Forget mentioning the name of a DC desk jockey in a column about her attention hungry husband’s lack of qualifications for a job, this is what a real outing looks like:
ABC runs a report showing the names and faces of two CIA contractors who may have had a role in the waterboarding of KSM and Abu Zubaydah. The network apparently outsourced this report to a freelancer named Matthew Cole, whose record in Nexis includes just three bylines — two stories for Salon (one of which about “how Bush administration aid to Pakistan helps fund insurgents who kill U.S. troops”), and one for the San Jose Mercury News just two days after 9/11 reporting “anxiety about a backlash” among Muslims, who assure the reporter that the attack “has nothing to do with Islam.”
In other words, Cole is a left-wing partisan with questionable reporting chops. This is obvious from the quality of the story tonight. Cole repeats the now throughly debunked claim that Zubaydah and KSM were waterboarded 83 and 183 times respectively. He posts video of the two refusing to answer questions in what is staged as a faux perp walk with no discernible news value other than to portray them as criminals. And, most amazingly, Cole indicts the two men for not having any experience prior to their work for the CIA — as though being “previously involved in the U.S. military program to train pilots how to survive behind enemy lines and resist brutal tactics” isn’t relevant.
ABC’s conduct here, exposing two men who will now become obvious targets for terrorists and left-wing extremists, is deplorable. Will the Obama administration investigate who leaked their identities? Or is it now open-season on Americans who were only doing what their government asked of them in order to protect their country from attack?
Despicable. First the media set up a witch hunt atmosphere with the way they report the enhanced interrogation technique story, then they decide to paint a target on the backs of two government employees who were tasked with trying to keep the country safe. I don’t know anything about these guys, but I have a feeling we won’t be seeing them in a fashion spread in Vanity Fair.
Update: Kim posted this earlier in the week, but considering the topic of this post I think it is important to watch again. When watching note (as if you could miss it) the advocacy displayed by O’Donnell. Make no mistake, the media is doing more than reporting this story. They are participating in it and shaping it (or more accurately mis-shaping it):
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Update II: Don’t miss Frank J’s column on The Super Moral Position on Torture.
Update III – Kim: Last year ABC News reported on the Democrats’ desire to impeach President Bush for the Valerie Plame non-outing. Their headline was “Is Impeachment Too Little, Too Late?”
Question: will the Democrats be as interested in holding impeachment hearings for Obama since it was his administration that outed these two CIA contractors and have put their lives in danger, something that was never an issue for Valerie Plame, and will ABC News so enthusiastically report on it? We all know the answer to that. Democrats hold themselves and are likewise held in the media to an entirely different standard than Republicans.
Update IV: You have to watch this amazing video of Condi Rice talking about torture with a college student determined to paint the Bush administration as mean old torture mongers.
