Why the Senate Intelligence Committee is like Rolling Stone magazine

Flopping Aces ^ | 12-09-14 | DrJohn

[Starman417]

Rolling Stone magazine has committed a series of astonishing journalistic blunders of late:

Rolling Stone magazine has blown it again.

First it outraged New Englanders by putting a photo of the accused Boston Marathon bomber on its July 2013 cover — after the horrific terror attack that killed three people and injured more than 260 — that made him appear like a sultry, tousled-hair rock star.

But the single worst example of its blinding ineptitude was the UVA scandal:

If that wasn’t reason enough to cancel one’s subscription, now Rolling Stone has backpedaled on its story about a woman allegedly gang-raped at a Phi Kappa Psi frat party at the University of Virginia in 2012.

In a 9,000 word expose, one of Rolling Stone’s freelance writers told a story based on interviews with a female UVA student by the name of “Jackie” who claimed that seven frat boys gang-raped her.

They made one mistake. One gigantic, idiotic mistake:

Instead of fact-checking the serious allegations by doing common sense things such as interviewing the accused — or verifying if the frat party even took place — Rolling Stone ran the damning story without doing its homework. And now Rolling Stone has issued an apology.

“In the face of new information, there now appear to be discrepancies in Jackie’s account, and we have come to the conclusion that our trust in her was misplaced,” Will Dana, the magazine’s managing editor, wrote on its website.

Memo to Rolling Stone: A fifth-grader would’ve done some basic fact-checking before potentially ruining men’s lives.

Hello lawsuits. This is media sloppiness at its worst.

Sloppiness indeed. There are two sides to every story. Well, not always.

The Senate Intelligence Committee today released its so-called "torture report":

A long-awaited Senate report concludes that the CIA repeatedly misled the public, Congress and the White House about the agency’s aggressive questioning of detainees — including waterboarding, confinement in small spaces and shackling in stress positions — after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, minimizing the severity of the interrogations and exaggerating the usefulness of the information produced, including its role in setting in motion the U.S. raid that killed Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.

The Senate Intelligence Committee report finds that the “Enhanced Interrogation Techniques” program escaped effective scrutiny by outsiders long after its inception in 2002, with CIA records showing that President George W. Bush was never briefed by the agency on specific techniques such as waterboarding until 2006. Top Bush administration officials such as Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin Powell were not told of the practices until September 2003.

The congressional review also says that the CIA’s actual tactics often went far beyond the terms laid out in Justice Department legal opinions, subjecting detainees to prolonged interrogation under a combination of harsh techniques and ignoring safeguards set forth in the legal memos such as ensuring that interrogators were well-trained and had high-level approvals before using the unusually aggressive tactics.

Taking a page out of the Rolling Stone playbook, Senate democrats decided not to interview any of those they were to so heavily criticize. They were not interested in both sides of the story, to which those besmirched, including some significant higher ups, took exception:

George Tenet:

George Tenet, who was CIA director through much of the Bush administration, said the report is "biased, inaccurate, and destructive" and said it "does damage to U.S. national security, to the men and women of the Central Intelligence Agency, and most of all to the truth."

"It is indeed a dark day for congressional oversight," Tenet added.

John Brennan:

[Wally_Kalbacken]

Let’s call it like it is. The Democrats have lost control of the Senate, effective January 3, 2015. There is no better explanation for this reckless act than they can do it now, and they could not do it once the Republican majority is in place.

[dandiegirl]

Their excuse for “transparency” is a joke. All these self-righteous liberals that get up there and talk about how bad America is but how we are the only ones that will admit it is just unbelievable. Wish they would say that about that criminal Obama and Holder. Those two are the people that have made America less safe and have made America lose it’s reputation around the world.

[molson209]

Democrat going out of business sale

[Daaave]

Democrat going out of business sale

They won't go out of business. They'll just reduce their prices.

[Real Cynic No More]

Deflection and pure distraction from Obama’s bad press of late. Nothing more, nothing less. Diane Feinstein should be water boarded.