The "Are you kidding me?" Department

Unlike Fox News, real journalism is objective. Or something like that.


Which brings us to the page not found message I just stumbled over at the PolitiFact section of the St. Petersburg Times' system of Web sites:


I think this is not the sort of joke one ought to indulge if the appearance of objectivity matters.

If they provide an image of Joe Biden when they find the missing page, then I suppose it evens things out.

Perhaps this should be filed under "Too clever for their own good."

Grading PolitiFact: Cheney on how many were subjected to waterboarding

An easy one, but PolitiFact found a way to blow it.

Fact-checking the fact checkers

The issue:

During a recent speech, Dick Cheney asserted that, despite a continued furor over waterboarding, it was administered to only three terrorists. PolitiFact relates it like so:

"You've heard endlessly about waterboarding," Cheney said in his address at the American Enterprise Institute. "It happened to three terrorists. One of them was Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of 9/11, who has also boasted about his beheading of Daniel Pearl.

The fact checkers:

Robert Farley: writer, researcher
Bill Adair: editor

Analysis:

To make a short story even shorter, Farley got this one right. Three detainees were subjected to waterboarding, and PolitiFact graded Cheney with its highest degree of accuracy ("True"). So what's the problem?

Farley put an odd focus on a marginally related subject, that of how many times the three detainees were waterboarded, and very probably got it wrong.

Farley used a New York Times story as his source, apparently assuming that its status the "the paper of record" would ensure accuracy. Fact-checkers ought to guard themselves against such assumptions. Numerous reports surfaced since the Times story calling its numbers into question.

A U.S. official with knowledge of the interrogation program told FOX News that the much-cited figure represents the number of times water was poured onto Mohammed's face -- not the number of times the CIA applied the simulated-drowning technique on the terror suspect. According to a 2007 Red Cross report, he was subjected a total of "five sessions of ill-treatment."

"The water was poured 183 times -- there were 183 pours," the official explained, adding that "each pour was a matter of seconds."

The Times and dozens of other outlets wrote that the CIA also waterboarded senior Al Qaeda member Abu Zubaydah 83 times, but Zubayda himself, a close associate of Usama bin Laden, told the Red Cross he was waterboarded no more than 10 times.

(Fox News)

The Times and Farley no doubt expect that the poor terrorists were so traumatized by the technique that they could not accurately recall how many sessions they had endured.

Abu Zubaydah:

The suffocation procedure was applied during five sessions of ill-treatment that took place during an approximately one-week intense period of interrogation in Afghanistan in 2002.
(page 10)

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed:

The procedure was applied during five different sessions during the first month of interrogation in his third place of detention.
(page 10)

"In addition I was subjected to 'water-boarding' on five occasions, all of which occurred during that first month."
(page 35)

Have the facts been checked adequately if the assessment includes just one of two widely discrepant accounts, and stories purporting to explain the discrepancy are simply ignored as though the writer was unfamiliar with them?

I don't think so.


The grades:

Robert Farley: D+
Bill Adair: D+

Both men pass merely on the strength of evaluating the main issue correctly. Including the minor issue was questionable, and getting it wrong is unacceptable. Or should be unacceptable.


Afterword:

Guidelines established by the Bush administration set limits on the number of sessions and duration of waterboarding.

You have informed us that the waterboard may be approved for use with a given detainee only during, at most, one single 30-day period, and that during that period, the waterboard technique may be used on no more than five days. We further understand that in any 24-hour period, interrogators may use no more than two "sessions" of the waterboard on the subject - and that no session may last more than two hours. Moreover, during any session, the number of individual applications of water lasting 10 seconds or longer may not exceed six. The maximum length of any application of water is 40 seconds (you have informed us that this maximum has rarely been reached). Finally the total cumulative time of all applications of whatever length in a 24-hour period may not exceed 12 minutes.

[W]here authorized, it may be used for two “sessions” per day of up to two hours. During a session, water may be applied up to six times for ten seconds or longer (but never more than 40 seconds). In a 24-hour period, a detainee may be subjected to up to twelve minutes of water application. Additionally, the waterboard may be used on as many as five days during a 30-day approval period.

(Bradbury memo, via waterboarding.org)

The math:

• Mohammed and Zubayduh both reported a number of waterboarding sessions consistent with the limitation of five days in a 30 day period.
• Five times at two sessions per day is 10 sessions (probably not a "session" as used in terrorists' descriptions) in a month.
• Six applications of water multiplied by 10 sessions comes to 60 applications of water in a month.

Sixty, of course, is less than 83, but it remains unresolved whether "applications" as used in the CIA descriptions matches the use of the same term in the Bradbury memo. It may have been necessary to use more than one container of water to sustain a 40 second segment. Or the CIA may have exceeded the guidelines. Either might be the case, not to rule out both.

Power Line on "Dueling Speeches"

President Obama and former vice president Dick Cheney both made speeches on national defense yesterday.

Power Line has a terrific series of posts delving into the comparison between the two speeches.

Highly recommended.

Part I
Part II
Part III
Part IV

Excerpt:

For Barack Obama to repeat the canard that the Bush administration shredded the Constitution, operated outside the law, etc., is false and dishonorable. It is also damaging to our country. Barack Obama is slandering his own government--his own nation, really--for political advantage. This is one more in a growing list of contemptible actions by our new President.

MSM continues to massage public opinion on pre-war Iraq

John Hinderaker of the Powerline blog posted an excellent piece of media criticism here.

Hinderaker quotes the Washington Post and then quotes from the source of the Post's information--it doesn't look like a match.

Captured Iraqi documents and intelligence interrogations of Saddam Hussein and two former aides "all confirmed" that Hussein's regime was not directly cooperating with al-Qaeda before the U.S. invasion of Iraq, according to a declassified Defense Department report released yesterday.
(the Washington Post)

And the source of the "all confirmed" phrasing (from a footnote in the report, as provided by Hinderaker--I haven't been able to link to the source document):

Noteworthy is that post-war debriefs of Saddam Hussein, Tariq Aziz, al-Tikriti and al-Libi as well as document exploitation by DIA all confirmed that the Intelligence Community [b]was correct: Iraq and al-Qaeda did not cooperate in all categories.[/b] The terms the Intelligence Community used to describe the relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda were validated, "no conclusive signs," and "direct cooperation...has not been established."

And this is how various dailies around the country fix the headline:

The Cleveland Plain Dealer:
"Report: Saddam not linked to al-Qaida"

The Pioneer Press:
"Pentagon debunks Saddam ties to al-Qaida"

The Kansas City Star:
"Report disputes prewar link
Hussein and al-Qaida were not directly cooperating before Iraq invasion, text shows."

Not every headline is as misleading as those above.

The Register-Guard (Oregon):
Report: Iraq, al-Qaeda contact limited

That's quite an improvement on the Post version, actually!

The story by Smith goes on to take a whack at Vice President Cheney concerning his statements that the current war in Iraq represents a struggle against al Qaida.
If that isn't a non sequitur then there's no such thing.

And the Post compounds the illogic with a Dan Froomkin column blasting Cheney based on their own inept reporting.

Cheney Sticks to His Delusions

By Dan Froomkin

Special to washingtonpost.com
Friday, April 6, 2007; 1:20 PM

Faced with overwhelming evidence to the contrary, even President Bush has backed off his earlier inflammatory assertions about links between al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein.

But Vice President Cheney yesterday, in an interview with right-wing talk radio host Rush Limbaugh, continued to stick to his delusional guns.

Inflammatory assertions by Bush? A pity Froomkin offers no examples.

Cheney told Limbaugh that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was leading al-Qaeda operations in Iraq before the U.S. invasion in March 2003.

"[A]fter we went into Afghanistan and shut him down there, he went to Baghdad, took up residence there before we ever launched into Iraq; organized the al-Qaeda operations inside Iraq before we even arrived on the scene, and then, of course, led the charge for Iraq until we killed him last June. He's the guy who arranged the bombing of the Samarra Mosque that precipitated the sectarian violence between Shia and Sunni. This is al-Qaeda operating in Iraq," Cheney said. "And as I say, they were present before we invaded Iraq." (Think Progress has the audio clip.)

(The Washington Post)

Same total lack of logic, here.
It's a leap worthy of Superman, albeit a leap of illogical thinking rather than a single bound over a tall Metropolis building.
Froomkin starts out by saying that links between Hussein and al Qaida have been discredited, and then mocks Cheney for not being up to speed. The smoking gun is a statement by Cheney that does not refer to any collaboration between the Iraqi government and al Qaida.

As Bugs Bunny would say: "What a maroon."

Not your finest moment, Froomkin.

V, P. Cheney off to Japan, Australia

Pakistan's the News reports on Vice-president Cheney's trip to visit Japan and Australia, primarily in order to encourage their continued support in the main thrust of President Bush's global war on terror.

WASHINGTON: US Vice President Dick Cheney will visit Japan and Australia this week to discuss their roles in Iraq and Afghanistan and common challenges like China’s rise and North Korea’s nuclear programs, officials said.

His trip, which opens in Tokyo Tuesday, comes as the US-led security plan for Baghdad has launched to mixed reviews and as even some White House allies have expressed concerns about a landmark atomic agreement with Pyongyang.

The vice president will take pains to thank Japan and Australia for their help in Iraq and Afghanistan and may urge them to consider ways to beef up their presence in both war-torn countries, a senior US official said on Friday. “We will talk about where there are places where we need to have more done, what other contributions we and other countries can make to the efforts of both those conflicts,” the official told reporters in a pre-trip briefing organized on the condition that he not be named.
(the News)

A Rove memo, and the Fever Swamp

The degree of the response remains to be seen, but early indications point to the left-wing Fever Swamp being somewhat a-twitter over a Karl Rove memo submitted as evidence in the case against "Scooter" Libby as an offshoot of the Plame investigation.

The Brad Blog (honored at Bad Blog's Blood) offers this unhinged headline:
'THE PRES' IMPLICATED IN LIBBY CIA LEAK BY CHENEY'S HAND-WRITTEN NOTE

Wishful thinking, Brad.

Here's the note:
Truthout.org

To the left near the margin, it appears to say "Tenet Wilson Memo" (Truthout says the memo was "written by Cheney in September 2003 for White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan").

At the top, there is a sentence in brackets (perhaps referring to a previous memo by Cheney?). It appears to read "[People have made too much of the difference in how I described Karl and Libby]"
followed by
"I've talked to Libby. I said it was rediculous [sic] about Karl and it is ridiculous about Libby[.] Libby was not the source of the Novak story. And he did not leak classified information."

That portion does not appear to be written by Cheney, assuming the lower portion attributed to Cheney is representative of Cheney's writing.
Here's the part attributed to Cheney:

Has to happen today[.]
Call out to key press saying same thing about Scooter as Karl.
Not going to protect one staffer and sacrifice the guy [the Pres.] [ ] that was asked to stick his neck in the meat grinder because of the incompetence of others.

The part in red was crossed out in the original note, and the green brackets stand in for some space on the paper.
The language used by commentators such as "Brad" would suggest that it's a simple matter of using "that" to replace "the Pres." but the spacing should allow for at least some consideration that a completely alternative ending was contemplated. Not that the note is necessarily important in any case.

In the timeline, the investigation into the Plame case has begun right around this time, and McClellan is apparently fresh from a press conference where questions regarding Karl Rove's involvement were raised.

"Brad" is crazy if he thinks that Bush is implicated in the Plame leak by this memo. It is most simply explained as a sketch of Bush's strategy for dealing with the investigation, as in designating a point man for fielding questions.

I'd like to see how this evidence is treated in the court proceedings, however.

I don't know whose incompetence Cheney speaks of (Richard Armitage?).

My best guess is that Armitage is the incompetent one and the one who would be protected without a crisp defense of Rove and Libby.

There's nothing here to implicate Bush unless I have completely mistranslated the page.