Whose “Intelligence,” is more Intelligent? The MSM or Governments

I was alerted to the existence of this “piece” by an article written my James S. Robbins at National Review Online, entitled, “Al Qaeda is back?”

The Robbins article questions the nearly unanimous opinion as fact, that the U.S. is losing or fighting a losing battle against the almost omnipotent al Qaeda. The article here, may appear to some as a piece preaching to the choir, but isn’t to anyone that may be interested in weighing the possibilities/points themselves.

That said I’m off in a slightly different direction; that being questioning the “balance,” of the decision(s) made by the msm writers and editorialists as to which “facts” are the appropriate ones for a given article.

Last week I posted regarding an editorial or two, the writers of which appeared to use their own paper as the source for the “facts.” This I believe is part of the msms problem; that being the bubble they inhabit forces them to use their own material, which in turn strengthens the belief that they know these tidbits as fact because they read it in the paper.

On Valentines Day of all times, the NY Times railed on the Bush Administration regarding the tentative agreement with North Korea asking (italics mine):

“The obvious question to ask is: What took so long? And even more important: Will President Bush learn from this belated success? Will he finally allow his diplomats to try negotiation and even compromise with other bad and undeniably dangerous governments?”

I in turn asked:

"What took so long? What is taking the Times so long? The Times and those opposed to “anything Bush,” insisted upon a “multi-lateral (while ignoring anything “multi” about it),” response to Saddam’s Iraq, while insisting upon a “uni-lateral (is there a pattern of opposites here?),” approach to North Koreas snubbing of the infamous 1994 “Agreed Framework.”

The day previous found the editorial board up in arms over the “nameless briefers,” involved in the “supersecret briefing in Baghdad by a group of American military officials whose names could not be revealed.” Yet another instance of lessons not learned; “how little this administration has learned from its failures is a constant source of amazement. It seems the bigger the failure, the less it learns.”

I wondered which scenario the paper felt would suffice in satisfying its unquenchable need for meat from either the left or right buttock of the president, since the editorial took both sides, which leaves nothing to counter with. Here, they expect conclusiveness:

“And perhaps in time, the administration will be able to prove conclusively that the weapons came from arms factories in Iran.”

Yet, a little further down:

“We have no doubt about Iran’s malign intent. Iran is defying the Security Council’s order to halt its nuclear activities, and it is certainly meddling inside Iraq.”

Ultimately, I guess neither scenario will satisfy the paper.

The Washington Post had an article that does not allow for any possibility of anything, save for what it sees as obvious, which can be found in my post “The Demuring Pace on Iran and the Possibility Denying Media.” The Post also uses various language and “facts” to “color our news.”

Today, thanks to Mr. Robbins (I had no time for perusing today, except for Robbins and the article in question), I get to note the hypocritical “balance,” of the NY Times again, and only one paragraph is needed as example:

“The intelligence and counterterrorism officials would discuss the classified intelligence only on the condition of anonymity. They would not provide some of the evidence that led them to their assessments, saying that revealing the information would disclose too much about the sources and methods of intelligence collection.”

An awful wordy and redundant post on my part if only to illustrate the obvious (though not to them or are they just dishonest); the msm is not a font of balanced honesty or its most trusted source for information, facts and history is itself. Oh yeah, and the impression one gets that "anonymity" is only acceptable to the "trusted" elite media.

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