Let's say I was shocked to hear that news flash from Newsweek editor, Jon Meacham. Mr. Meacham appeared on The O'Reilly Factor last night in a discussion of the pros and cons of 9/11-like commission to delve into the Bush administration's support for aggressive interrogation tactics against captured terrorists. Predictably enough, Mr. Meacham believes an independent commission would be a good thing. His Newsweek column of April 25th lays out his reasoning which he reiterated on The Factor last night.
'The idea that our only options are to move on completely or to prosecute is a classic false choice. A third way would be a 9/11-style bipartisan commission that would include clear supporters of the Bush administration. Such a panel would meet largely in private, have the power to grant immunity to witnesses and be charged with answering, as clearly as possible, the central question of whether Bush's war on terror in its entirety saved lives. Michael Isikoff touches on these matters in this week's issue, writing about FBI agentAli Soufan, who got intel from key terror suspects—without using torture.
Mr. Meacham has a much higher opinion of the 9/11 Commission than I do. The 9/11 Commission was a dog and pony show in which commissioners tried their very hardest to shield the Clinton administration from any blame for ignoring terrorist threats. It was stacked with people who promoted the theory that the World Trade Center attacks should have been anticipated, not by the Clinton administration which had been in charge of our national defense for the previous eight years, but by the Bush administration which had been in power for eight months.
Highlights from the 9/11 Commission drama included Clinton administration holdover, Richard C. Clarke, apologizing the government's failure -- taking the blame on behalf of the Bush administration. What a guy. Then there was the spectacle of commissioner and former Clinton administration Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick (Why was she a commissioner and not a witness?) pressing Bush administration Attorney General John Ashcroft on why nobody "connected the dots," only to have Ashcroft produce the memo that she wrote during her Clinton administration tenure that forbade information sharing between law enforcement and intelligence arms of the federal government.
Let's not forget Clinton administration National Security Adviser Sandy Berger, who was caught stuffing classified documents from the National Archive into his pants. He admitted later as part of a plea bargain that he smuggled them out, hid them under a trailer, and later destroyed them.
But I digress. The startling news from the Mr. Meacham during his O'Reilly Factor appearance was that we are winning the war on terror. He said it a couple of times. NewsBusters has the transcript. Emphasis in it is mine.
'O'REILLY: Look, I liked your book and I think you did a fair assessment of Jackson and you deserve the prize, in my opinion. But this pinhead stuff that you guys are peddling at Newsweek is ridiculous. Now, let me tell you why. Because, as you said, every president in a time of leadership, particularly in a time of war, and Jackson fought two of them, the Indian War and the War of 1812. There are going to be mistakes made. And you say that Jackson's good over-rode the bad. Well, I don't think we've been attacked since 9/11, you know? I don't think any other Americans are dead. So I don't want any show trial that is going to inevitably embarrass this country and inevitably make people who defended us, make their lives harder. And I'm right and you're wrong. Go ahead.
MEACHAM: Did the -- did the 9/11 Commission embarrass the country?
O'REILLY: Did it do anything? Did the -- did the Iraq commission do -- you know what the Iraq commission came back with?
MEACHAM: No, that's not what I asked you. Did the 9/11-
O'REILLY: No, that was just the same thing as you're calling for. The Iraq commission came back and said 'surrender,' okay? And Bush and Petraeus said 'no, we're not going to do that' and they turned it around. It doesn't do us any good now, Jon. Go ahead.
MEACHAM: That's ahistorical, though, Bill, and I know you don't believe in being ahistorical. What I want to know -- and we were calling it a 9/12 Commission -- I want to look at the whole war on terror. We're winning the war on terror because, as you say, we haven't been hit. How did that happen? What should we be doing going forward to emulate? Was it the attacks -- the unmanned drones? Is it the surveillance? Is it rendition?
O'REILLY: Well, how do you do that?
MEACHAM: Well, I think you do it the way you did the 9/12 -- the 9/11 Commission. And you get people, you immunize them. You don't do it in public, I don't think you have a show trial.
O'REILLY: But it leaks out and you know it will.
MEACHAM: But 9/11 Didn't.
O'REILLY: Yeah it did. There was a whole bunch stuff that came to me and I used some of it?
MEACHAM: No, but we learned -- we learned from that report. Why are you against wanting to know what worked?
O'REILLY: Because it's too soon, that's why. We're in the middle of this thing now. It's too soon. It's politicized. You know it's politicized. You -- if you don't -- look, come on.
MEACHAM: We did Pearl Harbor-
O'REILLY: What did you think of that cartoon with the Statue of Liberty with the whip? Did you like that? Was that good?
MEACHAM: I'm not going to comment on somebody else's editorial decision.
O'REILLY: Why not? Why not?
MEACHAM: I'm just not going to comment on that.
O'REILLY: Why?
MEACHAM: Because they make-
O'REILLY: You're an American. Forget you're editor of Newsweek, you're an American. You see this thing, what do you think? You think this is fair?
MEACHAM: You don't often see those two things together.
O'REILLY: Yeah, do you think this is fair? Do you think that's good for the country? Are you looking forward to putting those pictures coming out next week in Newsweek magazine, of abusing the prisoners, you looking forward to doing that?
MEACHAM: What I'm looking forward to is trying to get, what I think would be, a useful commission to look at how we're winning, winning, the war on terror. And I don't think that's-
O'REILLY: I don't think it's possible. I don't think it's possible in this day and age, as polarized as this country is, to do something like that. If I thought it were possible I would be on your train but it isn't. And it's too soon. You know, I'm not, see I'm -- look, you're a Pulitzer Prize winner now, you're the editor of a big magazine, you know? And you won't comment on that -- on that Statue of Liberty with a whip? Come on, you're an American, too. You know, I'm fighting the battle here alone. It's me and the Wall Street Journal, and couple of other guys on Fox, against a juggernaut of media apathy that you're a part of at Newsweek magazine, with all due respect.
MEACHAM: Well I -- obviously I disagree with that.
O'REILLY: What, you're a not a left-wing magazine?
MEACHAM: We -- we've had this conversation.
O'REILLY: And, yeah?
MEACHAM: No, I don't -- We're not a partisan magazine. We're just not.
O'REILLY: Come on.'
It's as if Mr. Meacham is acting in a play. He's in the role of the "objective journalist." Unfortunately, his role doesn't fit the story line. A real journalist, one who was truly objective, would have been on the story long before this. A real journalist, one who was truly objective, would already have done some digging on his own.
Newsweek editor Jon Meacham, though, was caught completely by surprise. He may have been a crack reporter in his day, rising to the position of editor as he did, but sadly it's no longer his day. The baffled Mr. Meacham looks to a commission to explain the mysteries for him.
It must be an odd style of investigative reporting that they do at Newsweek. Step One: See what you can find in the pages of the Washington Post. If you really have to pull out all the stops, look at the New York Times. If it's not there it didn't happen. Move on.
But then a strange thing happened. Newsweek editor Jon Meacham looked around an realized, the U.S. hasn't been attacked by terrorists since September 11, 2001. Why, what a stunning discovery -- a mystery to be solved. I don't suppose he would figure out that the Bush administration strategy of fighting the terrorists in their backyard, instead waiting for them to come to ours, might have had something to do with that.
As Bill O'Reilly pointed out, it's much to soon to install a commission. The commission of today's popular fantasies would have the sole purpose of indicting Bush administration officials for speaking harshly to people whose only offense was that they were trying desperately to kill Americans. Actually, they had already succeeded once. In spite of that, it will be several years before the Meachams of the world will have the honesty and moral courage to admit that our troops fought terrorists in Iraq and whipped them badly. That's why the terrorists didn't come here, and that's why we're winning the war on terror. You might think a journalist of Jon Meacham's stature would have figured that out by now. But no. He needs a commission.
Wow!
LIAR!
It disturbs me that I can't post this in 30 pt. type, in flashing red.
Posted by: CaptDMO | April 29, 2009 at 11:42 AM