and I don't think it's a big deal. What harm did the leaks cause?

It doesn't make sense. I can't come up with any reason they would.

right in line with the rest of the leaks, to give Obama credit for what he's doing secretly.

Repugs fucked up the program.

wonder if she had access

She is now on the committee that has the knowledge that was leaked. She is known even amongst her own party for not being able to keep her mouth shut. And she also has every motive to want to sink the Obama administration.

In other words: It was a set up.

Sounds good to me.

imo it is a half-baked theory. Two big problems right off the bat, 1)no way in hell David Sanger is going to use Michele Bachmann as a source for a story about Obama's deliberations. 2)she would have no motive, because the stories help Obama politically. The Bachmann types are frustrated because they ruin the picture of Obama being weak on national security.

Here we go. Repugs are praying to Saint Ronnie that they get another blowjob scandal to top this incident off with, and have a replay of the 1990s.

then this little dust-up ought not lose Obama a single vote.

Why else would they be screaming so loud? They have a habit of accusing their opposition of the exact same thing they are guilty of doing.

It talked about how the President sits in a room with his advisors and decides who to kill with drones, which anybody with a functioning brain knew happened anyway. The only details that they went into are the fact that he demands to personally authorize everything unless there's a very low probability of civilian casualties, something else that we pretty much already knew. There was no information leaked about the specific intelligence that the President uses to make the decision to authorize the killing of these people.

Furthermore, I'm not entirely sure how that piece was politically beneficial to the White House. Certainly the part about David Axelrod being in the meetings doesn't exactly make them look good.

officially we are not killing anyone with drones. If an American official is asked on the record about it, they say "I won't confirm or deny..." Everything we know about it comes from the media in the countries we are striking, and from leaks to our press.

Regarding why it's beneficial, the drone war is hugely popular. There are only two people in the world who don't like it: Jeremy Scahill and Glenn Greenwald. Something that popular, any politician will want to scream, "That's MY war!" Too bad it's secret, so they can't do it outright, but they can leak.

There is a whole lot about the process that is indeed secret. The fact that it happens isn't a secret.

opposing party always calls for the resignation of either the AG or Sec of Defense?

Of course, calling for the resignation of both the AG and Sec of Defense IS sometimes justified, particularly during the last (mis-)administration.

yes, I agree, Rumsfeld and Gonzales should have been gone.

Either way, the Obama administration wins on this. I don't think that the names of any vulnerable CIA agents who also happened to be parents and important employees of our government, were made public.

The reports that were made public do not make Obama look good, but the fact that the information is public makes his administration look a little more transparent, reluctantly more transparent, but more transparent.

They very rarely have their fingers on the "pulse" of the nation IMHO.

Going out of their way to make Obama look bad is par for the course with the media and the right. On the
other hand the leaks did have to come from somewhere and a NYT reporter said "high administration official."

My theory is that someone did in fact leak this information out of loyalty to their boss in the hopes that
it would counter the bs about Obama not being strong on terrorism. In fact he is a lot stronger in the issue
than a some of us would like. I don't think it hurts us politically but it does give the other side something
to yap about for a while and hopefully they hang themselves with it like they did in the Clinton years.

The WH had no need to leak any of this. I'm thinking a Republican leaked it simply so they could scream about leaks ... plus it keeps the GOP from doing any real work.

Last edited Thu Jun 14, 2012, 06:06 AM - Edit history (1)

Sen John McCain (R-AZ) yesterday blasted President Obama claiming that a series of national intelligence leaks to the media were a bid to make him look strong on national security.

Other members of Congress are beginning to comment as the protests grow louder. Several prominent Republicans have chimed in over news of the existence of a personal Obama "Kill List".

Rep. Peter King (R-NY), who has accused the White House for cooperating too closely with filmmakers on a movie about the mission to kill Osama bin Laden, said the leaks "make the president look like a strong foreign policy leader!"

Outraged the information paints the Obama administration as being effective in the war on terror, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), told Greta Van Susteren on Fox News on Wednesday night, it "paints the president as a strong leader!"

Sen. McCain especially had strong words for the president, saying, "it makes president Obama look strong!"