Wednesday, December 20, 2006

"Some Critics Say"

This is what TIME Magazine says about a potential plan to undermine Syria (it's about time that something was done with this terrorist state):

Some critics in Congress and the Administration say that such a plan, meant to secretly influence a foreign government, should be legally deemed a "covert action," which by law would then require that the White House inform the intelligence committees on Capitol Hill. Some in Congress would undoubtedly raise objections to this secret use of publicly appropriated funds to promote democracy.
Care to name ONE critic, Time?
However, in order to make the "election monitoring" plan for Syria effective, the proposal makes clear that the U.S. effort will have to be concealed: "Any information regarding funding for domestic [Syrian] politicians for elections monitoring would have to be protected from public dissemination," the document says. But American experts on "democracy promotion" consulted by TIME say it would be unwise to give financial support to a specific candidate in the election, because of the perceived conflict of interest. More ominously, an official familiar with the document explained that secrecy is necessary in part because Syria's government might retaliate against anyone inside the country who was seen as supporting the U.S.-backed election effort. The official added that because the Syrian government fields a broad network of internal spies, it would almost certainly find out about the U.S. effort, if it hasn't already. That could lead to the imprisonment of still more opposition figures.
Well, they know now, don't they? If they believe TIME's "official", "American", "experts", "democracy promotion", and the "some in Congress", "US Foreign Policy experts" and the ever esteemed "critics."

After all these assertions we have a quote from a University of Oklahoma academic and
"Edward P. Djerejian, a former U.S. ambassador to Syria who worked on the Iraq Study Group report".

Other than these two guys, every other opinion can only be credibly attributed to the article's author Adam Zagorin who is revealing classified information. Don't these news organizations have editors? And how can an article go to press without one valid, "on the record" quote?

No comments: