Tuesday, March 28, 2006
Are Right-Wing Bloggers Smarter Than The American Intelligence Establishment?
God, I hope not.
In an unprecedented move, Congress has pushed for the release of millions of document relating to Iraq, WMD, and Al Qaeda.
The captured documents will be posted on the web.The hope is that the blogosphere will be able to find something the highly trained analysts of the CIA and NSA couldn't. Said Republican Congressman Peter Hoekstra, "Let's unleash the power of the Internet on these documents."
I have one question for Mr. Hoekstra: Have you ever been on the Internet? Seriously. I'm not sure what you think is out there, but I have a hard time believing millions of porn sites, online gambling and crazy partisan bloggers are going to be able to find the 'silver bullet' linking Hussein to Bin Laden.
Of course, that's not going to stop people from trying. According to the NYT:
On his blog last week, Ray Robison, a former Army officer from Alabama, quoted a document reporting a supposed scheme to put anthrax into American leaflets dropped in Iraq and declared: "Saddam's W.M.D. and terrorist connections all proven in one document!!!"
I think Robison's use of three...yes, three... exclamation points conveys the deep analytic power of right-wing bloggers. That's why the Bush Administration's case for invading Iraq is so flimsy. Not enought emphatic punctuation!!!! Also nice to see that the primary conservative rhetorical technique- yelling something so loudly that you convince yourself its true- has found a happy home online. ¶ 3:06 a.m.
In an unprecedented move, Congress has pushed for the release of millions of document relating to Iraq, WMD, and Al Qaeda.
The captured documents will be posted on the web.The hope is that the blogosphere will be able to find something the highly trained analysts of the CIA and NSA couldn't. Said Republican Congressman Peter Hoekstra, "Let's unleash the power of the Internet on these documents."
I have one question for Mr. Hoekstra: Have you ever been on the Internet? Seriously. I'm not sure what you think is out there, but I have a hard time believing millions of porn sites, online gambling and crazy partisan bloggers are going to be able to find the 'silver bullet' linking Hussein to Bin Laden.
Of course, that's not going to stop people from trying. According to the NYT:
On his blog last week, Ray Robison, a former Army officer from Alabama, quoted a document reporting a supposed scheme to put anthrax into American leaflets dropped in Iraq and declared: "Saddam's W.M.D. and terrorist connections all proven in one document!!!"
I think Robison's use of three...yes, three... exclamation points conveys the deep analytic power of right-wing bloggers. That's why the Bush Administration's case for invading Iraq is so flimsy. Not enought emphatic punctuation!!!! Also nice to see that the primary conservative rhetorical technique- yelling something so loudly that you convince yourself its true- has found a happy home online. ¶ 3:06 a.m.
Comments:
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I'm not sure what you think is out there, but I have a hard time believing millions of porn sites, online gambling and crazy partisan bloggers are going to be able to find the 'silver bullet' linking Hussein to Bin Laden.
From what I can tell, given how practiced the rightwing bloggers are at sophistry, obfuscation and outright dishonesty, I'm more worried about the fact that those bloggers can in fact find anything they go looking for. At best, in their frenzy of self-justification, what these bloggers do manage to do is drag public discourse into a quagmire of irrelevant discussion to the extent that sensible people are completely turned off.
I support the release of these documents, but I'm not holding out any hope that we'll find anything useful.
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From what I can tell, given how practiced the rightwing bloggers are at sophistry, obfuscation and outright dishonesty, I'm more worried about the fact that those bloggers can in fact find anything they go looking for. At best, in their frenzy of self-justification, what these bloggers do manage to do is drag public discourse into a quagmire of irrelevant discussion to the extent that sensible people are completely turned off.
I support the release of these documents, but I'm not holding out any hope that we'll find anything useful.
# posted by 
: 9:06 a.m.
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