Too Much Secrecy It is a sad thing, but the Bush administration is the most deceptive (or, if you wish to be generous, the most misinformed and manipulated) crew that has occupied the White House in the past few decades. It is also the most secretive administration. Let's get down to basics. There are two reasons, and only two reasons, for classifying any information as secret. One, of course, is information that would inform an enemy of our military plans and thus enable the enemy to counter them. The other reason is when revealing the information would reveal the human source of the information, such as a spy. Using those standards, darn little information would be classified, but the Bush administration seems to want to classify everything. Why, for example, should the report of David Kay's search for weapons of mass destruction be classified? There can be nothing in that report that the Iraqis don't know. One can conclude that the only harm full publication would cause would be political embarrassment to the Bush administration. The fact is, those inspectors work for the American people, the American people are paying their salaries and expenses, and by God the American people are entitled to know what they are getting for their money. No national-security matter is involved whatsoever. Why classify that part of a report of a congressional inquiry that involves the Saudis? The Saudi Arabian government publicly demanded that it be declassified. Why should the American people be denied the results of their elected officials' work? Just what harm is going to be caused by letting the American people know what a number of members of Congress and their staffs already know? Why should the names of anyone held by the federal government, in U.S. jails or in Guantanamo, be classified as secret? This is pure totalitarianism. The ridiculous term "enemy combatant" really means a person whose rights are being denied. You can't have a combatant without a war, and when people in a war are captured, they are prisoners of war, subject to all the rights spelled out by the Geneva Convention. Certainly these people have relatives and friends who know they are being held somewhere and of course know their names. Why can't those names be published? It's ridiculous. This administration is paranoid. It is not safe to have mentally unhealthy people wielding great power. The American people should be angry. They pay every penny of the cost of government. It is their government. They have a right to know anything the government knows and anything the government does, with the two exceptions cited above. It is not a foreign enemy the Bush administration fears. It is the American people. I read some years ago an estimate that two-thirds of American history is still classified, and I don't doubt that at all. Stuff going all the way back to World War II is still classified long after there is rational reason for it being so. I hope the American people will realize eventually that people who lie to them and keep secrets from them are people who consider them to be enemies. Any politician who fears or dislikes the American people should be routed out of office immediately. The Bush administration, for its own private reasons, wanted to go to war against a country that had not attacked us, had not threatened to attack us and did not have the capability of attacking us. Therefore it concocted a lie about non-existent weapons and nonexistent relationships with al-Qaida. Now, to protect its lies, the administration wants to classify practically everything that has to do with the Iraq War and occupation. I'm sure the president's friends in Texas miss him, and next year, hopefully, the American people will return him to their bosom. He is, for all his faults, a decent and affable man who probably knows less of what's going on in his own administration than we do. At least some of us are interested; he doesn't seem to be. http://reese.king-online.com/Reese_20031029/index.php Let's not assassinate the messenger, but focus/comment on his msg. on side note if I may, I don't understand why AAAinthebeltway or anyone else would a blanket "we're not interested. You bore us" statement. There are many reading these threads, and not everyone has the same opinions. Cheers ps: C. Reese has also been critisizing liberal positions, see 11.04.03 archive
ROFL!! Morty Zuckerman's U.S. News and World Report is a joke! Normally, even in disagreement, I respect your arguments, Rogue. Call it a thread, this one you're batting .000. Read about the internal strife at U.S. News and World Report due to the over the top liberal editorializing that they attempt to sell as "news." https://secure.mediaresearch.org/news/mediawatch/1998/mw19980810p4.html
Feel free to challenge the facts of the U.S. News article when I post it. We should address the validity of the arguments and facts of the article, not personal opinions on Moyers and U.S. news, don't you agree?
Wait a minute? Are you saying that the Bush administration is more secret then the Kennedy or Nixon administration? Bwahahahahahahaha. OK man. If you believe that I have some lovely swamp land in Florida to sell you. Maybe I could interest you in this bridge in Brooklyn that's for sale. Bwahahahahahaha.
Are we currently under either the Kennedy or Nixon Administration? Did we have the Freedom of Information ACT back then to be ignored or violated by those administrations? This penchant for comparing the current administration to those of the past, is just another in a continuing line of fallacious argumentation. The question remains, no matter what others did in the past, is the Bush Administration controlling and secretive beyond normal and acceptable limits of today's culture? We need to compare to today, not 40 years ago. If we had remained in a cultural and political vacuum for the past 40 years, Clinton would have never been questioned about his sexual activity (ala the respect that the Republicans afforded Jack Kennedy) and Nixon would have served a full two terms. Here is an excerpt from the full article in U.S. News: Investigative Reports 12/22/03 Keeping Secrets The Bush administration is doing the public's business out of the public eye. Here's how--and why By Christopher H. Schmitt and Edward T. Pound "Democracies die behind closed doors." --U.S. APPEALS COURT JUDGE DAMON J. KEITH At 12:01 p.m. on Jan. 20, 2001, as a bone-chilling rain fell on Washington, George W. Bush took the oath of office as the nation's 43rd president. Later that afternoon, the business of governance officially began. Like other chief executives before him, Bush moved to unravel the efforts of his predecessor. Bush's chief of staff, Andrew Card, directed federal agencies to freeze more than 300 pending regulations issued by the administration of President Bill Clinton. The regulations affected areas ranging from health and safety to the environment and industry. The delay, Card said, would "ensure that the president's appointees have the opportunity to review any new or pending regulations." The process, as it turned out, expressly precluded input from average citizens. Inviting such comments, agency officials concluded, would be "contrary to the public interest." Ten months later, a former U.S. Army Ranger named Joseph McCormick found out just how hard it was to get information from the new administration. A resident of Floyd County, Va., in the heart of the Blue Ridge Mountains, McCormick discovered that two big energy companies planned to run a high-volume natural gas pipeline through the center of his community. He wanted to help organize citizens by identifying residents through whose property the 30-inch pipeline would run. McCormick turned to Washington, seeking a project map from federal regulators. The answer? A pointed "no." Although such information was "previously public," officials of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission told McCormick, disclosing the route of the new pipeline could provide a road map for terrorists. McCormick was nonplused. Once construction began, he says, the pipeline's location would be obvious to anyone. "I understand about security," the rangy, soft-spoken former business executive says. "But there certainly is a balance--it's about people's right to use the information of an open society to protect their rights." For the past three years, the Bush administration has quietly but efficiently dropped a shroud of secrecy across many critical operations of the federal government--cloaking its own affairs from scrutiny and removing from the public domain important information on health, safety, and environmental matters. The result has been a reversal of a decades-long trend of openness in government while making increasing amounts of information unavailable to the taxpayers who pay for its collection and analysis. Bush administration officials often cite the September 11 attacks as the reason for the enhanced secrecy. But as the Inauguration Day directive from Card indicates, the initiative to wall off records and information previously in the public domain began from Day 1. Steven Garfinkel, a retired government lawyer and expert on classified information, puts it this way: "I think they have an overreliance on the utility of secrecy. They don't seem to realize secrecy is a two-edge sword that cuts you as well as protects you." Even supporters of the administration, many of whom agree that security needed to be bolstered after the attacks, say Bush and his inner circle have been unusually assertive in their commitment to increased government secrecy. "Tightly controlling information, from the White House on down, has been the hallmark of this administration," says Roger Pilon, vice president of legal affairs for the Cato Institute. Link to entire article: http://www.usnews.com/usnews/issue/031222/usnews/22secrecy.htm Read the entire article, then get back to me, that is if you are capable of suspending your existing opinions before you read the facts.
i think the point about the unjustified secrecy surrounding the pipeline in that guy's backyard was well made, and 9/11 still does not provide justification for the builders' secrecy. so?
you're a good politician. you managed to totally avoid the question and start a side topic. let me ask you this directly -- what do you think about the pipeline in the guy's backyard? i don't think the secrecy is justified in this case. how would you like it if someone built a pipeline in your backyard? and doesn't this strike you as a bit suspect? (from the article) "...The clandestine workings of an energy task force headed by Vice President Dick Cheney have also been the subject of litigation, now before the Supreme Court..." ...and again in the article "...In Aberdeen, Md., families who live near an Army weapons base are suing the Army for details of toxic pollution fouling the town's drinking-water supplies. Citing security, the Army has refused to provide information that could help residents locate and track the pollution..." Apparently neither AAA or Pabst live in Aberdeen.
Really not impressed by that article. Yea, a couple of egregious examples of the Federal Government running amuck. Wow surprise. Government sucks, you'll never hear different from me. BUT let's create a hypothetical example of a Federal document that should be classified. Let's say that Bung, Rogue and Pabst were sellers of COCO during the formative stages of the break last week. Mind you, not manipulating, maybe just shorting through penetration of a moving average. Now the SEC decides to investigate trading in COCO. So our trading firms are forced to turn over an audit trail. All accounts who pummeled COCO. With names. Maybe the SEC interviews us. Do you think it's then fair that we all show up in some public document. And then have some prick who owned some COCO higher coming along, using that information and SUING us for manipulating his COCO! IMO it's bad enough that the government has as much information as it does. Releasing much of it would be an even bigger crime. What should be next, the IRS issuing an "earners list" like Worldco? Maybe Forbes magazine can use the Freedom of Info Act to petition the IRS for a REALLY well researched 400 list!
I just came across a link in a little lookup on dick army about how the reagan administration (literally the same bunch of assholes we have now) tried to block the Iran-Contra investigation using the same techniques dumya is using now... http://gi.grolier.com/presidents/aae/side/irancont.html (the article is short and is in Grolier's online encyclopedia) (from the article) "...On Mar. 16, 1988, a federal grand jury indicted North, Poindexter, and two other persons on a number of charges including conspiracy to defraud the U.S. government. The trials were delayed by legal maneuvering that in part involved questions of releasing secret information..."