission of their owners."
The site was a victim of the latter, but it's clean. Except for the corruption inside.
I hardly think that I assumed that the terror alerts were being made for political purposes came from a "gut hatred for President Bush". It came from lie after lie that the Bush administration had already been caught in. By then it was clear that the the pretext for the war in Iraq, specifically WMDs was a bunch of lies. And there was evidence all along -- UN weapons inspectors, the IAEA, etc. told us so before the war started. They didn't have a motive to lie, the Bush administration did.
Indeed it didn't take a genius to figure out that all the stories about Iraq developing nuclear weapons under the noses of the inspectors were false. The only question that could be honestly asked was whether there were a few drums of WW1 era mustard gas or the like stashed somewhere. I'm sure that if anyone in the government honestly believed there were WMDs, that's what they had in mind. All the mushroom cloud imagery was pure, unadulterated lies. Any journalist that still hadn't figured this out by the fall of 2004 was either complicit or totally incompetent.
The continued inability to credit those of us who were right all along with anything other than a "gut hatred for President Bush" is shameful.
Well stated Ted. Ambider's suspicion of "anti-Bush liberals" rather than Bush himself says more about Ambider's guts (or lack thereof) than mine. I tired of journalist's who apologize for missing the boat on Bush, but continue to miss it on other issues... health care for instance.
Come on, Marc. The terror alerts were timed so perfectly, how could you not have at least suspected it was being manipulated for political purposes? Just because a lot of us hated Bush doesn't mean it so colors our perspective that we can't see what's right in front of us.
This is an outrage. Not political-style faux outrage, not fake-controversy-of-the-day outrage, but a genuine outrage. The President put his own political campaign ahead of the security of 300 million Americans.
And the media won't care. Marc, just when I thought I couldn't be any more disgusted with your profession, I scraped the bottom of the barrel and managed to find just a little bit more shame for your colleagues.
@ Marc "Our skepticism about the activists' conclusions was warranted because these folks based their assumption on gut hatred for President Bush, and not on any evaluation of the raw intelligence."
That's a mighty big ASSUMPTION on your part, isn't it Marc? And the left's claims that the media was being bullied and suckered by the Bush administration was based on liberals' gut hatred for the media, right?? Face it, the Dirty F**king Hippies were right, and the media was wrong all along about the Bush administration. Good morning, sunshine. Coffee's on.
Marc, don't be silly. This sentence is just dumb:
"Our skepticism about the activists' conclusions was warranted because these folks based their assumption on gut hatred for President Bush, and not on any evaluation of the raw intelligence."
Our conclusions weren't based on a gut hatred of President Bush, they were grounded in a skepticism earned through years of Bush administration lies. How's that hunt for WMD's going, Marc? How about those Saddam/Osama links, Marc? How about the yellow cake? How about torture?
We weren't and aren't stenographers-to-power like you are, Marc. We trust, but verify. The Bush administration had been shown - repeatedly - to be composed of liars and crooks - with just enough incompetence thrown in to make the 8 years even more tragic.
Why would we have trusted them on the national security warnings when everything else they had done had been shown to be politically motivated as well? Attorney firings? Valerie Plame exposing?
Marc, use some empiricism and common sense, ok?
That kind of biased and self-serving generalization is unlike you, Marc, and it damages your credibility.
Unlike him? How long have you been reading him? It's been like him every step of the way.
Time and time again, "gut hatred" turns out to be justified. I used to have the same attitude. But its hard when to keep it when they turn out to be right over and over.
For supposed stopped clocks, Bush administration skeptics sure seemed to be right a lot more than twice a day....
Marc, your colleague Justin Miller is wrong. The question is not whether raising the threat level prior to the 2004 election was politically motivated (as Ridge says it was), the question is how many other times the threat level was raised for purely political reasons. Seems to me that by siding with your colleague, you are (once again)looking for journalistic cover after failing to get the story right.
Is Justin Miller related in any way to Judith Miller?
"Is Justin Miller related in any way to Judith Miller?"
Yes. Strategically.
hahahahaha. oh, Marc. way to make a complete ass of yourself! really, this is too funny. i want you to know i registered for this website just so i could leave you a comment; i don't normally do that at mainstream "news" sites. there's a word for people like you: pathetic. you just can't bring yourself to admit you went along with a lying, murderous, warmongering regime for the express purpose of getting better access and prestige on the DC/Village cocktail party circuit. were you fishing for a job, or just pleasing some republican boyfriend of yours? i hope you got something out of utterly trashing the tattered remnants of your profession's reputation. like, a car at least.
the entire blogosphere (which is comprised of millions of people who were, you know "correct") is laughing at you, Marc. you are a fool. either you got played, or you're a tool. which is it? my irrational gut hatred of lying idiots like you wants to know. but in the finest spirit of blogosphere intertube traditions everywhere: "HA-ha! You got punked."
You made Atrios' "Wanker of the Day," congratulations!
Bush Derangement Syndrome is a myth, Armbinder, always was. It was an excuse invented by Bush supporters to dismiss criticism by impugning the motives of the critics, so they wouldn't have to confront the harsh realities of what was actually going on.
"Our skepticism about the activists' conclusions was warranted because these folks based their assumption on gut hatred for President Bush, and not on any evaluation of the raw intelligence."
It had to be gut hatred, right, because nobody but the Bush administration could have had access to intelligence information that you didn't have access to. That was the excuse I used to convince myself that the Iraq invasion was justified: the Bush administration had to have had some intelligence information that showed Saddam was a clear and present danger, because I couldn't believe they would just make up something like that in order to get permission to go on a military adventure. And then it turned out that it was all a tissue of lies and the real goal was to secure access to oil and pursue some ridiculous nation-building agenda; how could I trust anything the administration said after that? How could you?
No, I'm afraid your skepticism was clearly NOT warranted, and in fact you should have been more skeptical of ANY administration claims not clearly backed up by publicly-verifiable evidence. That's what journalists are supposed to do. You and your colleagues have let down the nation. You are as much to blame for where we find ourselves as the Bush administration, because you were the watchdog that did not bark.
"because these folks based their assumption on gut hatred"
This is yet another example of non-journalism, where instead of hunting down any facts you casually make shit up. Have you ever spoken to "these folks"? Had you bothered, you might have found that their hatred of Bush wasn't so much from the gut, but due more directly to their perception that he was doing things like raising the threat level to scare people into supporting him. You know, that thing here that pretty much ALL THESE FOLKS KNEW and yet you -- improbably paid to know such things -- did not.
Was there one single instance where the reflexive: "I will believe one thing because the dirty hippies believe the opposite" attitude of you and your traditional press buddies during the Bush years served you well? One?
We were right and you were wrong. That will still always be true until you understand why.
Ambinder wrote,
"most journalists are going to give the government the benefit of some doubt, even having learned lessons about giving the government that benefit."
Why, Marc? Why in the world would you be inclined to give the benefit of the doubt to the Bush administration? I know those cocktail weenies taste great, but how much evidence do you need before you yank your head out of your rectal cavity and see the light? GW Bush and his surrogates lied to us repeatedly, on a multitude of serious issues.
The fact that we were being governed by a malicious and devious President and an even worse Vice-President could not have been more obvious. And just because you weren't privy to specific intelligence information is no excuse, either. All you had to do was pick up the daily paper and read a few blogs, and you should have come to the same conclusion that we dirty hippies did.
Oy, Oy, Oy......
Exactly.
Forget the Bush administration specifically. Journalists are supposed to be professional skeptics, Marc. NO ONE is supposed to get the benefit of the doubt, ever -- that's why you check multiple sources on a story.
With one sentence you've demonstrated perfectly that you do not comprehend what it means to be a journalist, and have no right to be called one.
You're a fraud, Marc. A joke and a fraud.
Ted T - I agree. Marc, you're wrong to think people who thought the terror alerts were BS did so because of a hatred of Bush. It was because when something smells fishy, it might be fishy.
Also Marc, you need to take your skepticism a step further when following up on this... what if the terror alert system was created just for political reasons such as Ridge alleges? It certainly did the public no good - it was a Boy Who Cried Wolf device that helped no one, just scared people. The only possible purpose for it would have been to alert city and county officials such as police and fireman of suspicious activities. They were the only ones capable of using that information.
The mea culpa would have been a lot better if you had been able to accept your own shortcomings rather than blame those very people who turned out to be right.
It does not take a rocket scientist to figure out that an administration would be angling for every possible advantage it could get.
Gone are the days when journalists were distrustful of an administration, today they both seem to be in bed together.
The fact is that there was good rational basis to be suspicious of the continued convenient timing of these terror alerts. Your thinking seems to have been that any observation that came from critics of Bush must be irrational and that in fact is a irrational and extremely prejudiced assumption (which still seems largely unexamined by you.) What is really the case is that you gave the Bush people the benefit of the doubt but that was not your job.
" Our skepticism about the activists' conclusions was warranted because these folks based their assumption on gut hatred for President Bush, and not on any evaluation of the raw intelligence."
Sure, Marc. And you based your "skepticism" about the "activists" (i.e., the empiricists) on your gut hatered of them, and not on any evaluation of the raw evidence. That much is clear.
Nobody could have predicted...
What you see as looking stuff up in the "gut" we see as recognizing patterns. While we may have been predisposed to see negative patterns of GW (possibly as a result of the catastrophe that was the 2000 election), that didn't make those patterns any less real. We didn't need to manufacture an antichrist out of the Bush Administration because the real Bush Administration was bad enough. You would have had to be an utter fool to not see by 2004 that they were using fear as a weapon. And that their scruples were--to put it kindly--subpar. Combine those two observations along with the very convenient timing of the terror alerts, and you should at least have had a healthy amount of suspicion. If you didn't, well, that's between you and your "gut".
Marc, the facts are the press has not had a very good track record of keeping us informed. You went along with the Johnson and Nixon administrations in their lies about Vietnam. It was Cronkite who finally came clean with his view that the war was "unwinnable." During the McCarthy era, the press was his lapdog. It's kind of ironic that the press is accused of being liberal-leaning but give the GOP a pass on everything. Compare all the stories written about "White Water" during the Clinton first term to the lack of stories questioning all kinds of aspects of the Bush II administration. You know you've done a lousy job when most young people look to Jon Stewart for a sense of what's real. Power has a lot of influence. It takes guts to face Power down and tell the truth. It also takes work to find out what is the truth. Most US journalists get an "F" for both.
The correction Ambinder made above shows that he is unconscious of his own biases. In effect, he says that not all critics of Bush were motivated by irrational hatred. Some of them weren't liberals, i.e. liberal = irrational. Apparently it's irrational to be too right too quickly.
The Bush hatred bit is just a right wing talking point, mindlessly repeated by journalists. The liberals never hated Bush. They found him contemptible, which is something quite different. We reserve our hatred for the journalists and pundits, some of them supposedly moderates, who got Bush elected in the first place by making excuses for his obvious unsuitability for high office while spreading snarky lies and distortions about his opponent. If there is ever a real reckoning about who is responsible for the horrors the Bush administration unleashed on Iraq, Bush himself can plead diminished capacity. You journalists don't have that excuse.
The saddest thing about all this is none of you hacks are going to lose your jobs over this. If D.C. journalism worked like a meritocracy we would now have a whole different cast of actors writing articles. Instead, the people that were massively wrong (even though they acted like they were balanced--and Marc is saying in this post what we all knew--they were biased to be pro-Republican) are allowed to parlay their failures and errors into work today and tomorrow.
at least some of you need to be fired...and I'm not talking Dan Rather or Phil Donohue or Scott Ritter.
Perhaps the admission that you were wrong and the attack on the judgment of the people were not wrong could have been two separate posts?
Posts like this make it easy to understand why a majority believe lies the MSM has already "fact checked" as if both sides lie equally.
The government has a long and tortured history of lying and screwing up and committing atrocities: since the media loves to put a Gate on everything I'd have imagined this would be crystal clear. For some reason, the fourth estate let itself be cowed by the Bush administration. I think it's because of the corporate influence on news that Katie Couric at least has had the guts to admit.
What is very sad: you are failing again. Instead of calling out liars in the Republican party and the likes of Rick Scott who defrauded Medicaid/Medicare you serve as passive conduits of information and "analyze" how people will react to the lies.
You make me sick and frankly, this is why your profession is dying.
Did you say "skepticism?" Really?
Where was your skepticism of the Bush Administration's claims? Why apply your journalistic "skepticism" only to the critics of those in power, rather than to the people actually making life-or-death decisions for the American people? Why not even ask the basic question "Who benefits?"
You say you were skeptical of any claim that didn't involve access to "raw intelligence?" But only members of the government have clearances for that. So your "skepticism" amounts in fact, to taking the current Administration's word for everything.
What you were doing, and what you continue to do in this post, is market a highly sophisticated credulity. Don't expect any praise for it.
"Our skepticism about the activists' conclusions was warranted because these folks based their assumption on gut hatred for President Bush, and not on any evaluation of the raw intelligence."
Everyone seems to be covering their rear ends. The reason that you covered up for G.W. was based on only one thing: your bosses at The Atlantic, undoubted under great pressure from their Neocon masters and the advertisers they controlled, decided to abandon what few (if any) journalistic scruples it had take and the path of least resistence.
After all, nobody that they knew in their cozy enclaves in Washington and New York would be actually fighting and dying. Instead those getting wounded and killed would be coming from the (mostly poor) areas of those despised "red states."
Marc, this makes journalists like you as complicit in the deaths in the Mideast as if you been a member of G.W.'s administration. A hero you most definitely are not.
This an amazing passage, that demonstrtes how most of the media abdicated their intellectual and moral responsibilities during the Bush era fear bubble. The passage also demonstrates how the media are using extraordinary rationalizations to either self justify their behavior to avoid the cognitive dissonance of their failures, or to con us to keep their eroding position in public discourse
" Journalists, including myself, were very skeptical when anti-Bush liberals insisted that what Ridge now says is true, was true. We were wrong. Our skepticism about the activists' conclusions was warranted because these folks based their assumption on gut hatred for President Bush, and not on any evaluation of the raw intelligence"
Many of us developed a gut level hatred for the regime, but is was wholly rational. My father , who lived under fascism in mid century Europe and is cerebral and apolitical, developed an immediate visceral and emotional response to the regime's policies and rhetoric. Why?
Because they lied over and over again; they used lies to engage us in ruinous policies, and the lied some more to keep the herd (the public and their fellow traveller lackey jounalists) from calling them out. Not just in Iraq, terrorism and foreign affairs- on science, the environment, social security, dergulation and the looting of the economy
Gut hatred is a rational response to evil .
Marc,
The consistency of the logic in the many comments bashing your CYA, incredibly arrogant and self-presumptive statement (below)says a lot about your attitudes and even more about your critical thinking skills, none it complimentary.
" these folks based their assumption on gut hatred for President Bush, and not on any evaluation of the raw intelligence."
You are factually wrong. There were bits and pieces leaking out from highly placed and highly competent authorities that pointed toward the minefield of lies the Shrub and his cronies placed before the American public.
Were you just completely unaware of the implications of direct statements from the IAEA and the WMD inspectors, or were you unable to understand them?
Shame on you.
Marc --
Thanks for admitting that you were wrong. But I hope you understand why you were, and how that applies to things going on still today.
Do you recall the quote from the Bush administration official about how the press were a part of the "reality-based community" that was no longer politically relevant? They were looking to marginalize people who would tell the truth, and they succeeded more often than not.
The press has a responsibility to STOP the delusion that they are some sort of referee between the right and the left in this country. In case you haven't noticed, the vast majority of the right wing of this country does not care what the truth is if it gets in the way of political power. It's not so much that the Bush admin lied about WMD or the terror alert system or whatever, it's that the right wing message machine propagated these lies very successfully while the neutered "free press" stood by with their thumbs up their behinds. Limbaugh, Fox News, Drudge, and other such outlets give an alternate version of events that are blatantly untrue, and the press is so scared of having "liberal bias" screamed at them that they've become cowards at calling a lie a lie. Witness the health care debate now, where almost half the country polled believes the nonsense about "death panels" that has been propagated by the right-wing message machine. Where is the outrage of the people on the side of the truth? Only Katie Couric has made a peep as far as I can tell.
In terms of spin, it would be easy enough to say that "both sides do it," but you and I both know that the degree and the depth of prevarication is highly skewed to the right. It's about time that journalists start facing up to the reality and become brokers for the truth as opposed to sitting idly by while more and more lies are spread.
And if you need help finding lies, all you have to do is look for something that is designed to create fear, the more primal the better (see Tom Ridge's terror threat levels as a perfect example). It's the MO of the right these days, because they've lost all moral authority and it's the only arrow they have left in their quiver.
You got the flogging you deserve from those above, but what concerns me most is that everyone, public, press, politicians, etc. have 1. become dependant on The Press for information, 2. the world of Deciders have become dependant on The Press for manipulating the opinions of both the public and the others who Decide, and 3.no one can count on the accuracy and/or honesty of The Press. Aside from the few like WSL or Fox where we can take a handful of salt, we don't know who is in bedded with whom! So we can"t discern truth from lie! When some Cheney-chosen marionette like Ridge tells us something we know where his bias is. In fact, we can vote his kind out of office. How do we vote on our feeders of information? The public disbelief in our two political parties is growing like a cancer on what we call democracy, but we can't redice the number of politicians and political bureaucrats. The public disbelief in The Press is reflected in diminished reading, listening, and watching that The Press is now crying about. But that still leaves us numb and dumb.
Mr. Ambinder -
Any journalist who sees it as his or her duty to give power the benefit of the doubt is either a fool, or a hack. I'll give you the benefit of my doubt by believing that you've been a fool - like ignorance, foolishness can be overcome with a little effort. But you need to understand that your credibility is at rock-bottom, Marc - nobody on the right trusts you simply because you're a member of the "liberal media", and nobody on the left trusts you because you failed miserably to uphold the best traditions of journalism. A little honest contrition, without the reflexive dirty-f'ing-hippie bashing, would be a marvelous way to start the rehabilitation of your reputation. Admit you were wrong, that you were wrong for the wrong reasons, and that people who were right for the right reasons currently are more deserving of the salary you're pulling down for a job you have miserably failed to do. Until your first instinct is not to blame other people for your mistakes, though, we aren't going to cry for you any more than we're weeping for the hacktacular Tom Ridge.
For your future reference: it doesn't matter who is in the driver's seat of an administration, Bush or Obama or Kang/Kodos - your job is to assume that person is being corrupted by the power they've accumulated. Nothing they tell you, on record or off, is immune from skepticism. They don't get a pass just because they've promised to protect you from the scary monsters - especially when the only evidence that the monsters exist is their say-so. They don't get a pass because they hold nice parties and are charming and sophisticated in private. And, most especially, they don't get a pass because you think that if you upset them they'll withhold "access" from you. The only thing "access" gets you is spoon-fed, pre-digested spin.
Your readers deserve better. Do a better job for the next eight years than you've done for the past eight, and maybe we'll talk.
Ridge's admission of political manipulation falls under the category of "no s++t, Sherlock". Ambinder's love for bush clouded his coverage of bush, then and now. You didn't have to hate bush to know what was going on--you just had to pay attention to people other than Broder & Novak the Wall Street Journal.
The DFHs were right and you were wrong.
This will continue to be true as long as you don't understand that the DFHs are generally right, then try to grasp why their worldview seems to get the job done so well.
Come on, Marc. Don't you remember where that stuff about "Bush haters" came from?
The people who talked the most about "Bush haters" were Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly, Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity, et cetera, and the right-wing mob the command. You should remember how they hated Clinton and all their crazy allegations about Clinton. You should remember how Congressional Republicans created Ken Starr's fishing expedition. The pot calls the kettle black.
Then W took office, and in their eyes, W could do no wrong.
And now Obama is in office, and now we have birthers, talk about the "real America" (the part that's white), and those screaming mobs repeating all those lies about Obama's health care plan.
Marc, how could you be so blind?
This has got Carl Rove written all over it.
Ambinder is an idoiot and so is Ridge.
Before today I had never heard of Marc Ambinder. In the future I'll remember to steer clear when I see his name in the byline.
wasn't Ed Murrow's motto: "Always give 'em the benefit of the doubt" Oh, wati, that was Ambinder. Hard to tell the difference.
As long as we are making hasty generalizations, let me make one: Mr. Ambinder, you are a pathetic hack. Even your apology is insulting, implying that only a non-liberal's opinions about the Bush administration could be valid. You are so far disconnected from what a journalist should be, it is almost incomprehensible.
Justin Miller writes: "The question that needs to be asked of the raising the threat level before the election matter is whether there was a) any intelligence that led people to believing there was a greater risk of attack. If not, then raising the threat level was unquestionably a political move. B) If there was intelligence - and different people had different judgments on whether it was credible or spoke of an imminent threat - and Ridge landed on the side that said it was not so dangerous, that's another matter. "
Actually, that question needed to be asked years ago. Too bad so many journalists, whose job it is to ask questions and report on what they've learned, didn't ask questions back then. Things might have been very different.
"Journalists, including myself, were very skeptical when anti-Bush liberals insisted that what Ridge now says is true, was true. We were wrong..."
What's wrong with this statement Mr. Ambinder? A bit broad isn't it? So ALL journalists were skeptical of the "ant-Bush liberals?" That's convenient for you, eh? So translation-- it wasn't just me that was asleep at the wheel. Everyone else was as well. That's convenient for you isn't it?
And please explain how you are able to read the minds of people who were skeptical of the alerts and know that they were "Bush haters." Because I was deeply skeptical and it had nothing to do with my personal feelings toward Bush.
Come to think of it, the dirty hippies have historically been right on just about everything. War, Environment, Corporate Malfeasance, Healthcare, Wall St. crime, etc. They have been ahead of the curve and very perceptive on every serious issue, yet they don't get any respect.
Thanks to these here Intertubes, that dynamic is changing.
killercop- I have earned the right, and this has nothing to do with anything but a government that was full of crap. Bush and Cheney, two draft-dodging, psuedo cowboys who used fear every chance they had. Sort of what you see today in healthcare. It was immoral at best.
You know what this clearly illustrates about Mr. Ambinder? It shows that-- not only are you a poor excuse for a journalist-- you don't have the basic integrity, honesty, and decency to admit when you're wrong. And in case you don't know, the two things are directly connected. If you had integrity, honesty and decency, you might be a better journalist. You're a perfect example of why many people don't trust the MSM-- it's so patently obvious to everyone that "journalists" such as yourself put your personal views and your career before basic standards of journalism. You're a "personality" (a politician really) masquerading as a journalist. And like our politicians, you immediately revert to damage control (manipulation of truth) when your mistakes are nailed in the spotlight. It's sad to watch you scurry around like this.
Damage Control Rule #1: Spread the blame. It wasn't just me! Everyone else thought the same thing!
Rule #2: Attack the opposition-- preferably ad hominem: Sure they may have been right, but it's only 'cause they're dirty liberal Bush haters!
I can't take the Atlantic seriously when it employs a reporter whose mind works like this.
Everyone involved should be embarrassed.
Dear Marc,
You can find your ass here: http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/08/20/ambinder/index.html
I don't cry for Tom Ridge. I cry for the state of American journalism and for the Atlantic Monthly. However one bright spot is that Glenn Greenwald over at Salon is running journalistic circles around Ambinder. Seriously Marc, you might want to buy a new jock strap. You can't keep up and it's starting to show. You can only get by on BS for so long. I'm going to make a prediction: This is the beginning of the end of Ambinder's career in journalism. A year from now his Atlantic Blog won't even exist. Any takers? I'd put serious money on it. He's starting to tarnish the reputation of the Atlantic.
Remember you heard it here first--
Wow.
I'm very skeptical of all these comments. They appear to be driven only by an irrational hatred of Marc Ambinder.
Zing!
So, liberals were right but still wrong anyway?
Always seems to work out that way.
The willing complicity of the media to blithely give the Bush Administration a pass (over and over and over) is the REAL terror. It is reminiscent of how, in the 1930's, the good citizens of Germany were able to turn a blind eye to the Nazification of Germany.
Mark,
Lucy Van Pelt called. She wants to hold the football, and then you can come running up and kick it.
Jim Coley,
Brilliant! You've captured this man's personal and professional failings in a single - very apt - metaphor. I'm still laughing....
Incorrect: "Most journalists are going to give the government the benefit of some doubt."
Correct: "No journalists are going to give the government the benefit of some doubt."
Correct: "Lazy writers who pat themselves on the back for transcribing the utterances of government officials are going to give the government the benefit of some doubt."
Without contemporary evidence that the accusations at the time were true, as far as I can see the correct reaction by a journalist trying to maintain old-style "objectivity" would have been to note the accusations without prejudice one way or the other. It's true that it is a major thing to accuse the government of, so i wouldn't expect mainstream journalists to jump aboard completely, but neither should they assume the accusations are made out of political pique. Using their noses for news, good journalists would have made an honest assessment of whether they thought there might be something to the allegations, and if thought that possible, started to investigate to see if there was evidence that could be turned up.
That is what should have happened. My memory isn't good enough to say exactly what did happen, but my strong suspicion would be that most of the MSM reacted with extreme prejudice against the allegations because of the major deal it would be if they were true, and the timing of when they were coming. In retrospect, such prejudice was obviously extremely inappropriate, but at the time it's harder to say how inappropriate it was, though it definitely was inappropriate.
As people have pointed out, it was the politicizing of everything first and the "gut hatred" second.
If you could even call it "gut hatred." It was more like passionate belief in good government, horror and disbelief at what was going on, and a desire to make themselves heard above the deafening silence of the Fourth Estate.
And now Marc will be going on about how the Obama admin must have every claim checked on because the Bush admin was so mendacious.
"Our skepticism about the activists' conclusions was warranted because these folks based their assumption on gut hatred for President Bush, and not on any evaluation of the raw intelligence."
What a crock! If you would have had even 1/10 of the skepticism of the Bush Administration's phony war run-up there wouldn't be 4000 dead US troops. If you had 1/10 of the skepticism of the blatant destruction of any established standards of constitutional law or international treatment of detainees, we wouldn't be the laughingstock of the world. You are not a journalist Marc, you are a stenographer of any blather that the Bush administration chose to slop in the trough on any given day.
A journalist maintains a skepticism of the blather that is being handed down and does some investigating on his/her own to test the validity of the thesis. To do otherwise disqualifies one as entitled to the title journalist. Go ask someone like Larisa Alexandrovna or Glenn Greenwald to give you private tutoring in how to be a real journalist. Maybe you still have time to do something really important...like report news.
To: Bob Cohn, Ed. Atlantic.Com
cc: James Bennett, Ed; Scott Stossel, Deputy Ed.; et al:
Sirs: Are you in fact reading this persons work? If so, WTF?
Marc, it is absolutely amazing that anyone actually pays you to be this big a wanker.
Not to pile on (oh, hell, who am I kidding?) but I and several friends gathered to watch the introduction of the new product that you don't introduce in August, delivered by GWB on October 7, 2002 . You know, the one that said "the smoking gun -- that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud" among all of the other bullshit. It was a drinking game where every time we heard a lie, we tipped it. We got pretty drunk...
My question: if I and my working class cohorts with no more than functioning brains and intertubes connections could recognize the lies as early as October 2002, why couldn't the Ambinders of the world?
Got anything to say for yourself after this epic smackdown, Marc?
Marc, the reason we all love reading you is that you tell us exactly what the convention wisdom in DC is thinking. Of course, you have no idea what's going on in the real world, but if we want to know what all the ignorant hack journalists in DC are saying to each other, you provide a window into that world but repeating the conventional wisdom of the DC press corps verbatim.
I can't believe i signed up just to defend a journalist? But do you people have access too crystal balls that the rest of humanity lacks? Many of you would really each win a prize in a jerk contest, if there ever was one officially. I mean really! I used too think our politicians were a bunch of cut throats, but now...
I've never read of a bunch of overly cynical, hypocritical and annoying know-it-all's too exist in one tiny little comment section in the enormity of the web. Like many of you would have done the job any better without fault? HA! The gentleman was trying to moderate his position a bit, with the addition of a compliment to those who were right and a lot of you just about pounced on him like a bunch of rabid dogs. Now that is just savage! No better then neanderthals, really! Compliments to the more mature ones who held back though.
Many of you instead of belittling, harping and slamming upon this gentleman, ought to be out running for the house, senate or even the presidency if anyone thinks their intellect is so darn superior to the average human? Perhaps some of you are the few chosen lucky people with access to a crystal ball! If that is the case, then by golly... get out from behind the computer screen, quit your day jobs and run for government office! The good lord knows the world is always in need of superior intellects whose honesty is without question and of whom also happen too have 24/7 access to crystal balls where others don't!
If government service isn't anyones cup of tea, then i hear football teams are always on the look out for a few good Monday morning quarterback? Sheeeesh......
I can't believe i signed up just to defend a journalist? But do you people have access too crystal balls that the rest of humanity lacks? Many of you would really each win a prize in a jerk contest, if there ever was one officially. I mean really! I used too think our politicians were a bunch of cut throats, but now...
I've never read of a bunch of overly cynical, hypocritical and annoying know-it-all's too exist in one tiny little comment section in the enormity of the web. Like many of you would have done the job any better without fault? HA! The gentleman was trying to moderate his position a bit, with the addition of a compliment to those who were right and a lot of you just about pounced on him like a bunch of rabid dogs. Now that is just savage! No better then neanderthals, really! Compliments to the more mature ones who held back though.
Many of you instead of belittling, harping and slamming upon this gentleman, ought to be out running for the house, senate or even the presidency if anyone thinks their intellect is so darn superior to the average human? Perhaps some of you are the few chosen lucky people with access to a crystal ball! If that is the case, then by golly... get out from behind the computer screen, quit your day jobs and run for government office! The good lord knows the world is always in need of superior intellects whose honesty is without question and of whom also happen too have 24/7 access to crystal balls where others don't!
If government service isn't anyones cup of tea, then i hear football teams are always on the look out for a few good Monday morning quarterback? Sheeeesh......
The real question you have to ask yourself is why, assuming you do, call yourself a journalist if you believe the government should get the benefit of the doubt. Or did you just miss that day in class where the purpose of a free press was discussed.
You can no doubt write this off as a bad day at the office, but unfortunately there are a lot of dead people in Iraq because the press was so incompetent, you specifically included, they couldn't even recognize the crock of crap Wolfowitz was selling on $50B and then self-funding for the war effort. Manipulating terror codes is the least of the Bush offenses.
It's a just result that the media finds themselves being marginalized, why pay stenographers when the government websites are easily accessible?
As Bruce Barlett said so accurately about the Republicans, Where is the penance? In this case by the press and you personally.
I hope some self-reflection on the basic assumptions you have about what constitutes the role of journalism in our society, not just politics, would improve your dedication to your craft. But based on the experiences I've observed over the past two decades my expectations are non-existent. Of course my intense hatred for illogical incompetence from the national media no doubt colors my view.
Journalists like Ambinder are now bending over backwards to 'explain' why they didn't do their job in the Bush years by blaming the "hate Bush" crowd as the reasonable scapegoat. And YET, Marc, the NYTimes and others have proven time and again that rather than dig a little and do the investigative work, they relied on what, exactly? Ambinder seems to suggest he purposely ran counter to what he calls the gut feelings from the 'angry left' to discredit the idea of deceit in the Bush White House, and also the lack of hard evidence awaiting him at his office desk. Whatever happened to journalistic cynicism? You know, that skepticism our paid journalists are supposed to innately be blessed with regarding elected leadership, and which helps them to seek evidence of wrongdoing on their own in order to keep our elected officials honest?? Instead, he throws those justifiably angry activists - who apparently had a better sense of investigative acumen than he did - under the bus. Way to stand like a man, Marc, in the face of your comeuppance.
The breakdown here in the color-coding deceit is all Ambinder. Blaming those who were justified in their anger at the deceit that got us into Iraq is a lame and regrettable move for Marc. If I were truly a knee-jerk angry mobster, in the same manner as the Birthers, teabaggers and deathsters, I'd claim that Ambinder was in cahoots with the Bushies and their deceit. But I'm not an ignorant or scared fool led by Limbaughian Lies. Instead, I recognize utter incompetence when I see it, and Marc displayed far more of that than anything nefarious and deceitful. Sadly, one could almost wish it were the latter that drove Mr. Ambinder to fail us so miserably.
Shame on Ambinder and others in his profession who dropped the ball on this and other such tales of wretched deceit in the last 8 years.
"because these folks based their assumption on gut hatred"
tit for tai, Marc:
"because Marc based his assumption on gut support for President Bush".
Your gut support helped a deranged Bush administration play adventurous and deranged games with foreign policy and war.
Take a moment and appreciate the historic chaos and instability Bush caused. Please remember the 1/4 million Iraqi men, women, and children killed and the deaths of our loyal troops.
Dear sir...
Could you please explain this statement of yours...It makes no sense...
"...Information asymmetry is always going to exist, and, living as we do in a Democratic system, most journalists are going to give the government the benefit of some doubt, even having learned lessons about giving the government that benefit...."
Thank you...
Ugh, I foolishly thought we finally went beyond this nonsense. Don't you have something else to write about that pushing forward that tiresome claim that all of us that saw the obvious -- such as ambiguous terror alerts being synchronized with Kerry's acceptance speech -- fall under this group called "liberals" which equates to "Bush haters".
This is one of those embarrassingly revealing posts that you try to live down. Apparently Ambinder bought into the Dirty/Deranged Fucking Hippie myth. As much as I hate these mythical creatures too, even in mythical form they were inadvertently right about a lot!
And let's think back to that time and put aside hindsight. You really trusted these people after the transparently silly causus-belli-per-day leading up to the start of the war...and the lack of WMD didn't even do it for you? The heinously botched postwar? What does it take to make Marc Ambinder skeptical of an administration - a Republican administration - on foreign policy? Or is he just determined to be a loyal dupe?
Ambinder,
The real problem is that you're not a bonafide journalist though you may characterize yourself as such. It's too bad you are given an audience in this forum.
It is a journalist's job to question, then question again, and yet again - regardless of their political leanings. You didn't. For a journalist, that type of conduct is unprofessional. Rather, you dismissed the allegation by ascribing it to 'gut hatred for' GWB.
That's why you're not a journalist and it's an affront for you to contend you are. Instead, your actions made you an enabler for much of what GWB's administration did. For that, and for claiming to be a journalist, you should be ashamed.
Marc,
When you are in a hole, stop digging.
By the time people suspected Dept. of Homeland Security was palying politics with terrorism alerts the Bush Administration had 100% fully deserved their skepticism. This is clear in hindsight to many; it was clear at the time to a few.
I think such a conclusion was fact-based and did not rely on hatred or reflex.
I am a liberal and I was politicall aware for both Reagan and Bush I. I was perfectly capable of realizing quite early on that GWB was something else entirely. (lies abouot the budget started me on this road, the way the aluminum tubes were presented unambiguously as centrifuge parts when most experts thought that unlikely was the turning point for me. After that I did not 'reflexively' assume anything the Bush Administration said was a lie. I simply gave them no credibility and made up my mind on a case by case basis depending on circumstances. On the terror alerts I thought something along the lines of "no way to know, but not unrealistic for this group'.
Instead of reading motives into the hearts of others, why don't you start asking yourself why you continued to believe an Administration that was so dishonest? Why do you impugn the motives of people who over time GOT IT RIGHT more than you did? Isn't that the measure of whether someone is on touch with the real world?
Your failure contributes where are right now. 'Death panels' are read into a bill that does not have death panels, and millions are convinced. You and others need to forcefully call out lies, because if you do not the lies succeed and we are debased. I guess you are too concerned about your image to get upset when people cross the line. Not prudent for your career I suppose.
It was reported at an "attack website" because the U.S. government will stop at next to nothing to silence the voices of the site. The site has already being through a full investigation by the L.A.P.D., the Sheriff's Department High Tech Crime Division, the F.B.I. and the Justice Department. No crimes by the owner...but lots of crimes done to him.
You said, and I quote, "Attack sites try to install programs that steal private information, use your computer to attack others, or damage your system."
"Some attack sites intentionally distribute harmful software, but many are compromised without the knowledge or permission of their owners."
The site was a victim of the latter, but it's clean. Except for the dirty cops inside.