Interesting op-ed in NY Times

[Rex Kickass]

Text of editorial to follow, with lots of partisan fighting beyond that and at least one reference to the newspaper as the New York Slimes and somehow Bill Clinton will get blamed for it or there will be a moral equivalency on the part of someone to some other President Democrat or Republican. Oh yeah and allegations of a liberal media as well.

 

However, I think this is a good synopsis of the serious issues that a lot of people have regarding this President regardless of how anyone feels about any particular situation.

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/12/opinion/...serland&emc=rss

 

Editorial

The Trust Gap

Published: February 12, 2006

We can't think of a president who has gone to the American people more often than George W. Bush has to ask them to forget about things like democracy, judicial process and the balance of powers — and just trust him. We also can't think of a president who has deserved that trust less.

 

This has been a central flaw of Mr. Bush's presidency for a long time. But last week produced a flood of evidence that vividly drove home the point.

 

DOMESTIC SPYING After 9/11, Mr. Bush authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on the conversations and e-mail of Americans and others in the United States without obtaining a warrant or allowing Congress or the courts to review the operation. Lawmakers from both parties have raised considerable doubt about the legality of this program, but Attorney General Alberto Gonzales made it clear last Monday at a Senate hearing that Mr. Bush hasn't the slightest intention of changing it.

 

According to Mr. Gonzales, the administration can be relied upon to police itself and hold the line between national security and civil liberties on its own. Set aside the rather huge problem that our democracy doesn't work that way. It's not clear that this administration knows where the line is, much less that it is capable of defending it. Mr. Gonzales's own dedication to the truth is in considerable doubt. In sworn testimony at his confirmation hearing last year, he dismissed as "hypothetical" a question about whether he believed the president had the authority to conduct warrantless surveillance. In fact, Mr. Gonzales knew Mr. Bush was doing just that, and had signed off on it as White House counsel.

 

THE PRISON CAMPS It has been nearly two years since the Abu Ghraib scandal illuminated the violence, illegal detentions and other abuses at United States military prison camps. There have been Congressional hearings, court rulings imposing normal judicial procedures on the camps, and a law requiring prisoners to be treated humanely. Yet nothing has changed. Mr. Bush also made it clear that he intends to follow the new law on the treatment of prisoners when his internal moral compass tells him it is the right thing to do.

 

On Thursday, Tim Golden of The Times reported that United States military authorities had taken to tying up and force-feeding the prisoners who had gone on hunger strikes by the dozens at Guantánamo Bay to protest being held without any semblance of justice. The article said administration officials were concerned that if a prisoner died, it could renew international criticism of Gitmo. They should be concerned. This is not some minor embarrassment. It is a lingering outrage that has undermined American credibility around the world.

 

According to numerous news reports, the majority of the Gitmo detainees are neither members of Al Qaeda nor fighters captured on the battlefield in Afghanistan. The National Journal reported last week that many were handed over to the American forces for bounties by Pakistani and Afghan warlords. Others were just swept up. The military has charged only 10 prisoners with terrorism. Hearings for the rest were not held for three years and then were mostly sham proceedings.

 

And yet the administration continues to claim that it can be trusted to run these prisons fairly, to decide in secret and on the president's whim who is to be jailed without charges, and to insist that Gitmo is filled with dangerous terrorists.

 

THE WAR IN IRAQ One of Mr. Bush's biggest "trust me" moments was when he told Americans that the United States had to invade Iraq because it possessed dangerous weapons and posed an immediate threat to America. The White House has blocked a Congressional investigation into whether it exaggerated the intelligence on Iraq, and continues to insist that the decision to invade was based on the consensus of American intelligence agencies.

 

But the next edition of the journal Foreign Affairs includes an article by the man in charge of intelligence on Iraq until last year, Paul Pillar, who said the administration cherry-picked intelligence to support a decision to invade that had already been made. He said Mr. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney made it clear what results they wanted and heeded only the analysts who produced them. Incredibly, Mr. Pillar said, the president never asked for an assessment on the consequences of invading Iraq until a year after the invasion. He said the intelligence community did that analysis on its own and forecast a deeply divided society ripe for civil war.

 

When the administration did finally ask for an intelligence assessment, Mr. Pillar led the effort, which concluded in August 2004 that Iraq was on the brink of disaster. Officials then leaked his authorship to the columnist Robert Novak and to The Washington Times. The idea was that Mr. Pillar was not to be trusted because he dissented from the party line. Somehow, this sounds like a story we have heard before.

 

•

 

Like many other administrations before it, this one sometimes dissembles clumsily to avoid embarrassment. (We now know, for example, that the White House did not tell the truth about when it learned the levees in New Orleans had failed.) Spin-as-usual is one thing. Striking at the civil liberties, due process and balance of powers that are the heart of American democracy is another.

Edited February 12, 2006 by Rex Kickass

[kevin57]

Hmm...an "op-ed" used to mean that readers would get differing viewpoints from the paper's editorials (opposite opinion on the page opposite the editorial page). How is this "op-ed" any different from the usual pap from the NY Times?

[kapkomet]

Hmm...an "op-ed" used to mean that readers would get differing viewpoints from the paper's editorials (opposite opinion on the page opposite the editorial page).  How is this "op-ed" any different from the usual pap from the NY Times?

Now stop that. Rex already took all those arguments away with his little blurb at the beginning. No one dare hath a legeth to standeth oneth.

 

All Hail the NY TIMES. ALL IS FAIR, ALL IS GOOD, IMPEACH THAT MOTHER@!#%#!!!!

[LowerCaseRepublican]

When all else fails about attacking the message, attack the messenger.

 

Yeah the NYT isn't the best newspaper but then Fox News isn't exactly the most "Fair and Balanced" source either. The whole idea of news objectivity is a f***ing joke in the first place.

 

But please, kevin57 and Kap, -- refute the arguments made rather than doing the chic/brainless thing of whining about the "liberal" media.

[FlaSoxxJim]

Hmm...an "op-ed" used to mean that readers would get differing viewpoints from the paper's editorials (opposite opinion on the page opposite the editorial page).  How is this "op-ed" any different from the usual pap from the NY Times?

 

It wasn't an op-ed, Rex's thread title is in error.

 

The NYT page it came from is titled "Editorials/Op-Ed," and that was the first piece in the Editorial section, and clearly labeled as such.

 

This was the day's contents:

 

EDITORIALS:

 

The Trust Gap

 

A Surprising Warning on Stimulants

 

Editorial Observer: According to Webster: One Man's Attempt to Define 'America'

 

OP-ED CONTRIBUTORS

 

The Islam the Riots Drowned Out

 

Capture the Flag

 

Our Faith in Letting It All Hang Out

[Balta1701]

Hmm...an "op-ed" used to mean that readers would get differing viewpoints from the paper's editorials (opposite opinion on the page opposite the editorial page).  How is this "op-ed" any different from the usual pap from the NY Times?

I always thought it was so-called because it was the page "Opposite" the editorial page, and that had nothing to do with the slant of the piece.

 

In fact, our good friend Wikipedia agrees with me.

 

An op-ed is a piece of writing, expressing an opinion. The name originated from the tradition of newspapers placing such materials on the page opposite to the editorial page. The term "op-ed" is derived from combining the words "opposite" and "editorial." It is primarily an American term.

...

 

Most op-ed pieces take the form of an essay or thesis, using arguments to promote a point of view. Newspapers often publish op-ed pieces that are in line with their editorial slants, though dissenting opinions are often given space to promote balance and discussion.

 

"Op-ed" has become a general category to identify opinion from fact regardless of the medium. For example, Web pages containing opinion articles are labeled "op-ed," even though the original meaning is not relevant.

 

It has become popular in some circles to incorrectly expand the term "op-ed" as "opinion-editorial," a reasonable though incorrect guess at the term's origin.

 

The New York Times has an "Op-Ed" section devoted to op-ed pieces.

Interestingly, it would appear that FlaSoxxJim is right here...the Op-ed section is distinctly different from the Editorials section of the NYT, and technically I think the thread is mislabeled. The correct way to say it would be "Interesting Editorial in the NY Times"

Edited February 13, 2006 by Balta1701

[FlaSoxxJim]

Interestingly, it would appear that FlaSoxxJim is right here...

 

Hey. . . ?!? You say that like it's never happened before. . .

 

[Rex Kickass]

Now stop that.  Rex already took all those arguments away with his little blurb at the beginning.  No one dare hath a legeth to standeth oneth.

 

All Hail the NY TIMES.  ALL IS FAIR, ALL IS GOOD, IMPEACH THAT MOTHER@!#%#!!!!

 

Yeah, that's not what I meant. But I guess I'm just sick of seeing the same reply to every thread in here. I thought it was an interesting piece, and a good illustration of where one side lies.

[kapkomet]

Yeah, that's not what I meant. But I guess I'm just sick of seeing the same reply to every thread in here. I thought it was an interesting piece, and a good illustration of where one side lies.

Now that's quite different.

 

Having said that, though, of course that's where one side lies. It's no different then the other 10,000 posts even on this forum in the last two months.