The ‘news‘ that Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) is making of herself over being briefed on CIA enhanced interrogation might seem to you like this is the first time you’ve heard of it. That’s because it is.
This issue came up in 2007 when the Democrats began turning up the heat on Bush and his ‘torture’ camp at Club Gitmo. And by turning up the heat, I mean politicizing the war effort. They have done the same in every area of the prosecution of the war including methods of espionage. The New York Times, the newspaper of choice for al Qaeda, took the pleasure in publishing how the NSA’s tracking of financial transactions were effective in locating and identifying terrorists.
Back then, the bullseye was Bush and Cheney. The media never mentioned the fact that Democrats in oversight positions, including Nancy Pelosi, then ranking member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, also approved the same methods in 2002 that today she is calling torture.
Two years later, the media is giving it some notice only because Nancy Pelosi called the CIA liars. What has changed from 2007 to today? Barack Obama’s campaign was in full torture mode and running against Bush who, by the way, was not in the race. And that’s where the media put the ink. What else happened is that Obama beat out Hillary Clinton over war issues. By comparison, Hillary was a hawk. And Obama beat John McCain, Democrats’ favorite Republican.
Not on the basis of this one example, but in the cumulative, it could be argued that had the media done its job two years ago and reported on how Obama and Pelosi were politicizing the war, and did it every time he did so, we may have had ‘President Hillary Clinton’ today. Or the other democrat, McCain. But not Barack Obama.
More than one precedent was set on November 4th, 2008. The other one was the media’s successful campaign in picking the candidates for both sides and also in helping to elect Barack Obama. What happened was the media watchdog died. The media has assumed another role.
