Psychoanalysis
June 29th, 2006
About this story:
Bush camp attacks newspaper ‘treason’GEORGE BUSH and Dick Cheney are calling The New York Times a disgrace, Republican congressmen say it is guilty of treason and demand the prosecution of the Editor, while a right-wing radio presenter suggests most of its readers must be “jihadists”.
I believe psychologists call this “projection.”
Postscript: they’re savaging the New York Times for announcing that the government is going after terrorist financing–but Bush himself announced this five years ago. All that the NYT has done is alert the public to the fact that Bush and the GOP are doing this illegally. Definitely a case of projection.
The story is a little peculiar, which is why I haven’t really come to a conclusion yet–though I’m leaning toward the story shoudn’t have been printed. Some questions you may be able to answer:
1. If it didn’t harm national security, why are some Dems upset and why did they urge the Times not to run the story?
2. How can there be no congressional oversite (another major reason the Times ran the story) if everyone knows about the program? Does it make sense that everyone knew except congress?
1. If it didn’t harm national security, why are some Dems upset and why did they urge the Times not to run the story?
They didn’t. Media Matters showed up that assertion to be false. At most two, and perhaps only one Democrat “urged” the NYT not to run the story. If I am not mistaken, the one Democrat we know about for sure was co-head of the 9/11 commission, and it was a joint statement with his Republican partner.
2. How can there be no congressional oversite (another major reason the Times ran the story) if everyone knows about the program? Does it make sense that everyone knew except congress?Bush announced the intent to track terrorists by their banking five years ago. He did not say that he would be doing it without warrants; nor did he announce the specifics. Oversight is not simply to be aware of a program’s existence, it is supposed to be told of the details, so that if anyone crosses the line of illegality–which Bush likely did–they’d be there to see it. Hence “oversight.” Congress could have known of Bush’s announcement to the world that he was going to track banking transactions and yet never have been told of any specific program or its methods.