In yet another fill-in-the-blanks screed against the evil NYT published
today 7-6-06, token gasbag black conservative Deroy Murdock
writes once again about how the Times endangered poor, poor Rumsfeld with it's dangerous story about his summer house.
Now I know that this is riding on the coattails of Hunter's work on the subject of the faux-revelation of Mount Misery, most recently posted
here. However, it's worth noting how far VRWC conspiracies reach even when their erstwhile motivations are shown beyond doubt to be laughable. They just keep barelling ahead through facts and reason, like a rudderless, captainless ship mowing through icebergs. Of course, we get to deal with the aftermath.
More below the flip
Here's the actual BS from his article:
While it seemingly involved no classified information, the Times again displayed its contempt for public safety in a recent article on the summer homes of Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Both men are obvious terror targets. Nevertheless, this story provided driving directions to these two men's vacation getaways in rural Maryland. The Times identified the relevant highways, streets, and even turning instructions to these properties. Also named were several stores where Mrs. Rumsfeld shops. The article includes a photo of the Rumsfelds' home and, shockingly, pinpoints a well-concealed security camera on the premises.
What did this article accomplish but the endangerment of these two top officials? If the Times did not act with actual malice, it certainly exhibited a reckless disregard for Cheney, Rumsfeld, and their loved ones. To imagine what Islamic extremists could do with this particular Times dispatch, look no further than militant Muslim Mir Aimal Kasi's January 1993 fatal shooting of two intelligence officers at the driveway of CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia.
Even though pieces like this have been all too prevalent the last few days, let's stroll through how this textual diarrhea shows the right's MO, especially since this piece is the only new story to stick to this line published after all of the official clarifications.
- Innuendo "While it
seemingly involved no classified information"
- Scare Tactics: "Both men are obvious terrorist targets". Ignoring the fact that their homes, autos, etc. are not like those in the civilian world.
- False Equivocation : assination in 1993 of intelligence officers DOES NOT EQUAl assination of a sitting SecDef ensconced in the security of the Secret Service and who knows how many electonic imperatives.
- Willful Ignorance (have to break into sub-sections):
1) Ignoring the many stories already done that have given similar clues to location (cited in previous stories)
2) Insisting that revaltion of a hidden camera (which any half-competent terrorist would anticipate anyways) is dangerous. If there had been a dead-ground map (areas uncovered electronic security imperatives), then maybe you'd have something actually useful terror-wise.
3) And most obviously overlooking the fact that permission granted
Making this even more laughable is the fact that Jonah Goldberg himself corrected a statement of his own on this topic on the National Review's elitist, contributor-only blog
3 FREAKIN' DAYS AGO. It's one thing when righties' beliefs don't accord with facts in the real world, but usually they're internally consistent in their wrongness.
I don't really have much to say, other than the fact that this guy has some Colbert size balls to put this shite out there with his name on it, when it is so demonstrably false and/or grossly misleading. It pisses me off, because I honestly believe that righties engage in this sort of disinformation not just to warp people's sense of reality to accord with their schemes, but also so that everyone in the reality-based community has to work so dilligently to undermine their lies. Imagine how much "work" could be done politically, if we weren't, like Bush, ceaselessly clearing the brush.