Wash. Post Lied to Readers About Max Baucus & His Health Care Reform

The Super massive Black Hole at the Center of our Galaxy

Back on May 18, 2009, Perry Bacon Jr. participated as the Washington Post's representative in their Post Politics Hour discussion. At one point during that discussion Mr. Bacon was asked about single-payer health coverage and this was his response:

Perry Bacon Jr.: The Post is not covering single-payer (like the rest of the media) because the President of the United States has repeatedly ruled it out as an option. I wrote recently about a meeting he had with some House Democrats who were pushing the issue and he again said no

So there you have it - our media corporations are censoring information crucial to the public discussion about health care reform simply because the government doesn't support it. 

Whether this censorship is self-censorship by our corporate controlled media or whether it's due to government pressure is unknown. But the results are clear - rather than reporting all of the facts to the public, our establishment media is instead tailoring it's reporting to support the president's view on health care just like they've been tailoring their reporting to fit the president's view that there should be no criminal prosecutions for torture.

Today the Washington Post continues their policy of not reporting about single-payer health care. Not only didn't they mention single-payer health care in the Shailagh Murray/Ceci Connolly piece about Senator Max Baucus but because they didn't, they out and out lied to their readers about what they call "the Baucus approach to health care reform." 

 

For Baucus, Health Care is the Issue of a Lifetime

Legislation Could Define His Career, His Party.  

The Washington Post says in the above headline that health care is the issue of a lifetime for Senator Baucus. That may be, but for average Americans, the health care reform debate is not about selfishly polishing our legacy or defining our career, it's about getting quality, affordable health care where we are not at the mercy of the greedy health insurance industry. And unlike Mr. Baucus, for some Americans this truly is an issue of a lifetime - their lifetime- a lifetime that frequently gets cut short because of the greed of others. In view of the seriousness of this issue for so many average Americans it is especially galling to see the Post deliberately lie about and hide key facts in this article.

The majority of the Murray/Connolly article attempts to rehabilitate the well deserved, bad reputation that Democratic Senator, Max Baucus has earned for not supporting Democratic principles on high profile issues. Murray and Connolly actually go out of their way in their piece to give readers the impression that Senator Baucus is a western maverick who gets in trouble with his party only because he sticks up for principle and because of his strong belief in bi-partisanship. They of course fail to tell the readers that Senator Baucus is a darling of the health care insurance and pharmaceutical industries and that he has received enormous amounts of campaign donations from these players because of his strong support for their agenda - you know something that readers might want to know about when deciding whether they should believe what he says about health care reform issues.  

But this omission of relevant facts about Senator Baucus' background is a small lie compared with the blatant lie told by the Post about "the Baucus approach to health care reform." That lie is truly a whopper.

For more than a year, Baucus has schooled himself -- and many on the committee -- on the daunting complexities of the U.S. health-care system, a sector that represents one-sixth of the economy. His approach has been to pull together stakeholders and hold them as long as possible; no idea is ruled out, no policy change dismissed.   

This statement by Murray and Connolly that was approved for publication by the Post is just factually false.  In fact, it’s a bald-faced lie. Max Baucus ruled out the idea that there should be a policy change to a single-payer system for health care before the discussion even began. Not only did he rule out the idea but he and the rest of the Committee made sure that not one representative who supported the idea of single-payer, that incidentally the majority of the public supports, would even be allowed to sit on the panel of so called  “stakeholders” who testified before the Committee. 

 But these groups had a seat at the table:

1. The insurance industry was at the table.
2.  The Business Roundtable was at the table.
   
3. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce of Commerce was at the table.
4. Blue Cross Blue Shield was at the table.
5. The Hertiage Foundation was at the table
6. Corporate liberals like Andy Stern, Ron Pollack, and AARP were at the table.

Baucus and his Committee, like the Washington Post, were determined that the pubic would not even so much as hear about the idea of single-payer much less that the idea would be given fair consideration in the debate to reform health care.

When  nurses and doctors protested this undemocratic exclusion of  not having a spokesperson, who supported the single-payer view, represented on the Baucus health care reform panel the Washington Post didn’t even bother to run their own story about it. Instead they ran a small AP piece that was hostile to single-payer (they characterized it as “government run” health care) that gave very few details about what actually happened and why. And now today the Post is once again failing to inform their readers about relevant facts because of their policy not to report on single-payer.

Max Baucus excludes single-payer representatives from having a seat at the table for discussion on health care reform and instead of being challenged by the Washington Post, as he should have been, he is awarded with a puff piece by them designed to enhance his reputation because the Post sees itself not as a watchdog for the public but as a propaganda mouthpiece for the president’s “protect the insurance industry” agenda. And sadly, the Post is not alone. The majority of our establishment media are doing the exact same thing, as this study by FAIR documents.

The establishment media censorship of single-payer is more in line with the kind of propaganda we'd expect from Pravda then it is with what we'd expect from a FREE PRESS that historically prided itself on serving the democratic principle of the public's right to know. In this Washington Post piece today the readers are delibertately lied to about Max Baucus in order to continue with the Post's policy of not reporting about single-payer. For a country like the United States that fancies itself as the world's leading democracy, fully capable of spreading democracy around the world,  this is an absolute disgrace.

Cross Posted at Oxdown Gazette

Update: I also found this hilarious yet depressing chat answer in another Washington Post discussion where Garance Fanke-Ruta refers a questioner from Princeton (who's asking about single-payer) to Ceci's Connolly's blog. Yeah, the very same Ceci Connolly who helped write today's Max Baucus piece where she and Murray lied about "the Baucus approach to health care reform."

Princeton, N.J.: You may think single-payer health care has no chance. But this will be a self-fulfilling prophecy if the facts are not available to the people.

We see article after article on process, but never any discussion of content. Since the wealthy health insurance industry has the power to suppress the facts, we only have the media, you, to get the truth out.

Garance Franke-Ruta: Thanks for your faith in the power of the fourth estate! One good place to get more of the substance of the debate is our new Health Reform 2009 aggregating page and Ceci Connolly's Daily Dose blog:

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/health-care-reform/

Washington Post Withholds Critical Info from their Pelosi/CIA Reporting

Over the weekend the Washington Post went on a full scale attack against Nancy Pelosi.  Almost all of their Pelosi news stories, analysis pieces or opinion columns were highly critical of Pelosi and some of the pieces all but called her a liar. 

What you didn't see mentioned in any of the Washington Post pieces from Friday to Monday, however, was that Nancy Pelosi's claim that the CIA lied to Congress was supported by former CIA Deputy Inspector General, Mary McCarthy, who made the same claim to the Washington Post back in 2006. McCarthy was a key source for the Post's Pulitizer Prize winning series by Dana Priest on the CIA Black sites.

Fired Officer Believed CIA Lied to Congress
Friends Say McCarthy Learned of Denials About Detainees' Treatment

By R. Jeffrey Smith, Washington Post Staff Writer, Sunday, May 14, 2006; A01

snip

That CIA officer was Mary O. McCarthy, 61, who was fired on April 20 for allegedly sharing classified information with journalists, including Washington Post journalist Dana Priest. A CIA employee of two decades, McCarthy became convinced that "CIA people had lied" in that briefing, as one of her friends said later, not only because the agency had conducted abusive interrogations but also because its policies authorized treatment that she considered cruel, inhumane or degrading.

snip

Whether McCarthy's conviction that the CIA was hiding unpleasant truths provoked her to leak sensitive information is known only to her and the journalists she is alleged to have spoken with last year. But the picture of her that emerges from interviews with more than a dozen former colleagues is of an independent-minded analyst who became convinced that on multiple occasions the agency had not given accurate or complete information to its congressional overseers.

snip

In addition to CIA misrepresentations at the session last summer, McCarthy told the friends, a senior agency official failed to provide a full account of the CIA's detainee-treatment policy at a closed hearing of the House intelligence committee in February 2005, under questioning by Rep. Jane Harman (Calif.), the senior Democrat.

McCarthy also told others she was offended that the CIA's general counsel had worked to secure a secret Justice Department opinion in 2004 authorizing the agency's creation of "ghost detainees" -- prisoners removed from Iraq for secret interrogations without notice to the International Committee of the Red Cross -- because the Geneva Conventions prohibit such practices.

While the 2006 article doesn't specifically mention the 2002 briefings, the fact that you have a former CIA Deputy Inspector General who is accusing the CIA of lying to Congress in briefings should certainly make what Nancy Pelosi said about the CIA misleading Congress much more credible. 

Ms. McCarthy was a source for the Post's Pulitizer Prize winning series on the CIA Black sites and yet no one at the Post who wrote a story or column this weekend bothered to report on this earlier story that confirmed what Pelosi was saying? Why not?

Instead of telling readers that both Pelosi and this former CIA official claimed that the CIA lied to Congress the Post instead wrote pieces this weekend that tried to paint Pelosi as a liar and the CIA as the truth tellers. Why?

We had a story by Paul Kane where he made this statement:

Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) yesterday charged the CIA with knowingly misleading members of Congress about the interrogation practices, even as she acknowledged for the first time that she learned six years ago that waterboarding was being used on detainees.

While Kane's piece is the most balanced of all the Post's reporting this weekend, this statement is misleading at best. In an AP story appearing in the Post the same day, Julie Hirschfeld Davis documents that Pelosi told reporters back in 2007 that she found out in 2003 that Jane Harman had been briefed that the enhanced interrogation techniques were being used. Kane is either playing word games to claim that Pelosi only said this for the first time in 2009 because Pelosi didn't specifically say "waterboarding" in 2007 and only said "enhanced interrogation techniques" or he just got it wrong. By the way because Bush didn't admit to using waterboarding until 2008 Pelosi would not have been able to divulge the name of the specific technique of waterboarding back in 2007. She would have had to use the words enhanced interrogation techniques to describe it. Evidently Mr. Kane never read Ms. Davis' piece in the Post because he never corrected his own piece.

Dec. 9, 2007: Pelosi, now the House's speaker, first publicly acknowledges having been briefed on enhanced interrogation techniques in 2002 and learning in 2003 of their use. Responding to a news report that said Pelosi was among top lawmakers who had been briefed in 2002 about waterboarding, she issues a statement saying she had been briefed once in 2002 "on interrogation techniques the administration was considering using in the future," and told that Bush's team "had concluded that the techniques were legal." She also acknowledges learning in 2003 that Harman had been briefed that "the techniques had in fact been employed." She references Harman's letter of objection and says it was "a protest with which I concurred."

May 14, 2009: Pelosi herself says for the first time that she was specifically told in 2002 that waterboarding had not been used, and accuses the CIA of misleading her and the Congress. She also confirms that she learned of its use in February 2003. CIA Spokesman George Little says the CIA's description of Pelosi's briefing was "true to the language in the agency's records," adding, "It is not the policy of this agency to mislead the United States Congress."

On the same day as the Kane and Davis pieces appeared in the Post we also had an "analysis" piece by Dan Balz. Mr. Balz starts out his piece by giving only two reasons for Nancy Pelosi holding her press conference and both of the reasons he gave were negative. Mr. Balz evidently never considered the fact that she might want to set the record straight instead of having the media get it wrong, again.

Pelosi's performance in the Capitol was either a calculated escalation of a long-running feud with the Bush administration or a reckless act by a politician whose word had been called into question. Perhaps it was both.

Unfortunately for Ms. Pelosi, despite the press conference she gave the media is still getting it wrong. Mr. Balz joined Mr. Kane in misrepresenting the facts. This is what he says about her statement:

For the first time, Pelosi (D-Calif.) acknowledged that in 2003 she was informed by an aide that the CIA had told others in Congress that officials had used waterboarding during interrogations. 

Now while Mr. Balz is technically correct that this is the first time we knew that it was an "aide" who told Nancy Pelosi in 2003 that the CIA had briefed others that waterboarding had been used, this is not the first time that Pelosi said she knew that harsh interrogation techniques had been used. Mr. Balz, like Mr. Kane, didn't report the 2007 Pelosi statement. Because he didn't report it he gives readers the false impression that Pelosi is somehow changing her story, when she isn't. Indeed, Mr. Balz even accuses her of giving shifting accounts.

The speaker's charges about the CIA's alleged deception and her shifting accounts of what she knew and when she knew it are likely to add to calls for some kind of independent body to investigate this supercharged issue, though Obama and many members of Congress would like to avoid a wholesale unearthing of the past at a time when their plates are full with pressing concerns.

Dan Balz also made this bizarre statement:

But in attempting to defend herself, Pelosi took the remarkable step of trying to shift the focus of blame to the CIA and the Bush administration, claiming that the CIA accounts represented a diversionary tactic in the real debate over the interrogation policies. 

There is nothing remarkable here except for Dan Balz calling it remarkable. What the GOP, CIA and establishment media are doing to Pelosi IS  a diversionary tactic to deflect attention away from the Bush administration and the CIA, who were up to their necks in torture, and try to make the conversation about what  Pelosi may or may not have known. Nancy Pelosi is not the one shifting the blame she is merely trying to return the blame where it rightfully belongs before it was incorrectly shifted to her. While knowing what Congress knew is important, it is not more important than knowing who created, authorized and ran the torture program.

Balz closes out his piece ignoring Pelosi's 2007 statement again.

Pelosi is not out of the woods. She could have saved herself some trouble by admitting earlier that she had been informed that the CIA was using waterboarding. (you mean like she did in 2007?).

There were a number of other pieces in the Post over the weekend that were highly critical of Pelosi. There were two AP analysis pieces that were both skeptical of Pelosi's version of the briefing. You had several commentary pieces that were scathing in their criticism of Pelosi's truthfulness. Here's one comment from a David Ignatius piece

If you read the CIA's careful 10-page summary of the 40 briefings it has given to Congress since 2002 on "enhanced interrogation techniques," it's pretty hard not to conclude that Pelosi is shading the truth to retrospectively cover her backside.  

Whether by design or accident, the Washington Post left out key information (Pelosi's 2007 statement, comments by Senators Graham, Goss & Rockefeller and CIA deputy IG McCarthy's accusations about CIA lying in their briefings to Congress) from their multiple pieces about Pelosi this weekend that the readers deserve to know about. The Post also has a duty to explain to it's readers why this happened and to set the record straight or we might begin to believe that this is a deliberate CIA misinformation campaign, similiar to what happened to Barry Goldwater back in 1984, only this time instead of the New York Times being used to disseminate the disinformation, it's the Washington Post.

Update: Emptywheel also critiques the Washington Post's Pelosi coverage

Update 2:  Battochio has an excellent piece up at Vagabond Scholar: Torture Versus Freedom

Why is the Washington Post Pushing One Point of View on Torture?

Photo description: Helene Sardeau often conveyed contemplation, serenity and humanism in her work. Her first major commission, Slave (1933) was executed for a sculpture garden in Fairmount Park, Philadelphia. She sculpted under the pseudonym "Sardeau" even after she married fellow painter George Biddle. Creator/Photographer: Peter A. Juley & Son

Tonight I sent the email below to the Washington Post's Ombudsman, Andy Alexander. Mr. Alexander has done some really good things since he's been at the Post so I thought if anyone would try to do something about the slanted opinion page at the Post it would be Mr. Alexander. 

While I have no illusions that Mr. Alexander will be able to change the high number of one-sided opinions published by the Post I was so frustrated tonight that I thought I'd at least try to do something to make them see that they are losing their readers. I think all of us want to see a variety of opinions from a variety of perspectives but what we don't want to see is one view to be pushed down our throats which is what the Post has been doing on the torture issue.

Dear Andy,  

Today the Post reported on the results from it's most recent Washington Post/ABC poll. In that poll 51% of respondents supported investigations for torture, 47% did not and 2% had no opinion. When you looked at the internals of the poll it showed that 23% of the respondents self identified as liberal, 39% as moderate and 35% as conservative. In other words, even if every liberal polled said that they wanted investigations (23%) that meant there were still 26% of the respondents who wanted investigations who were not liberal. In fact there were more non-liberals who wanted investigations than there were liberals who wanted investigations yet the Post consistently frames this issue as a left vs. right issue. 

Tonight I logged onto the Post's site and saw this on the home page: 

OPINIONS

The Torture Debate

Scheuer:    The Bin Laden Scenario 

Danner:     Who's to Blame? 

Gerson:     Memos Understandable 

Broder:      No to Prosecutions 

Of the four opinion pieces listed only 1 of them advocates for accountability. This is why the Post is losing it's readers. We see a newspaper determined to push one point of view and to marginalize all others. 

I've seen all kinds of pieces written on line by rank and file conservatives against torture where they even call the Republicans who support torture, "Rubber hose Republicans". This is not just a left vs. right issue but if you read only the Post you would never know that. 

This truly is a right vs. wrong issue and unfortunately the Post has chosen to push the view that there should be no accountability for torture over and over and over. I keep trying to defend the Post but even I find that harder and harder to do these days. I keep finding myself having to write pieces on my blog where I'm critical of what is in the Post. Have they lost their minds? Do they not want readers? 

I don't expect a response from you but I felt I needed to alert you to this information and hopefully you can pass it along to someone at the Post who might still care about the readers and this newspaper.

Parroting Words, White House Stenographers And Dana Milbank

Dana Milbank's new column in the Washington Post inadvertently reveals the kind of things that are really important to our White House press corps. 

Hint: it's not about getting answers to questions about torture or about why the new president is using "state secrets" and other Bush administration excuses to cover-up Bush era crimes.

Parroting Words at the White House
By Dana MilbankTuesday, April 14, 2009; Page A02

[Snip]

The White House press corps was in an uncommonly good mood yesterday, owing in part to the Obama administration's decision to reverse years of Bush White House policy and admit reporters' children to the Easter Egg Roll. Some media types were also giddy with anticipation of Tuesday's arrival of the new White House dog. "Can you describe for us the plans for Bo's debut?" inquired Associated Press Radio's Mark Smith, to groans from his highbrow colleagues.

Yeah, the important things are the perks. It's all about the perks!

As most people know Dana Milbank writes a very cynical and sarcastic column about his observations of the Washington scene. Think of him as the Post's answer to Maureen Dowd. Today he was using a "pirate" theme to skewer the White House press conference. I didn't really think his column was particularly funny today until I came across this tidbit: 

The main news of the briefing was the Obama administration's softening of some anti-Cuba policies, a move to placate Latin American critics in advance of this week's meeting of the Organization of American States. The White House deftly limited the visibility of the announcement by leaving the president in the Oval Office (where he, too, could listen to the dance music on the South Lawn) and having a mid-level official from the National Security Council make the announcement in the briefing room -- in Spanish.

This meant that the White House stenographers transcribed the announcement, in its entirety, as "(Speaking Spanish)."

While it was interesting to note that the "transparent" Obama administration was not being very transparent on this issue and in fact, was being downright sneaky, I noticed something else in this comment that was much more fun. The thing that jumped out at me was that Dana Milbank actually left himself open to receiving a sarcastic comment about "White House stenographers" in an article called "Parroting Words at the White House."  

As most people probably know most left leaning bloggers call the White House press corps "stenographers" because they pretty much take whatever the administration says, write it down and then pretend that they've done a good job as "journalists." So when I saw this opportunity for my own sarcastic comment I admit that it was just too juicy to resist. I even joined in on Milbank's  "pirate theme." 

pmorlan1 wrote:

Parroting Words at the White House

"This meant that the White House stenographers transcribed the announcement, in its entirety, as "(Speaking Spanish)."

Well "blow me down," Dana, I didn't realize that the White House correspondents (stenographers) were all fluent in Spanish. Usually when they "parrot" the White House they use English or more accurately, they use inside the beltway speak.

4/13/2009 9:58:58 PM

Yup, this was the first Milbank column I really appreciated. Thanks Dana for providing me with such fun material for my blog post. And thank you Washington Post for publishing pieces that have provided this new blogger with such good material to use for three blog posts in a relatively short period of time. 

Washington Post Loses Focus

Monday night I read a story in the Washington Post called :

Medical Officers Violated Ethics While Overseeing Interrogations, Red Cross Says

Once I clicked on that title it took me to the actual story that curiously had a different headline with a different focus: 

Report Calls CIA Detainee Treatment 'Inhuman'

Yesterday morning when I got up I  decided to check the story again to see if more comments had been added by the readers. But when I looked for the story called Medical Officers Violated Ethics While Overseeing Interrogations, Red Cross says, I couldn't find it.  I saw the link to the story called Report Calls CIA Treatment 'Inhuman' that I'd seen the night before but there was no longer a storywith the Red Cross headline. I finally discovered that the reason I couldn't find this headline was because it had been replaced in the wee hours of the morning with this bland sounding headline that had nothing to do with the critical role medical professionals played in Bush era interrogations.

CIA Detainee Treatment Assailed 

(the link to the CIA Detainee Treatment Assailed story takes you to the story called Report Calls CIA Detainee Treatment 'Inhuman')

Leaving aside the confusing use of multiple headlines for one story I decided to read the article again so I could see if they eliminated the information about the ethically challenged medical people when they eliminated the earlier headline. What I discovered was that the information about the medical people was still in the story but that extra paragraphs had been added to the piece overnight that caused the focus of the story to shift.  It was no longer a story focused on Medical officers violating medical ethics by participating in interrogations, as it originally was, but the story now focused more on the CIA. 

The new paragraphs that were added were not essential to the original story but were essential in allowing the CIA the opportunity to deflect attention away from the ICRC report itself.  For instance, there was a sentence added to the original piece that now quoted an ICRCspokesperson saying:

An ICRC spokesman confirmed the authenticity of the document and said the organization"deplores that what was to be a confidential report has been made public."

The insertion of this new statement by the ICRC, while fine in and of itself really appeared to be inserted in the story specifically to provide backup for the absurd new CIA statement that had also been added to the story: 

The CIA declined yesterday to comment on the report, citing the Red Cross's own policy of maintaining the confidentiality of its reports. But spokesman Mark Mansfield noted that the agency had long since ended the controversial interrogation program.

Prior to the ICRC statement being added to the story there was an old quote from an anonymous U.S. official that was used instead of the “new” quote by Mark Mansfield above. 

The CIA had no immediate comment on the report. Previously, top Bush administration officials defended the interrogation methods, saying they were legal and necessary to prevent terrorist attacks. A U.S. official, commenting on a leak of portions of the report in March, said: "It is important to bear in mind that the report lays out claims made by the terrorists themselves

Another added paragraph gave Mr. Mansfield more opportunity to use the “looking forward, not backward” Obama administration mantra to spin the story without him having to comment on the actual charges in the report.  

"Director [Leon] Panetta has taken decisive steps to ensure that the CIA abides by the president's executive orders. That means CIA will not use interrogation techniques outside the Army Field Manual," he said. He noted that Panetta also has stated repeatedly that "no one who took actions based on legal guidance from the Department of Justice at the time should be investigated, let alone punished."

After the statement by Mr. Mansfield that “no one who took actions based on legal guidance from the Department of Justice at the time should be investigated, let alone punished” this sentence from the original story was inserted:

Previously, top Bush administration officials defended the interrogation methods, saying they were legal and necessary to prevent terrorist attacks.

And finally, after the Obama administration and Bush administration defense statements were inserted into the story we see this new paragraph almost at the end of the story:

*The report's release puts added pressure on the Obama administration, which has banned the use of waterboarding and similar techniques but has resisted calls *to conduct legal inquiries to determine whether Bush administration officials broke laws.

* Note: even though the piece stated that the release of the ICRC report puts added pressure on the Obama administration, it never mentions the fact that the ICRC actually called for investigations and punishment in their report.

The story ends with a new paragraph that actually should have appeared in the original version that focused on medical people; however, the placement of this paragraph in the revised story is very odd. Why would they include this relevant paragraph but do it in a way where it seems quite out of place in the revised story? It looks like it was inserted almost as an afterthought?  

The presence of medical personnel at CIA interrogation sites has been reported previously, but ICRC investigators found that their participation in some of the more harsh episodes to be a severe breach of medical ethics. The report said the officials were enlisted to ensure that the detainees did not die or suffer irreparable damage.

Now after seeing the headlines and content change in the story what is a Washington Post reader to make of all of this? If you’re a reader like me, who has previously documented where the Washington Post downplayed serious charges about torture, like my General Taguba  piece on this blog, then you are very suspicious about how a story about the unethical medical conduct documented by the ICRC somehow morphed into a story that was more scattershot in its focus. 

My first thought was that the Post was trying to downplay the complicity of medical personnel in the Bush interrogation program. And then it dawned on me after reading the following  comments in a piece by  Daniel Froomkin   that appeared in his excellent blog  at the Washington Post:  

News stories this morning dwell on the report's finding that medical personnel at the prisons took part in the torture of detainees, in gross violation of both their own professional ethics and international law (except for the Post).

But the report, which was based on interviews with the 14 "high value" detainees transferred from the secret prisons to Guantanamo in September 2006, also raises and expresses "grave concerns" about a very significant unanswered question: What happened to all the other detainees who passed through the secret CIA prisons who we still don't know about?

Froomkin also cited other news that came out of the ICRC report:

Salon blogger Glenn Greenwald calls attention to the report's demand "that the US authorities investigate all allegations of ill-treatment and take steps to punish the perpetrators, where appropriate." Writes Greenwald: "Yet Obama's handpicked CIA Director, Leon Panetta, continues to demand that there be no investigations of any kind, let alone prosecutions."

Scott Horton blogs for Harper's: "The Red Cross does not reach quickly to an 'investigate and punish' recommendation. That happens only where the evidence of criminal conduct is manifest. And it was in this case. They use the word 'torture' repeatedly, without equivocation or qualification....

"The question...is for the Obama Administration: why has Eric Holder blocked the criminal investigation that a proper understanding of his duties would lead him to initiate?"

So based upon the information presented by Froomkin I no longer believe that the Post was just trying to downplay the ICRC's documentation of  medical ethics violations when they added the CIA "CYA" paragraphs. I now believe that The Post was actually trying to downplay the entire ICRC report.

Instead of covering the multiple lines of inquiry that were contained in the report, which would require several stories, the Post was attempting to write one story to cover the entire report. And because of this they ended up having a very schizophrenic story that didn’t know if it was about medical ethics violations, a story about the overall CIA “interrogation” program or a story that was about the ICRC calling for investigations into the Bush interrogation program. 

But perhaps I'm being too hard on the Post. Perhaps I'm allowing my memory of how they treated the Taguba accusations of torture  to color my perception of the Warrick/Tate story. Perhaps this was not a deliberate attempt to downplay the ICRC report, as I suspect, but was nothing more than someone being asleep at the wheel when they allowed this mishmash of a story to be published in the first place. 

In fact, I actually hope I’m wrong  because I think Washington Post readers, like me, are desperate to see the Post do a more in-depth story about the medical personnel angle than was touched on in the schizophrenic Joby Warrick and Julie Tate piece and in this short AP story that the Post also published. We want to see more of the fantastic investigative pieces like Dana Priest did on the CIA Black Sites but we also want to see good everday reporting that doesn't just rely on the comments from the usual suspects. For instance where was the comment from the AMA or other medical organizations in the Warrick/Tate story? Why only comments from the CIA?

What people like me want to see from the Post  is evidence of the “major focus”  on the torture issue that Scott Wilson said the Post supported when he held his Post chat today. 

 

New York, NY: Now that the Red Cross torture report is out, it's clear that the U.S. tortured multiple prisoners with multiple banned techniques. And it's been going on for years. By refusing to investigate the parties involved in instituting this program, and even actively invoking claims like the "state secrets privilege" to shield any possibility of a reckoning, isn't the Obama Administration also implicating themselves? Why else would they use the same extreme claims of executive power, in some cases more so, to facilitate this ongoing cover-up? Also: Are any intrepid WaPo reporters digging into this topic, or is it editorially verboten?

Scott Wilson: We've been writing about it extensively for years - we're the paper that brought you the CIA black sites - and are doing so now. It's a major focus for us.