Media’s mental masturbation

They’ve been running headlines like this one from the Washington Post;

The Post writes:

House Democrats said yesterday that they expect to launch a formal investigation into a secret CIA program that was not disclosed to Congress for almost eight years, a probe that could entangle senior Bush administration officials who oversaw intelligence issues.

Democrats on the House intelligence committee said the inquiry would examine both the nature of the still-secret program and the decisions to keep congressional oversight committees in the dark about its existence.

Sounds pretty serious, huh? A secret program thsat wasn’t disclosed to Congress run at the highest levels of the Bush Administration. Serious stuff, indeed. But what kind of program was it? Huh? You don’t know? This one from the Washington Times;

The Times says:

…the decision to keep the details of the program secret in the past was made in part because the program remained “in the capability stage,” meaning it had been developed but not necessarily implemented.

Oh, wait, so it wasn’t even a “program”, per se? It was nothing more than an idea?

Buried in the Post story;

“We never briefed the vice president, the president or the Cabinet,” said a former senior intelligence official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because the program remains highly secret. He said the program remained in the planning stages and never crossed the agency’s threshold for reporting to the administration and congressional overseers.

So, like the Bush firings at the DOJ, it’s all perfectly legal – but it makes for good headlines for the sheep who are still reading that POS partisan rag the Washington Post.

Oh, but we have nimnils coming in here, on This Ain’t Hell, who seem to know that it was Seymour Hersh’s secret assassination program. Funny how all of these rocket scientists know the intimate details of “secret programs” from behind the computer screens in their parents’ basements.

All this mental masturbation from the Post does is reinforce the conspiracy theorists’ speculation about the evil Bush Administration. Funny how this always happens when Obama takes a hit in the polls or hits a snag in Congress, huh?

Newsweek takes their shot, too. Eric Holder is The God of Independence;

These are not just the philosophical musings of a new attorney general. Holder, 58, may be on the verge of asserting his independence in a profound way. Four knowledgeable sources tell NEWSWEEK that he is now leaning toward appointing a prosecutor to investigate the Bush administration’s brutal interrogation practices, something the president has been reluctant to do.

Yeah, that’s independence; doing something completely partisan for no other reason than kicking political sand up in your opponent’s collective face. It’s not even news anymore – it borders on rumors and inuendo. All pumped up by jerk-asses who don’t have the gumption to get off their collective ass and find NEWS instead of recycling HuffPo and DailyKos diaries.

Category: Barack Obama/Joe Biden, Media