McClellan finally grows a pair....Follow

As usual tho, these tossers are too spineless to say anything when they could actually have done something useleful with the information.




Link

*******

Meaningless. People with intellectual capacities greater than a gnats knew all of this years ago, Gbajis will assume it's all dirty lies because he's making money from the book sales.

Bah. Bored...



No. I assume it's a reasonably accurate and fair assessment of the facts of the situation as he knows them. I will also assume that the 2 paragraph "snippet" released was designed to highlight just the bits that could be most easily taken out of context, put into an article like the one linked above, and prompt a bunch of tools to say "OMG! See. We knew it was all lies all along!!!".


He'll be yet another in a long line of people (most recently former Bush administration folks) who's words have been misquoted and taken out of context for exactly this reason and in exactly this way. It's not exactly surprising. What *is* surprising is how the public keeps falling for the same gag time after time...

For the purpose of selling books? The people who released the snippet was his publisher. There's no ulterior motive for it except to make people want to spend money on his hardcover.

That was my point. There's nothing more to read into the motive here than "Let's get some ears perked and sell some books."

I'm not sure of any others who've really been "misquoted" (McClellan wasn't, regardless of context) as former administrative folks who are selling books. Maybe I'm just not buying enough books from former Bush White House staffers. Closest I can think of in recent memory was Greenspan but he wasn't misquoted -- he honestly criticised the administration on several counts (and was okay with it on others).

Yes, it would.


'Cos I take a huge delight in saying "I fucking told you so".

Especially in connection to the scumbags who've been responsible for the way the world has become a shittier place to live in since they decided that war against an ill-defined 'methodology' would be a fine excuse to generate a huge pile of cash for themselves and to further their own degenerate religious/idealistic beliefs, while alllowing dimwits like yourself to feel 'patriotic' in your support of their evil plans policies, all the while pissing themselves laughing as they tear up the constitution and steadily removing the freedoms that 'they hate you for'.... Ya mug.

Ah. I was unclear, and didn't help matters with the phrase "in exactly this way". I was referring to the method of taking a quote out of context from a snippet of somekind and implying a specific meaning that wasn't present in the original source. I wasn't constraining this to producers releasing snippets from books.

Leaked bits from the Plame investigation spring directly to mind (and interestingly enough are relevant to this very issue). Admittedly, this is a minor point, but amusing just in the sheer amount of misinformation that investigation generated in the publics mind about what exactly happened.

Leaked bits from numerous security assessments prior to official release spring to mind (inevitably showing some quote saying that the war in Iraq is causing an increase in terrorism while magically forgetting to include the quotes stating that the increase would be worse if we weren't in Iraq).

Leaked memos. Leaked minutes. Leaked this. Leaked that. Heck. Leaked grades for Christs sake! It's been a pretty constant barrage of short bits pushed out into the public eye with a pretty obvious and specific goal of eroding confidence in the Bush administration. Never in my life have I seen such a constant and large scale effort by an opposition party to do this sort of thing.


My point is that we get very little useful information from short snippets, and even less from selective quotes from said short snippets. Inevitably, when the full document comes out it often says exactly the opposite of what the "leaked" quotes implied. Unfortunately, the public tends to form its opinion based on the spin placed on these leaked (or in the case of a book, released by the publisher) snippets. Everyone makes huge hay out of these things and then there's utter silence when the full information comes out. Funny that...

Um... He didn't "lie through his teeth". He stated something he believed was true. Do we need to go through the whole "definition of a lie" again?

I also don't trust *any* second hand quote where there's a split in the quotation marks. Period. For all I know there were three other sentences between the first one and the second. Doubly so since it appears on a separate paragraph in the article.

While it would be a blatant (and obvious) "trick", any quote appearing on a separate line with no clear indication who wrote it can't be assumed to be a quote by any particular person. Could be the editor inserting his own opinion for all I know. At the very least we have no direct evidence of the connection between that sentence and the preceding one.

Read only what's there. Don't make assumptions. Once you stop inferring from the quoted sections what you already believe to be true, you might just realize that he didn't really say anything that damning or inflammatory. It's just presented that way in the article.



Um... Because he didn't?


All we can directly state from the quotes provided is that in his book is a quote in which he states that he publicly exonerated Rove and Libby. And then a second quote (which is presumably a quote from the book but could technically be from any damn thing the article writer choose to quote), in which he states "There was one problem. It was not true".

You assume that the second quote immediately precedes the first in the book, with nothing in between. But there's absolutely no need for that to be the case (it could be, but isn't required). They are separate quotes. We can't assume anything about their relative position or order in the source material. The writer of the article put those two quotes together that way. We have no idea how it's actually written in the book.

Again. Read only what's there. Don't add anything extra.



I'd much rather that they simply provided the entire three paragraphs from the snippet to us instead of essentially "editorializing" it. Seriously. Wouldn't it have been shorter to just write the paragraphs and let the public read it for themselves? The only reason to write their own words is to tell you what they want you to believe about the subject being written about.

That's "available information", It may even be "freely available information". But it's not "good information". Is it too much to ask for free information that is actually untainted by the person delivering it to me? There is some middle ground between having *no* information and having information that only comes to us through the lens of the media. Presenting it as an either/or is a huge fallacy.

I'd like my information to be accurate. Not spun all to hell by the time it reaches me.




Lol. Google "leaked national intelligence estimate". Do I have to do everything for ya?

There's been at least one "leak" every single year since the war began. It's not exactly hard to find. And selective portions quoted from NIEs on a number of other sources magically appear on the interwebs all the time as well (while conveniently missing the facts quite often as well.

One of the major arguments against the war in Iraq is based on the "fact" that two NIEs prior to the invasion made some statements, which when selectively plucked out of context would make one think that our intelligence agencies were all desperately trying to wave us off of military involvement in Iraq.

There are more examples of this then I could post without making your eyes go more buggy then they already are.



Strange. You completely buy that it's possible the 'state' that terrrorist incidents would have been lower if we hadn't invaded Iraq, yet are tripped up on this?

That's why they're called NIEs (national intelligence estimates). They make assessments about "might have been" and "might be" scenarios.



See answer above.

You're right. They are guesses. They are made up of a collection of intelligence agencies, both governmental and private think tanks and their assessments of a whole range of things.

Put what weight on it you want. My point is that the anti-war folks have put absolutely *huge* weight on a handful of leaked lines from selected NIEs over the years to argue against the war, while ignoring the bulk and context of those same NIEs. If we should put no weight in those, then so be it. But then you've tossed out the bulk of the arguments about the shaky nature of intelligence that led us into Iraq.

If those NIEs have weight, then we should look at the bulk of NIE reports that counter the snippets that the anti-war folks have pulled out of selected NIEs and leaked to the public. You don't get it both ways. You can't declare only the stuff out of NIEs that support your "side" as valid and ignore everything else. But that appears to be exactly what the anti-war argument is based on.

And it "flies" with the public largely because the public only sees the furor made in the media when one of these "damning" leaks occurs, and yet virtually never hears about the full reports and how they don't support the implication in the leaked bits at all.

Just as I'm sure when this book comes out, and people read it and sure enough McClellan isn't really slamming the Bush administration over it's handling of the Plame leak, you won't hear about it. Because it wont be printed in any magazine or news source that you read, so you'll never know and will continue living in ignorance believing what you believe about the facts of the situation. Just like the last dozen times something like this has happened...





Getting information from more then just what's shoved in front of you on your TV and far left anti-war sites might just help you have a better view of reality though. Just a thought...

The "only" reason? Are you serious?

Nope. Just an adjective. It's not the position of being anti-war that I have issues with, but with the methodology and in many cases the basis for those holding that position in the first place.


Those using the specific methods I'm talking about just happen to be pushing an anti-war message. Doesn't mean that anti-war messages are all wrong. Just that this one happens to be anti-war. It's not like it isn't a common theme here. The Plame thing was entirely about a group of anti-war people making hay out of something which should have been an embarrassment to their own position (Joe Wilson having been sent on his fact finding trip by his own wife, which somewhat mutes the whole cronyism/nepotism argument against the Bush administration) and through a brilliant manipulation of the media managed to blow so much smoke out there that they were able to not only deflect attention away from that problem with their argument, but get the public to completely miss the blatant flaws in Wilson's own statements *and* managed to convince so many people that there must be a fire here somewhere that they were able to pin the blame on the Bush administration for a coverup of an action that never actually occurred.


Well done. But still shady and ultimately requiring a public that largely does not question facts when they tie into rhetoric they've already been primed to believe.

Similar issues surround the other examples I gave. NIE snippets that require a public that doesn't really pay attention to facts and is willing to jump at any straw that appears to tell them what they want to hear. Government leaks are wonderful that way since you can leak just the bits you want, and the only way for anyone to debunk it is to declassify the source information itself. Which of course, always involves some redacting (the black marks you'll always see), which just feeds more into the publics belief that the government must have something to hide.


It's pure chicanery. But it unfortunately works very well on most people.

If it's so boggling, then why not name some other reasons?

Oh. And for the record and to be fair, I did a tiny bit of research and here's the full three paragraphs (although the positioning of the quote marks still makes me wonder if this is the correct ordering in the source):




The only tricky part I see here is the word "involved". Of course, it can mean anything, but is presumably being interpreted by most of those making a big deal out of this to mean that all of these 5 people knew "the truth" and lied to McClellan and made him give false information to the public.

Of course, that's just an interpretation. A tiny amount of research revealed that this was released from an unfinished manuscript (which perhaps explains the odd quoting). He's still polishing the book up, so making assumptions about exactly what he meant from this is pretty questionable.


I have absolutely no doubt that McClellan is not trying to say that the President knew that Libby and Rove were "involved" (funny how that same vague word is used there too) in the Plame leak. It would exactly counter every single statement he's given in every interview on this very subject. He's said repeatedly that the President didn't know, so it seems unlikely that he's reversing himself here.

More likely, it's just a poor word choice in an unfinished manuscript that can be interpreted that way by someone eager to do exactly that.


But hey! Rhetoric over facts, right?

Lol. Interested enough to call me on it, but unwilling to define what purpose extraneous words and quotes serve here?


If the only purpose is to inform the public that a three paragraph excerpt has been released and to provide the contents of that excerpt, why write anything other then that? Why include quotes from other folks commenting about the issue?

How is that not editorializing? Sure. The author isn't writing down his opinion directly, but he's certainly doing the same thing by choosing what quotes and order to put things in, which people to provide commentary quotes from, and what additional background information to put into the article.


If you'd like (not today though cause I'm heading out soon), I'll write a copy of that article, only switching around the ordering of the quotes and changing which other sources and facts to include with the article. It'd be exactly as factual but would present an entirely different "opinion" on the subject. It's not even terrifically difficult to do.

I suppose it might be a good exercise and maybe will highlight to some of the more sheeplike folks out there just how easy it is to manipulate people's opinions just via word and quote choice in an article.