Reporting the American Gulag

The Gray Lady:

In defending the Central Intelligence Agency’s secret network of prisons on Wednesday, President Bush said the detention system had used lawful interrogation techniques, was fully described to select members of Congress and led directly to the capture of a string of terrorists over the past four years.

A review of public documents and interviews with American officials raises questions about Mr. Bush’s claims on all three fronts.

Raises questions? This happens a lot in Big Media: in order to abide by their notion of themselves as Reporters of Objective Fact they'll twist themselves into big doughy pretzel shapes in order to avoid seeming partisan. For example, the preponderance of evidence that I am aware of does more than raise questions about these claims. The claims are false -- the United States has been applying illegal techniques of torture (and at least some of our victims have been innocent of any crime), Congress has been selectively and deceptively briefed, when briefed at all, and there's no evidence to support the claim that the torture conducted in our worlwide network of secret prisons has yielded positive results. Raises questions?

Some time ago, someone (was it Paul Krugman? Frank Rich?) wrote that the search for journalistic "balance" has been taken to such an absurd degree that if a senior administration official were to insist that the world is flat, the headline in the NYT would read: "Shape of Earth: Views Differ." Instead, of course, it should read: "Senior Administration Official: Idiot or Liar?" Raises questions?

For the record, remember that I pick on those with power -- right now, they're mostly Republican. The Democrats will get their turn again, as they have in the past (as a friend once said to me, "Wow, don't you have anything nice to say about the Clinton Administration?").