'Scandal' might be distracting us from more damning stories? (USA Today)

I'm not usually a fan of USA Today (at all), but this op/ed piece really brings up some interesting points and shows how the media might be missing the ball on the other emerging stories that are damaging to the Bush admninistration. Submitted for your consideration:

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'Scandal' has media digging in the wrong place
Wed Oct 1, 6:32 AM ET


Washington and the reporters who cover it adhere to a curious definition of what constitutes a full-blown scandal.

Dating back long before Watergate, the ingredient usually needed to trigger breathless scandal coverage is that some law, no matter how minor, may have been broken. All that are required are a few key words like "Justice Department (news - web sites)" and "investigation" and suddenly the press and the politicians are caught up in a furor of righteous indignation and desperate spin control.

In the past week, three major Iraq (news - web sites)-related developments should have, in theory, caused lasting embarrassment to the Bush administration. But because none of these flaps touched on illegality, they have been treated as one-day stories.

According to media reports, the interim report of the American weapons-search team headed by David Kay is expected to acknowledge the inability to locate Saddam Hussein (news - web sites)'s purported arsenals of chemical and biological weapons. Because George W. Bush and his top advisers have consistently justified the Iraqi war as needed to eliminate these weapons of mass destruction, the failure of the four-month search should call into question the validity of the administration's claim that Saddam posed an imminent threat.

Republican Porter Goss and Democrat Jane Harman, the leaders of the House Intelligence Committee, sent a letter last week to CIA (news - web sites) Director George Tenet criticizing "significant deficiencies" in the intelligence gathering before the invasion of Iraq. This bipartisan critique, based on a four-month examination of 19 volumes of classified intelligence information, further undermines the administration's stated case for war.

The New York Times reported Tuesday that Joe Allbaugh, Bush's 2000 campaign manager, and two top Republican lobbyists have formed a new firm to advise companies on how to win contracts to rebuild Iraq. This legal buck-raking along with the contracts awarded to Halliburton, the company that Dick Cheney (news - web sites) headed before he was picked as Bush's running mate suggests an eagerness to turn Iraq into a profit center.

But under Washington's excessively legalistic definition of scandal, these worrisome developments have been overshadowed. This week's uproar revolves around charges that the administration leaked the name of a CIA agent to discredit her husband, Joseph Wilson, who had publicly challenged the president's State of the Union claim that Saddam had tried to buy African uranium. Because an obscure 1982 law makes the disclosure of a covert agent's identity a crime, the White House announced Tuesday morning that the Justice Department has launched a full investigation...

<SNIP<

....But there is a danger of losing sight of the real scandal amid the search for the administration leakers. And that is the president's continued inability to explain why we invaded Iraq based on seemingly faulty intelligence and unarguably without a well-developed plan for reconstituting a war-torn nation.


Walter Shapiro's column appears Wednesday and Friday. E-mail him at wshapiro@usatoday.com
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I snipped out the middle section, but here it is in its entirety:
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=676&ncid=676&e=7&u=/usatoday/20031001/ts_usatoday/11879922

The shit has really hit the fan..

Things are truly tanking fast.

The last ones all came in at about 50%, and reflected a continuing and significant decline form the month or two before.

We're in a bit of a lull now (polling-wise) and some had suggested that Bush's U.N. speech would give him a boost or at least stabilize his ratings. But that speech dropped like a brick, and now... Traitor-Gate!

I've been saying all along he'd be at 40% by year's end. I might have to adjust that downward.

Now that there's blood in the water there's a better chance that they'll be emboldened enough to take those on.

and I'd add, those issues aren't going away.

There's a lot going on that should be brought to the headlines. The problem is that we (Democrats) don't have a sufficiently sophisticated organization like the repubs do to place this stuff in front of the public on a consistant basis.

Let's face it the repubs have the biggest bullhorn (and bull is meant in BOTH senses)

Truthout, Takebackthe media, and others like them have yet to gain a sufficient audience to counter the repub wulitzer. In time, they will but they haven't yet hit the fast moving current of mass markets.

significant stories. Both of these stories are significant, and both are symptomatic of the total greed, hypocrisy, corruption, arrogance, (I could go on and on) of the current administration. The only way that the average American who hasn't "gotten it" yet will "get it" will be if all the important facts are revealed. Otherwise they can dismiss one story or another as an insignificant blip on a screen. This was what was attempted for a long time with Watergate.

Is it possible that what the other scandal stories need is an advocate? For example, Joe Wilson held on tenaciously to this story for almost two months before the media finally picked up on it.

If there was an advocate for each of the other stories listed above, would they finally see the light of day?

Another interesting irony:

USA Today is editorializing on these stories but they aren't making the stories FRONT PAGE NEWS . They have the power to make them front page, so why aren't they?

I think some politicians, like the media, don't really jump on something unless the ball is already rolling somehow.

Great point also about USA Today. I've never given them much credit, part of me regards them as the "reader's digest" of newspapers (which isn't fair, but hey, I'm a snob sometimes.) But every once in awhile, they are right on the edge with this stuff. Other times, they miss the boat. I just haven't figured their news department out.

But their editorial staff is usually in the right direction... at least what I've read (and especially this piece by Shapiro).

hope for with USA Today et al.

Also, Isn't it the CIA's pushing, rather than Joe Wilson's alone, that made the difference here? Didn't the story break open because of their request to DOJ to investigate recently?

I've heard that some in the administration are grumbling at the CIA for "leaking the leak story." Which is crazy! That means, they wanted, and maybe expected(?) this all to be dealt with and handled in private. When the CIA's request for an investigation went public, the shit hit the fan.

It just kind of shows how delusional this administration might really be. I think some of them honestly thought this might never hit the papers. They have always managed to dodge this kind of stuff, but now it is sticking like flypaper.

We will see some dissension in the ranks soon, I believe. Many in Bush's circle don't seem to have the temperament or be well equipped to stay cool when the heat is turned on..

I guess the one thing we've got going for us is that this scandal is connected to the Iraq quagmire. Every time this story is mentioned, it is linked back to Joe Wilson's original piece criticizing Iraqi war intelligence and the administration's actions. So people are hearing that over and over again and being reminded of the entire controversy.

The dynamics of the repub bullhorn are scary. It is so far reaching. I heard one of the blowhards this morning; he led with a story about Gitmo.. then went into Wesley Clark. I wanted to call in and say, "you know? I bet you're the only one in the country who did not lead with the Plame story." But in truth, they are probably all going to handle this way. Rail about the dems, but ignore bad news on the republican side.

and burns Bush's ass.

But, I've seen 'scandals' like this inflated beyond the level this one has been and watched them flop. A missed hit can result in scandal fatigue.

Plenty more out there to burn them with. I wouldn't say, at this point that this is our strongest hand. But, who knows? Push on all fronts!

More Bush Cronies Profiting From the Blood of our Men and Women in Iraq:
From the Guardian:
Wednesday September 24, 2003 http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1048205,00.html

More Cronyism:
Wednesday, September 10, 2003; Page A17 By Al Kamen
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A51378-2003Sep9?language=printer

:hi:

material - he mentioned TruthOut on the senate floor Monday, so maybe we can email him tidbits. This Traitorgate is big, we need to keep at it, but we also need some point people in congress who will listen to our other concerns.

I agree we cannot fully focus on this and ignore the other stuff - we need to turn the drip, drip, drip into DRIP DRIP DRIP.

And it would be in line with the Administration's policy to create a distraction. George Tenet doesn't strike me as somebody who would cause problems for a Bush. Why does he now (relatively late in the game) ask for an investigation?

If there is anything that you got to hand to this Administration, it is that they know how to manipulate the media.

Mr. Shapiro might very well be on to something here.

It is all related. Everything mentioned in the snip is interconnected. Each piece being like a point on a bubble: a bubble which surrounds this White House. We've needed one weak point to burst that bubble. This Leak may be that weak point.

Add fan. Duck.

Thorough exposure of this crime will only increase the impact of all other misdeeds.

This is an erosional process: working the belly rather than going straight for the jaw, so to speak. It is first necessary to accustom the people to the idea that these reptiles in usurped office are beleagured criminals, who have betrayed the nation and its security agencies for petty political gain. The fact that Ms. Plame was a specialist in preventing proliferation of nuclear and biological and chemical weapons will have a great impact in this connection, as that is what the people have for so long been trained to fear. As this awareness spreads, all the various crimes and incompetencies, all the crony corruption, of the criminals of the '00 Coup, will come to seem more and more believeable, and more and more important, to the people, even that portion of the people that tends to support reactionaries. These do so, after all, in a self-perceived spirit of selflessness, for they are mostly aware they would themselves derive greater material benefit for themselves by supporting progressives, but they feel it their duty to put country and righteousness above their own well-being. They will be particularly repelled by facts of treason and cupidity in the reactionary figures they vote for.

"LET'S GO GET THOSE BUSH BASTARDS!"

for the Mrs.Plame Wilson interview.

Every issue, everything negative connected to the White House just might sink in a little deeper between now and the election. There is a taint.. We all knew the taint has been there from the beginning, but now, hopefully mom and pop america will start seeing the writing on the wall.

What colossal frauds.

The Bushco spin machine has dubya painted as a "nice guy" who, by inference at least, is incapable of committing the crimes we are actually seeing.

Each scandal whittles away at the "nice guy" veneer. My hope is eventually people will start to see how corrupt this whole administration really is.

The technique, then, is to keep multiple scandals in the loop concurrently. How to do so is the biggest question.

A key part of the network to track the movement of WMD has been blinded. What is being moved while all eyes are focused on puppets?
If WMD are suddenly identified a week from now,right in downtown Bagdad ,with US writing on the barrels identifying them as such, then this whole incident goes away....

That's the big story here. All the groundwork done by the CIA is compromised. WMD are now easily hidden from the CIA. This is the crime for which laws were written.

The United States Intelligence Network relating to WMD, has been ruined!

There are so many potential scandals, beginning with the Great California Ripoff, that are more important but they are too abstract or complicated or "just playing politics" for most people to quickly grab. But this is a classic nasty hit job, a mean abuse of power that sacrifices an obvious general good and perhaps the life of a loyal soldier in the war of terror for a petty payback.

It's also a great whodunnit. More like Columbo than Charlie Chan. We know a crime has been committed. We have witnesses. We even know with great certainty who did it. It's just a matter of proving who, and , as Bush put it, "taking care of him." Especially when the prime suspect is a smarmy Himmler-looking heavy like Karl Rove.

:kick: