The MSM has clearly adopted the storyline that President Bush is only appointing yes men/women to his cabinet. They say he shuts people out who disagree. They always bring up Gen. Shinseki as proof of their story line. He was, they say, fired for having a dissenting opinion. John Kerry ran around the country saying Bush/Rumsfeld got rid of him becaise he disagreed with them.
Washington Times, Inside the Ring, By Bill Gertz and Rowan Scarborough
Gen. Shinseki was challenged by higher-ups about his estimate. And he and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld did not see eye to eye on Army transformation. But Gen. Shinseki, a decorated Vietnam War combatant, was not forced out by Mr. Bush or anyone else. He served his full four-year term before retiring as scheduled in August 2003 after 37 years in the Army.
It’s just not true that he was fired for having a different opinion, but it fits the script.
New York Times: New C.I.A. Chief Tells Workers to Back Administration Policies
November 17, 2004
By DOUGLAS JEHL
WASHINGTON, – Porter J. Goss, the new intelligence chief, has told Central
Intelligence Agency employees that their job is to “support the administration
and its policies in our work,” a copy of an internal memorandum shows.
Discouraging dissenting views. Get with the program or get out. You get the picture. It fits the script.
The memo also said,
“We do not make policy, though we do inform those who make it. We avoid political involvement, especially political partisanship.”
So the page one, above the fold story in the Times didn’t have room for this part of the memo. For such an important story, you would think they would have read the whole thing.
The White House press briefing had several questions about today’s ‘front page’ story.
Q. Why shouldn’t people, though, see this as an effort to tell people at the
CIA, if you disagree, keep your mouth shut?MR. McCLELLAN: That’s not at all what he was saying. And if you look at
the email, he said what the direction from the President was to him when he took
over as the Director of Central Intelligence. He said the President’s direction
was very clear: the intelligence community must do all it can to keep Americans
safe, both here and abroad. And we appreciate all the work that the men and
women of the CIA are doing. He also went in to say in that email that: “We do
not make policy, though we do inform those who make it. We avoid political
involvement, especially political partisanship.” So you have to look at the
entire email. It’s exactly what he said.
This is one reason why the NY Times is so powerful, and dangerous. They used to be able to drive coverage in any direction they wanted. Thank heaven for the blogs. The blogs have changed the way the game is being played. It is no longer a monopoly. It is no longer a quick and easy trip from the Times front page to national syndication around the country to the evening news. Today, a story has to go through a mine field of blogs who get great satisfaction from highlighting their bias. This story is just another screaming headline hiding a thin, predictable storyline.