Replies

They have a way to go.

Editorial: London calling/Terror again on city streets
July 8, 2005
http://www.startribune.com/stories/1519/5495827.html

Poor London: From the ecstatic high of winning a bid for the 2012 Olympics, and besting rival Paris in the process, its residents were plunged overnight to the depths of grief and worry by terrorist attacks that killed more than 40, injured many hundreds and put a serious dent in the transportation system the city depends on to survive and thrive. The shift from the happy faces of Wednesday, with Olympic circles painted on joyful cheeks, to the drawn, bloody and bandaged faces of Thursday was wrenching. As someone said in a recollection of Sept. 11: Today we are all Londoners.
(so far so good, BUT wait for it..)

(snip)

But there are ways to fight it. Some are better than others. Just days ago, Bush said again that Iraq is the central front in the war on terror. He asserted that the United States fights terrorists there so it won't have to fight them at home. The London bombings illustrate the fallacy at the heart of that argument: Terrorists aren't a finite army that you can defeat on a battlefield and achieve victory. Ivo Daalder, international security expert at the Brookings Institution, said it well: "Today's terrorists are independent operators, beyond the control of any state. They roam relatively freely around an interconnected world -- striking when they are ready and we least expect it."

Mark Rosenwinkel: Wanted: the truth, not a smokescreen
Mark Rosenwinkel
July 9, 2005
http://www.startribune.com/stories/1519/5497579.html

Rep. John Kline, so eager to convey apparent "truths" about the numerous allegations of abuse at Guantanamo (Commentary, June 27), seems to have forgotten how far from reality his previous statements on military matters have proven to be.

Speaking during a heavily fortified tour of Iraq some time ago, Kline noted great progress being made toward shoring up the country's stability -- and lashed out at media for not portraying the situation in a positive light. In months since, however, we've seen a sharp increase in insurgent attacks, hundreds of military and Iraqi deaths, and little real progress on reconstruction. The situation has deteriorated so much that even members of his own party have become critical.

Kline now continues to lecture us on "truths" as he sees them -- showing more concern over assertions made by the Star Tribune and by Sen. Dick Durbin than over whether the Guantanamo abuse charges have any merit.

Gary Gilson: At last, press starts doing its job White House reporters showed some skepticism and vigor that's been absent for years.
July 14 2005
http://www.startribune.com/stories/562/5505394.html

At the most raucous White House press briefing in years, the president's spokesman, Scott McClellan, used time-tested techniques to fend off questions about Karl Rove's possible involvement in the outing of a CIA agent.

McClellan kept saying he would not comment in the midst of a federal investigation of the matter, and when pressed by reporter after reporter he kept saying that they all knew him, that they could rely upon him for a comment when the time was right. In other words, he was saying, "I'm a chum."
(snip)

It's time for the tough-minded, experienced and wise heads in journalism to reclaim their franchise and return to their mission in life: asking the hardest questions they can and digging out the truth. That would not only serve the public interest, it would set a great example for less experienced reporters just starting their careers, who may not recognize a bulldog when they see one.
Gary Gilson has been executive director of the Minnesota News Council since 1992.

Editorial: Karl Rove/Real issue is the case for war
July 14 2005
http://www.startribune.com/stories/1519/5505382.html
(snip)
In the meantime, it's important to look beyond the immediate political spectacle in Washington -- White House spokesman Scott McClellan finally confronted by reporters who feel abused and lied to -- to the reason Rove was talking to a reporter about ex-diplomat Joseph Wilson at all.

The real issue, more serious and less glitzy than whether Bush will stand by his political adviser, is the extraordinary efforts the Bush administration made to protect a case for war in Iraq from all contradictory evidence -- in effect, as the British spymaster Sir Richard Dearlove put it, to "fix" the facts and intelligence so they would support a decision already made.

Enter Wilson and his wife, Valerie Plame, an undercover CIA operative specializing in weapons of mass destruction. As Wilson tells it, a question arose at the CIA early in 2002, prompted by an inquiry from Vice President Dick Cheney's office, about reports that Iraq had purchased uranium for nuclear weapons from the African country of Niger, where Wilson previously had served. When someone was needed to travel to Niger, Plame apparently told her superiors that her husband had good contacts there. CIA officials talked with Wilson and decided he should be the one to make the trip.

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