Osama, dead or alive... or not

The friendliest place on the web for anyone that follows U2.
If you have answers, please help by responding to the unanswered posts.

najeena

War Child
Joined
Sep 20, 2002
Messages
995
Location
an island paradise
The CIA has closed it's special unit devoted to finding Osama bin Laden, citing the need to "address changes in terrorist organizations". To my cynical eye 9/11 was the best thing that ever happened to Bush, the war in Iraq the best thing that ever happened to Osama. Why end a great relationship?
 
najeena said:
The CIA has closed it's special unit devoted to finding Osama bin Laden

Don't worry, I'm sure they have several new "top secret" or "hush-hush" operations now in place. The details of which, no doubt, will soon be splashed all over the front-page of the NY Times.
 
Re: Re: Osama, dead or alive... or not

INDY500 said:


Don't worry, I'm sure they have several new "top secret" or "hush-hush" operations now in place. The details of which, no doubt, will soon be splashed all over the front-page of the NY Times.


and the WSJ too?

it would be terrible for OBL to find out that we've been looking for him. a real breach of national security.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZmYFc_ZCdH4&search=dana priest meet the press
 
Last edited:
I guess when W said he wanted ......
dead or alive

he was referring to the 80's pop group?


petethanksandy.jpg


they do have that catchy song

You spin me round, (like a record)
 
also, were you this upset about Valerie Plame?

the President did direct Cheney to disclose highly classified intelligence information to defend his administration and smear Joe Wilson.
 
Irvine511 said:
also, were you this upset about Valerie Plame?

the President did direct Cheney to disclose highly classified intelligence information to defend his administration and smear Joe Wilson.

Highly classified info? I think not. Everyone in Washington knew Valerie Plame was CIA. Her hubby Joe had talked openly about her being "with the agency". How is it a "leak" if everyone knew it?

Besides, it's not even certain that she was a covert agent - some say she was an analyst.
 
80sU2isBest said:


Highly classified info? I think not. Everyone in Washington knew Valerie Plame was CIA. Her hubby Joe had talked openly about her being "with the agency". How is it a "leak" if everyone knew it?

Besides, it's not even certain that she was a covert agent - some say she was an analyst.



he outed a CIA agent for the sake of politics -- this is a big deal! there is no question that she was a covert officer:

http://news.nationaljournal.com/articles/0703nj1.htm

this is a much bigger deal than the NYT stating that near well every terrorist on the planet has his telephone monitored and his international bank transfers scrutinized. just how much of a shock was this? for years, terrorists have employed unconventional money transfers and creative communications precisely because they assume that they are being monitored by most of the Western world.
 
Irvine511 said:

this is a much bigger deal than the NYT stating that near well every terrorist on the planet has his telephone monitored and his international bank transfers scrutinized. just how much of a shock was this?

Maybe not a shock, but it was big enough to be an above the fold headline. :confused:

Spilling the beans (like a handful of our leading newspapers seem to make a habit of) could very well make some of our more skittish allies (France, Germany, etc) less likely to share information with the U.S.
 
Bluer White said:


Maybe not a shock, but it was big enough to be an above the fold headline. :confused:

Spilling the beans (like a handful of our leading newspapers seem to make a habit of) could very well make some of our more skittish allies (France, Germany, etc) less likely to share information with the U.S.



simply because it's not news to terrorists doesn't mean that it isn't news to the American people. counterterrorism deserves debate and analysis as well as checks and balances, particularly in light of the growing concern of the Patriot Act and the explosive expansion of the powers of the executive branch under the Bush Administration.

your question begs another: if it is such a concern that terrorists might learn something from the NYT and WSJ articles, then wouldn't it be wise to stop stamping our feet about "leaks" in the press, in the press? once again, we see the politicization of terrorism in order to scare the right wing base back into the booths this fall.
 
Irvine511 said:
once again, we see the politicization of terrorism in order to scare the right wing base back into the booths this fall.

Every issue doesn't need to become a left/right slugfest. I think this is one of them, although the NYT seems to have shown its hand a long time ago. Even John Murtha was against releasing this.

I'd like to see a serious investigation into the government officials who had loose lips. That would be some progress.
 
Bluer White said:


Every issue doesn't need to become a left/right slugfest. I think this is one of them, although the NYT seems to have shown its hand a long time ago. Even John Murtha was against releasing this.

I'd like to see a serious investigation into the government officials who had loose lips. That would be some progress.



this has been made a right/left issue not by the NYT but by the moaning of the Bush administration. the simple fact that they are going after the NYT and not the right-wing WSJ demonstrates that this is little more than an attack on a single newspaper who's very name gets their base all riled up.

how has the NYT shown it's hand? did you watch Meet the Press on Sunday? everyone agrees: there's a firewall between the Op-Ed pages of the NYT and the WSJ and their reporting. this was a report, not an opinion piece.
 
Irvine511 said:

this has been made a right/left issue not by the NYT but by the moaning of the Bush administration. the simple fact that they are going after the NYT and not the right-wing WSJ demonstrates that this is little more than an attack on a single newspaper who's very name gets their base all riled up.

A few points:
1. While both the WSJ and LA Times had the story (apparently the leaker really wanted this info out ) neither was going to print it until they learned the NY Times was going with it. The NY Times was the catalyst. That's the explanation I've heard.
2. This is the 3rd such story in less than a year for the Times following disclosures about the NSA surveillance program and "secret CIA prisons." Both of the earlier stories earned the reporters Pulitzers, make of that what you will.
3. It was the NY Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr who in a May commencement address called the war in Iraq "a misbegotten war in a foreign land.”

I hope both reporters of the terrorist/banking story are subpoenaed and asked to reveal their sources on threat of jail time. Won't it be fun watching them explain to the American people why "the people's right to know" that supposedly allows the Times to print these classified government secrets, suddenly stops with the secrets of the NY Times.
 
So it really is not a illegal to publish or release classified information? It's not a crime? You're allowed to do this?
 
What is the motive here? If there was outrage that this information was harmful to nationial security, then Irvine's right. The White House should be all over the other papers as well as NYT.

I suspect this is more desire to intimidate the New York Times, to intimidate a powerful newspaper whose editorial policy opposes.
I suspect that the same information released being given a really positive spin would have pleased the President.

There are reasons why protection of the press was built into the Constitution and protection of the government was not.
 
80sU2isBest said:


There is indeed question about whether she was covert, and not just by me, in case you were wondering.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valerie_Plame



and you should know that wikipedia is only fact-checked by peers and would be inadmissable as a citation on any high school or university level paper.

and by insisting that she wasn't covert, when she was, and making the discussion about that misses the much bigger issue.
 
INDY500 said:
I hope both reporters of the terrorist/banking story are subpoenaed and asked to reveal their sources on threat of jail time. Won't it be fun watching them explain to the American people why "the people's right to know" that supposedly allows the Times to print these classified government secrets, suddenly stops with the secrets of the NY Times.


it is NOT illegal to publish classified information. it isn't. nothing was illegal. nothing.

there is no issue here beyond administration tantrums.
 
Irvine511 said:


and you should know that wikipedia is only fact-checked by peers and would be inadmissable as a citation on any high school or university level paper.

and by insisting that she wasn't covert, when she was, and making the discussion about that misses the much bigger issue.

Wikipedia isn't where I first got my info about Valerie Plame not being covert. It's just what I used to show you quotes that testify to the fact that there is indeed question about whether she was a covert agent.

I am curoius as to what big issue I am missing. I think the one you are missing is that it was well known that she was CIA. How can it be a leak if everyone knew it anyway?
 
Irvine511 said:



it is NOT illegal to publish classified information. it isn't. nothing was illegal. nothing.

there is no issue here beyond administration tantrums.

I think the issue of compromising national security is a big issue.
 
80sU2isBest said:


I think the issue of compromising national security is a big issue.



yes, but national security was not compromised. every terrorist knows that his bank account and communications are being monitored.
 
Okay, so it's not illegal to reveal classified information.

I think it should be. If something is vital to national security then it seems like there should be some sort of law about just revealing it to the world.

If, on the other hand, the information is not important enough to be protected by law then there shouldn't be any complaint about that information being revealed.
 
maycocksean said:
I think it should be. If something is vital to national security then it seems like there should be some sort of law about just revealing it to the world.



here's what Dana Priest, who won a Pulitzer for her article on the secret torture chambers the CIA set up in Eastern European nations, has to say about this subject:


[q]Arlington, Va.: No doubt about it, a free media is critical in a democratic system. However, it is not the media's job to determine whether or not information is classified. There are legal processes for declassifying documents. And Congress, as the overseer of the intelligence community (residing in the executive branch), has the responsibility to deal with issues of excessive government secrecy, or not enough secrecy. When the media decides for itself whether or not documents should be declassified, they are breaking the law and should be prosecuted.

Dana Priest: Well, actually, the media is not breaking the law by publishing classified information. That's still a safeguard we have in the law. The person/s who turn it over are breaking the law, technically. But the courts and the body politic have always looked at this as the cost of democracy and that is one huge reason why reporters have not be pursued previously. It's the trade off for having a free press. The alternative is prior censorship and government control of the media, a la Israel, China, Iran, etc.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dy...4/DI2006041400971.html?nav=rss_nation/special

[/q]



[q]MS. PRIEST: Well, it’s not a crime to publish classified information. And this is one of the things Mr. Bennett keeps telling people that it is. But, in fact, there are some narrow categories of information you can’t publish, certain signals, communications, intelligence, the names of covert operatives and nuclear secrets.

Now why isn’t it a crime? I mean, some people would like to make casino gambling a crime, but it is not a crime. Why isn’t it not a crime? Because the framers of the Constitution wanted to protect the press so that they could perform a basic role in government oversight, and you can’t do that. Look at the criticism that the press got after Iraq that we did not do our job on WMD. And that was all in a classified arena. To do a better job—and I believe that we should’ve done a better job—we would’ve again, found ourselves in the arena of...

[...]

MS. PRIEST: Still, the point is the tension between the media and the government is long-standing. And that’s to be expected. And in fact, all these—many of the people getting up to lambaste the media now are also people that we talk to with our stories, to vet our stories, to say, “What is it in this story that you’re most concerned about?”

MS. MITCHELL: You mean, to hold things back?

MS. PRIEST: To hold things back. In the prison story, we talked with the administration. No one in the administration asked us not to publish the story. In fact, people said, “We know you have your job to do, but please don’t publish the names of the countries where the prisons are located.” So there is a reasoned dialogue that often goes on between the media and the government behind, behind all this.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13615446/page/5/

[/q]



how about Jon Harwood, of the Wall Street Journal:

[q]MR. JOHN HARWOOD: This is what I don’t get. The people who killed 3,000 Americans on September 11, who murdered Danny Pearl, my colleague at The Wall Street Journal, commit atrocities every day in Iraq, are evil, but they’re not stupid, and I don’t understand the logic that says all of a sudden they’ve discovered something they didn’t know. September 24, 2001, President Bush walked into the Rose Garden and announced, “We’ve developed a strategy, we’re putting banks and financial institutions around the world on, on notice. We’ll work with their governments, freeze or block terrorists’ money. We’re going to work with the United Nations, the EU, the G8 to follow this money.”

[...]

MR. HARWOOD: Well, Republicans certainly think so. They—if you’re a Republican in the White House or in Congress, would you rather talk about immigration, gas prices, the estate tax, all the things that you can’t get done right now, or would you rather go after The New York Times, the Supreme Court on the Guantanamo ruling—we’ll talk about that later—and make hay and say “They’re tying our hands in the war on terrorism”? It’s obvious they’d rather do the latter, and they love this discussion. They’re going to love it even more if Congress takes up legislation on Guantanamo.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13615446/page/5/

[/q]
 
Irvine511 said:



it is NOT illegal to publish classified information. it isn't. nothing was illegal. nothing.

there is no issue here beyond administration tantrums.

It is illegal for government employees who sign a contract of nondisclosure to then leak classified information. That's who needs to be worried right now.

Imagine this, instead of leaking to the newspapers, the very same leaker had been caught passing the very same classified information on to an agent of Al-Qaeda in the form of a computer disc or something. Gosh, think they'd be in trouble?
 
Back
Top Bottom