Sullivan:
Fire every single person who allowed this to happen, identify them publicly, explain what they did wrong. Then I'll believe Obama is serious and can run the government. But right now, in this area, the government is running him.
Are you not entertained?!!
Greenwald had a recent post with a thorough take down of this type of argument and found this from Coleen Rowley:
Extraneous, irrelevant data clutter the system, making it even harder for analysts to make meaningful future connections. A needle is hard enough to find in the proverbial haystack, without adding still more hay. . . . Quantity cannot substitute for quality. Higher quality data collection depends not only on better guidance with respect to relevance, but also on judiciousness applied from the beginning and throughout the collection process. Unfortunately, case and statutory law has come to be regarded as some kind of nicety -- or a barrier that needs to be overcome. Not so. That law sets standards of relevancy for collection that used to hold down data clutter.
I know every now again a James Woods gets lucky, but the amounts of misinformation out there and the crying wolves in America has to be overwhelming. Sullivan only need to look at his own posts to see that.
I am Frank Chow and I approved this message
Extraneous, irrelevant data clutter the system, making it even harder for analysts to make meaningful future connections. A needle is hard enough to find in the proverbial haystack, without adding still more hay. . . . Quantity cannot substitute for quality. Higher quality data collection depends not only on better guidance with respect to relevance, but also on judiciousness applied from the beginning and throughout the collection process. Unfortunately, case and statutory law has come to be regarded as some kind of nicety -- or a barrier that needs to be overcome. Not so. That law sets standards of relevancy for collection that used to hold down data clutter.
I know every now again a James Woods gets lucky, but the amounts of misinformation out there and the crying wolves in America has to be overwhelming. Sullivan only need to look at his own posts to see that.
I am Frank Chow and I approved this message
4 comments:
I like Sully, but he does have this tendency to just take something and run with it far more than he should. Calling for accountability is great, but then he has to go beyond that and claim that Obama is just like Bush if he doesn't fire people.
What I like about him though is he usually figures out that he's gone too far and lets things go after a point. He's one of the few pundits who will actually admit to his mistakes and is very open in analyzing the mistakes he's made. But he does seem to enjoy making them when he's in the moment :)
He really tries my patience with this kind of stuff.
I ain't mad at the idea of accountability or firing, but he writes like he is on the cabinet and has all the information.
Not so. This is one of those I hope he backtracks on soon.
I suspect he'll just let it go but he won't recant. This is one of those things where he's achieved a kind of moral clarity that he thinks is undeniable. Once he gets righteous he doesn't come down from it very easily.
Eugene Robinson has a good (similar) article in the WaPo on the real problem with intel gathering: too many agencies, too much information.
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