Back from the Convention: a few thoughts
6th August 2007
by gordo
I’m back from the Yearly Kos convention, and I have a few thoughts. First, here’s 3 suggestions as to how to improve the convention next year:
1) Invite some wild-eyed conspiracy theorists. I went because I read in Townhall that Kossacks are “extremists who promote a virulent hatred of the military, conspiracy theories, and in some cases, even violence and Fascist tactics against the people who disagree with them.” I didn’t find anyone like that. I don’t know whether that’s because there weren’t any extremists there, or because the description itself doesn’t make any sense. Daily Kos is run by a veteran, and it’s hard to see how one could actually use “fascist tactics” online. Can you digitally kick in someone’s door and toss them into a virtual concentration camp? Is that something you can do if you download the latest Firefox plugin?
Bottom line: the convention would have been a LOT more fun if some lunatic conspiracy theorists had showed up, claiming that Saddam Hussein was the real mastermind of 9/11.
2) Incite some hatred. Bill O’Reilly says that the Kos community are vicious hatemongers, on a par with the KKK and the Nazis. Now I’m pretty sure nobody in the Kos community has ever lynched anyone or herded people into camps because of their ethnicity (that’s something O’Reilly’s pals would like to do), so I thought O’Reilly was probably exaggerating. Still, I expected to see SOME hatred.
Instead, I found people rationally discussion politics and making friendly conversation. Maybe that’s how Kossacks sublimate their hateful impulses. I don’t mind rational discussion and friendly small talk, but it’s kind of boring compared to the unreasoning hatred I’d been expecting. I think I’m entitled to a partial refund.
I think the problem is that conservatives don’t really understand what the word “hatred” means in this context. When you say that a site like Michelle Malkin’s is hateful (see here, here, here, and here), you mean that she displays irrational hatred toward others based on an arbitrary characteristic, like ethnicity, religion, or national origin. That’s why it’s legitimate to compare people like Malkin to the KKK and the Nazis: they all hate entire groups of people for irrational reasons. What “hatred” does NOT mean in this context is the rational animosity that people feel toward individuals because of the behavior of those individuals.
Saying that you’d like to see Osama bin Laden castrated doesn’t make you a hatemonger. But saying that Muslims shouldn’t be allowed to pray on an airplane does make you a hatemonger. Here’s Malkin, missing this point for about the millionth time.
3) Instead of identifying attendees with orange necklaces, convention organizers should have issued orange hats:
I got the idea for that last suggestion from another convention that was also going on at the hotel.
***
For the most part, I agreed with the assessment of Yearly Kos that Katie cross posted here: if you went to the convention to learn how to blog or to promote your site, you wasted your time. But I had a great time. Here’s what I wrote about it over at her site:
I only stayed for a day and a half, but it seemed to me that small-time bloggers like myself were very much a minority. Most of the people fell into one of a few groups:
1) Big-time bloggers, who came as panelists and attended some of the events.
2) Political candidates and their staffs.
3) Senior citizens who are concerned about politics.
4) Fans of blogs like FDL and Kos, and Kos diarists.
5) Political activists. There were actually a whole lot of these.
About the only group I noticed that had less representation than the small-time bloggers were the half-crazed anger junkies who would shout 5 paragraphs of their manifesto before spitting a question at the panelists.
I really liked the structure of the convention. On the one hand, you wound up missing a lot of stuff you wanted to see. On the other hand, it enabled anyone to put together a schedule that would be personally appealing. If you wanted to take one of the workshops on blog writing or promotion (I did a promotion workshop, which was absolutely worthless), you could spend almost all of your time doing that and networking.
On the other hand, if you wanted to spend the time networking with activists and trying to get a job as an activist, you could do that. If you wanted to spend the whole weekend in relatively small sessions with luminaries like Gen. Wesley Clark and Senator Dick Durbin, you could do that. You could spend a day doing nothing but watching documentaries. You could spend your time watching experts like Glenn Greenwald and Juan Cole discuss current events. The bottom line is, you didn’t have to spend your time in a futile attempt to build traffic for your D-list site.
***
Both Katie and Richard of This Old Brit were quite critical of Markos “Kos” Moulitsas. Katie brought up his insensitivity on gender issues, and Richard pointed out that Moulitsas has banned several people who posted pro-Palestinian diaries at Daily Kos. As Katie says, it’s impossible to separate completely Moulitsas and the event that’s named after him, so I did find it problematic to justify my presence at the convention. Here’s how I replied to Richard:
I don’t agree with his decision to be heavy-handed on the issue of debating Israel and Palestine, I can’t condemn him for it. I hesitated at first to venture into those waters on my own site, because I knew that I’d wind up spending a large amount of time answering the never-ending parade of Likudniks. I finally started to write about it after the Israelis lobbed a shell onto a Gaza beach and killed a family of vacationers, starting a chain of events that ended in Israel’s re-invasion of both Gaza and Lebanon. I wound up having to ban my most prolific commenter because he lost the ability to debate rationally during this time, and began to spew his racist bile on virtually all of my comment threads.
Kos has to be cognizant of the fact that he has the highest visibility political blog on the Internet, and he’s trying to use the site’s influence to push the Democratic party in a more progressive direction. That’s going to be virtually impossible if the site morphs into a food fight between Likudniks and supporters of Palestinian rights. Kos also limits posting on other topics, including 9/11 conspiracy theories, and the Kennedy assassination.
Obviously, there’s a major qualitative difference between Kennedy assassination posts and posts about Palestine, but I think that Kos is motivated in both cases by the same impulse: a desire to the site from either becoming a single issue blog, or becoming a site that Democratic leaders would have to distance themselves from. That said, I think that if you’re going to make a topic off-limits, you ought to close it off completely. That would mean barring just about all discussion of the subject.
So again, I agree that the criticism of Kos is valid. But I think that achieving the sort of prestige that Kos now enjoys forces a person to make compromises. Jay Carney of Time magazine drew hoots and jeers for making this point at one of the panel discussions at the conventions, but I think he was right. The subject was whether journalists should allow administration officials to speak off the record, and Carney pointed out that while reporters have to take care not to be manipulated when they talk to official sources off the record, it’s sometimes necessary in order to give readers an accurate picture of what’s going on. Like the censorship at Kos, it’s a practice that can’t be shoehorned into a rigid system of media ethics, but such compromises are often necessary in order to achieve a larger goal. And while I wouldn’t make the same choice that Kos has, the fact is that his decision to bar pro-Palestinian bloggers from posting is not the same thing as outright censorship, because there are popular sites that do publish articles with that perspective.
***
For me, the highlight of the convention was a panel that included Jill Filipovic and Glenn Greenwald representing bloggers, and Jim Carney of TIME and Mike Allen of Politico representing mainstream journalists.
Greenwald came out swinging, pointing out that TIME failed to report a key fact about the National Security Agency’s warrantless wiretapping program: the program was, from the beginning, inarguably illegal. Greenwald also pointed out that Politico launched a thorough investigation of John Edwards’ haircuts, touching off a media frenzy that diverted attention and resources from more important stories. Allen and Carney didn’t defend those choices, but did point out that bloggers can be unreasonable about nitpicking news stories and about seeing media bias where none exists.
During the question-and-answer period, some audience members showed some of the anger that allegedly permeates the Kos community. A few shouted at Allen for dodging a question about pursuing frivolous stories, and Carney got some angry questions after he asserted that journalists have to avoid gratuitous attacks on politicians in order to preserve access to those politicians.
I spoke to Greenwald after the panel, and thanked him for confronting Allen and Carney in a constructive way. He said that he thought that some of the questions from the audience were also constructive and substantial. Maybe Greenwald thought I was referring to a different panel discusssion.
***
Here’s my bottom line for Yearly Kos: it was only $275 for 3 days, and there was a dizzying array of activists, officeholders, journalists, and activities. There were only 1,500-2,000 who attended the convention, so I could always find a good seat at any of the panels and workshops that I cared to attend. The whole atmosphere was laid back and friendly. I’m pretty sure I’ll be back next year.
August 6th, 2007 at 10:49 am
For some reason, Abstract Nonsense managed to avoid being a single-issue site featuring pie fights between pro-Israelis and pro-Palestinians. Maybe Kos should contact me about how to call Israeli actions murder and get away with it… (the trick is to post about many issues, preferably ones that can’t possibly be related to I/P, and also to include a lot of serious analyses of the conflict in addition to the polemics and action alerts).
August 6th, 2007 at 11:47 am
Alon–
I don’t know if that works when you get a quarter of a million visitors a day. And in the case of Kos, you also have to figure in the fact that he wants the site to be the communications hub of the Democratic Party’s rank and file. Getting all of the Democratic presidential candidates to attend YK was a big coup for him, and it wouldn’t have been possible if Kos was known as a pro-Palestinian site.
August 6th, 2007 at 1:01 pm
“Instead of identifying attendees with orange necklaces, convention organizers should have issued orange hats”
Better yet, propeller beanies.
Kos is very much overly introduced as having any kind of real impact on a national election . Even that idiot Obermann gets about half a million viewers a night-about double Kos’ “visitors”-and he’ll never influence a single vote that wasn’t in the pocket of some left wing candidate anyway.
The Kossies predictably booed Hillary Clinton and most likely fawned all over Dennis Kucinich. No surprise there, and except for his family, his students and a small cadre of fellow Muslim apologists Juan Cole couldn’t attract enough of a crowd from main stream Democrats to fill a Pooh day nursery at a small town shopping mall. Granted they’ll pick up some bucks for their favorite moonbat and will likely have a small degree of influence in some of the primaries, but not all by any means, And despite all the “centrist” claims for this group the only candidate that even comes close to meeting that political description, Clinton, got an underwhelming 9% in their straw vote.
So they light on Obama or Edwards, so what? Ask Howard Dean how much influence their support had in the last election.
Glad you made it back to the real world gordo…
August 6th, 2007 at 1:11 pm
It’s one of those very few things we can’t see eye to eye on, Gordo. But that’s a good thing I think, since it shows neither of us are ditto-heads.
Tell you what though — after reading all you’ve written since I first said:”He’s a tool,” it’s my contention that you’ve not disagreed at all — merely elaborated. ;^p
August 6th, 2007 at 2:21 pm
“Greenwald came out swinging, pointing out that TIME failed to report a key fact about the National Security Agency’s warrantless wiretapping program: the program was, from the beginning, inarguably illegal.”
Did Greenscreed also point out that Democrat dominated Senate and House just approved basically the same proceedures that the Bush administration was following from the very beginning? So, other than the top of his head, what’s been his bloody point for the past year or so?
How many Congressional hours that could have been devoted to something useful, how many computer bytes, television screen pixels and how much air time were totally wasted; how many trees had to die to give idiots like Greenscreed, John Conyers, the ACLU and the rest of the moonbat chorus an audience for their hysterical “Bush is watching me pee” nonsense?
Moonbats, like French politics-”Hopeless but not serious”…
House Approves Wiretap Bill
Sunday August 5, 2007 3:31 AM
By CHARLES BABINGTON
Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) - The House handed President Bush a victory Saturday, voting to expand the government’s abilities to eavesdrop without warrants on foreign suspects whose communications pass through the United States.
The 227-183 vote, which followed the Senate’s approval Friday, sends the bill to Bush for his signature. He had urged Congress to approve it, saying Saturday, “Protecting America is our most solemn obligation.”
August 6th, 2007 at 5:12 pm
Blog promotion workshop?
I could have written something about blogwhoring… haa ha.
August 6th, 2007 at 5:16 pm
btw. It’s a surprisingly small convention. I would imagine it’s twice or three times the size.
with only 1-2K. One can practically meet everybody.
August 6th, 2007 at 10:02 pm
Old Brit–
Katie objected to attending the convention at all, which was my only real point of disagreement. I certainly don’t disagree with the idea that Moulitsas is a sexist and that he ought to publish diaries that tell the truth about what’s going on in Israel and Palestine.
Squashed–
I think that an essential weakness of the “how to promote your site” workshops is that they featured only semi-successful local bloggers. Virtually everything they had to say pertained only to local blogging, and there really wasn’t much in the way of “how to.” The tips offered were mostly obvious, and it seemed a bit strange to be getting advice on promotion from the writers of a 3 year old group blog that gets a little more than double the traffic of my year old individual blog.
I think the main problem is that the most successful bloggers prefer to be on the policy discussion panels. But that could be solved by inviting successful non-political bloggers. Bloggers who write about music and sports tend to operate in a more competitive market, and the most successful of them could probably teach the political bloggers quite a bit about promotion.
BRT–
“Muslim apologists?” You make it sound like Islam is radical ideology, rather than a mainstream faith with 1.3 billion adherents. I can imagine your reaction if I referred to Elie Wiesel as a “Jewish apologist.”
As for Kos’ influence, it would seem that it’s far greater than you imagine. Not many organizations could induce all of the Democratic presidential candidates to show up at a forum.
I think that the problem is that you’re looking at the number of daily Kos readers. But Kos is not a newspaper, and a lot of people read it weekly rather than daily. And the ideas and positions that Kos diarists write about tend to bounce around the blogosphere and even into the mainstream media, so the site has a lot more influence than its number of daily readers suggests. Also remember that a lot of the daily readers of your morning newspaper skip right past the front page to the sports, financial, or classified ad sections, so a look at raw readership numbers tends to exaggerate their influence.
It’s true that candidates identified with the website haven’t won many races, and there’s a reason for this: the mainstream candidates backed by the website aren’t identified as “Kos candidates.” Only the candidates who would stand very little chance of winning without the community’s backing are identified with the site.
There’s another factor that I witnessed in last year’s race in the AZ 8 district. Gabby Giffords, a longtime member of the state legislature, ran in the Democratic primary against Nina Trasoff, a local newscaster, and Jeff Latas, a Kos diarist. Predictably, Giffords collected most of the endorsements from local pols and activists, and split media endorsements with Trasoff. She also used her considerable fundraising advantage to saturate the district with direct mail, while Trasoff traded on her huge name recognition. Hopelessly outgunned, Latas desperately appealed to the netroots.
In other words, this wasn’t the example of the Kos community rallying behind a candidate who got swamped in the primary. It was a case of a no-hope candidate who wrote a bunch of Kos diaries.
And if I were to ask Howard Dean about the influence of the netroots, he’d probably say, “They have very little influence. All I got was the chairmanship of the Democratic Party, and in November we only took 30 seats from the Republicans in the House, and a bare majority in the Senate.”
That hadn’t happened yet when I saw him, but he has commented on that. And the fact that a few Democrats went along with the president last week doesn’t in any way change the fact that the president knowingly and deliberately violated the law, and that the mainstream media generally failed to convey this aspect of the story to the American people.
August 7th, 2007 at 4:15 am
“the fact that the president knowingly and deliberately violated the law”
Yep, that turned out to be a really big deal. Sheriffs in blue counties in the fifties “knowingly and deliberately” didn’t arrest merchants for opening for business on Sunday because it was an outmoded law that didn’t make any sense.
It’s really been fun watching useless word weasels like Greenscreed squirm, cover up and equivocate since Congress just ratified everything Bush was doing to protect the American people.
August 7th, 2007 at 5:42 am
BRT–
I just want to be clear– are you saying that the prohibition on tapping phones without a warrant is outmoded? What other constitutional protections are outmoded? Should the government also be allowed to arrest Americans and hold them indefinitely without charge, or is Bush wrong to do that?
August 8th, 2007 at 7:16 am
Yes,it was. Obviously since it was drawn before 9/11 and before terrorists were communicating with people in this country who were out to blow up our people and instititutions.
Bush knew that. Gonzales knew that. I knew it and every sane and rational American in this country knew it. Congress finally acknowledged it by ratifying the administration’s actions and even strengthening some areas.
The only nitwits that apparently didn’t know it, or knew it but still wanted to make some hate Bush hay while handcuffing our security efforts were people like Greenscreed, Markos, Slimes writers and ilk.
The new bill just stuffed it up their whining, “Bush is watching me pee” asses.
Justice will out…
August 8th, 2007 at 1:58 pm
So your answer is yes, it’s OK to wiretap American citizens without a warrant, and it’s OK to imprison them indefinitely without trial. You’re confident that the only people who will be subjected to these outrages will be Muslims and Arab-Americans, and that’s OK with you.
Consider, though, the fact that terrorism was a problem that we dealt with successfully before Bush took charge. Somehow, Clinton and his predecessors managed to keep Americans safe without resorting to warrantless wiretaps, extreme renditions, imprisonment without charge, torture, and unprovoked attacks on nations that posed no threat to us.
Bush didn’t fail because he lacked enough information. This presidential briefing spelled the threat out for him in plain language: Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US. Two paragraphs from that briefing really stand out:
Ahmed Rassam was caught because Clinton ordered an elevated level of vigilance at our borders and airports in anticipation of an al Qaeda terrorist attack. He was questioned at a ferry stop in Port Angeles because customs officials thought that he appeared nervous, and a search of his car revealed a timing device and nitroglycerin. Rassam was not tortured, which probably would have yielded inaccurate information, but standard questioning techniques yielded all the information that authorities should have needed to break up the 9/11 plot.
Instead of stepping up airport security in response to the briefing, Bush chose to remain on vacation. Terrorism was such a low priority for his administration that FBI officials overruled field agents and chose not to seek a FISA warrant to wiretap Zacarias Moussaoui and search his apartment, a search that would have exposed the 9/11 plot (link). Increased vigilance at the airports probably would have prevented the hijackers from boarding with boxcutters, but airport officials weren’t alerted to the impending attack.
So preventing the 9/11 attacks wouldn’t have required imprisoning anyone without trial. Torture was also not required. And a simple request for a FISA warrant would have enabled a disruption of the plot, based on information contained on Moussaoui’s computer. What’s needed to fight terrorism is not a set of expansive new powers for the executive. What’s needed is a competent president.
August 11th, 2007 at 5:40 am
“Clinton and his predecessors managed to keep Americans safe without resorting to warrantless wiretaps blah, blah blah…”
I guess we’ll never really know just how “safe” Clinton kept Americans gordo, since the 9/ll planners were in this country, plotting away and honing their box cutters even as he whiled away the time pushing intern’s heads up and down in the oval office.
It’s just laughable to postulate that 9/11 can be laid at Bush’s feet on the basis of a breathless last minute CYA memo dashed off less than 9 months after he’d had the chance to brush the inaugural confetti off his suit and replace all the missing White House china and the wiring ripped out by his predecessor’s blue jeans misfits.
If the Clinton lackeys knew all that why didn’t they do dick about while the plotters were strolling into the country on phony passports and visas, taking flying lessons that didn’t include takeoffs and landings and generally thumbing their noses at one of the most inept NSCs in the history of this country?
http://www.securityfocus.com/columnists/143
When you consider how perilously close this country came to having the 9/11 horror visted on us by the very administration whose pecadillo pursuing boss and his support team of “Saddam’s got WMDs” cassandras actually caused it and the subsequent invasion of Iraq, it’s no wonder the left wing Bushophobes are stuck with their ridiculous “pet goat” and “Cheney blew up the Twin Towers” deflections from the truth.
August 11th, 2007 at 5:45 am
Wish I’d said this.
From “dan” in the comments section of another blog…
“I read DailyKos occasionally, and I think they simply represent the present suburban radical chic - that is, minds possessed by Bush Derangement Syndrome, which are quite receptive to the props of 60s radicalism, from which, with small innovations, they utter vindictive attacks on “the right,” “Jews” (oops I mean Zionists), and seem to believe every claim made about everyone from Hugo Chavez to Mahmoud Ahmedinejad is a pretext for a corporate invasion with Special Forces as its financiers.”
August 11th, 2007 at 6:51 am
BRT–
When was Moussaoui taking flying lessons, and telling his instructors that he wasn’t interested in taking off and landing? Oh yes– it was during the Bush administration. Local FBI officials were notified and asked permission to seek a warrant to search Moussaoui’s apartment, by they were overruled by their superiors in Washington. What I don’t understand is why you use this to attack Clinton’s competence, and not Bush’s.
George Smith’s attack on Richard Clarke reveals an ignorance of what Clarke actually did and what he pushed for when he was National Security Advisor. Tellingly, the one fact that Smith cites contradicts his thesis. Here’s what Smith says was needed:
Here’s what he says about Clarke:
So Smith can’t cite any State Department documents or officials, but relies instead on the notoriously unreliable New Republic. And while Smith says that what’s needed to fight terrorism is a campaign of assassinations and bombings, he criticizes Clarke for countering terrorism through a series of bombings. For the record, it’s evident from this Jan. 25, 2001 memo that Clarke was quite serious about the threat posed by al-Qaeda. Too bad Ashcroft was too busy chasing pornographers, Rice was too busy pushing for a revival of Star Wars, and Cheney was trying to figure out a way to justify an invasion of Iraq.
As for your friend “dan”, it sound to me like he’s never read anything on Daily Kos in his whole life. Notice how he failed to provide a single example of the hatred, anti-Semitism, or support for Ahmadinejad that he alleges.
August 11th, 2007 at 1:12 pm
“Local FBI officials were notified and asked permission to seek a warrant to search Moussaoui’s apartment, by they were overruled by their superiors in Washington. What I don’t understand is why you use this to attack Clinton’s competence, and not Bush’s.”
I’m glad you brought up Moussaoui gordo, a wonderful example of not so benign neglect and transparent buck passing fashioned by the Clinton-Clarke team of abysmal national security failure.
The Bush administration did something the Clintonistas failed to do for 8 long years-this is, to get inside the ongoing terrorist plots that triggered Clarke’s hysterical “Osama’s Coming!!!” CYA memo to Bush while he was cleaning out of his desk after spending years without doing one single fucking thing about it.
Byron York:
“Lawmakers of both parties recognized the problem in the months after the September 11 terrorist attacks.
They pointed to the case of Coleen Rowley, the FBI agent who ran up against a number roadblocks in her effort to secure a FISA warrant in the case of Zacarias Moussaoui, the al Qaeda operative who had taken flight training in preparation for the hijackings.
Investigators wanted to study the contents of Moussaoui’s laptop computer, but the FBI bureaucracy involved in applying for a FISA warrant was stifling, and there were real questions about whether investigators could meet the FISA court’s probable-cause standard for granting a warrant.
FBI agents became so frustrated that they considered flying Moussaoui to France, where his computer could be examined. But then the attacks came, and it was too late.
Rowley wrote up her concerns in a famous 13-page memo to FBI Director Robert Mueller, and then elaborated on them in testimony to Congress.
“Rowley depicted the legal mechanism for security warrants under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, as burdensome and restrictive, a virtual roadblock to effective law enforcement,” Legal Times reported in September 2002.”
Wall Street Journal:
“..As Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” before 9/11 “our intelligence agencies looked out; our law enforcement agencies looked in. And people could–terrorists could–exploit the seam between them.”
The wiretaps are designed to close the seam.
The New York Times…
..” Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales said yesterday that Congress had granted Mr. Bush broad powers to order domestic surveillance after the attacks.
”Our position is that the authorization to use military force, which was passed by the Congress shortly after September 11, constitutes that authority,” Mr. Gonzales said. He called the monitoring “probably the most classified program that exists in the United States government.”
Gen. Michael Hayden, deputy national intelligence director who was head of the NSA when the program began in October 2001, said, “This program has been successful in detecting and preventing attacks inside the United States.”
9/11 Commission Report..
“Many agents in the field told us that although there is now less hesitancy in seeking approval for electronic surveillance under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, the application process nonetheless continues to be long and slow,” the commission said.
“Requests for such approvals are overwhelming the ability of the system to process them and to conduct the surveillance. The Department of Justice and FBI are attempting to address bottlenecks in the process.”
So…What’s in YOUR wallet?
(Moonbats fumbling for talking points and ACLU membership cards)
August 11th, 2007 at 4:08 pm
As I’ve already explained, the Bush administration did NOT get inside the ongoing terrorist plots. If they had, there wouldn’t have been 4 hijackings on 9/11. They had enough information to thwart the attacks, thanks to an arrest made during the Clinton era (Ahmed Rassam) and the work of FBI field agents in Minnesota. But Bush and his security team dropped the ball.
As for Clarke’s “CYA memo”, the fact is that it was written in JANUARY, well before the 9/11 attacks. I don’t see how you’ve managed to twist the situation in your mind to the point where this memo works as an indictment of Clarke, rather than the Bush administration. You characterize EVERY warning that the Bush administration got as a “CYA memo”, but let me ask you this: what action did the Bush administration take to prevent the attacks that they were warned about? Where is the documentation that shows that the Bush administration was concerned about the threat of international terrorism?
As for Byron York, he seems blissfully unaware of the fact that the FISA warrant could have been obtained if it had been sought. I’ve already linked to the statement made by York’s source, Colleen Rowley, in which Rowley says that officials in Washington refused to seek such a warrant.
The Wall Street Journal quotes Condi Rice, who simply lies. Terrorists did not exploit a seam between intelligence and law enforcement, they exploited the Bush administration’s unwillingness to deal with the problem of terrorism. Clarke told her, in writing, of the threat from al-Qaeda back in 2001. If Rice was trying to deal with the problem, let her show some documentation of that.
The rest of your argument amounts to citing Gonzales and Hayden, the guy who authorized the warrantless wiretapping and the guy who implemented it. What did you expect them to say? That they violated the law? That their program had broken up a grand total of zero credible threats to national security? I have to say, your trust in these men, especially Gonzales, is mind-boggling.
As for the 9/11 commission report, I searched for the phrases you quoted, and they’re not in there. I did, however, find them in this article by Byron York. Do you get the impression that Mr. York isn’t being completely honest?