Cease And Desist

The Visitor
And Democrats have made plenty of gaffes in the past, including President Obama, who once said he had visited 57 states. (NYT, 11/16/2011)


Gaffes happen. Just ask Gaffe Machine Joe Biden. Anyone in the public eye who is called upon regularly for spontaneous comment will occasionally slip-up. Most of the time miscues provide a quick laugh and do not reveal anything fundamental about a politician. As always, however, the state-controlled media seeks to define the worthiness for office of a Republican candidate on the basis of a single slip-up. Hence we have been subjected to virtually nonstop "gaffe watch." Obama's "57 states" comment was virtually ignored until now, when in a belated attempt at fairness, the Times mentions it.
  
The Battler
As Barack Obama battled Hillary Rodham Clinton over health care during the Democratic presidential primaries of 2008, he was adamant about one thing: Americans, he insisted, should not be required to buy health insurance.... Polls show the mandate is by far the most unpopular provision of the 2010 bill, and now Mr. Obama, who ultimately embraced the idea, is in the awkward position of defending something he once rejected. (NYT, 11/16/2011)


Now they tell us? Does this make Obama a flip-flopper or is that term reserved for Mitt Romney?


Assertions
The Post writes that supporters of enhanced interrogation “have asserted that waterboarding led to important intelligence gains. It is not clear this is true.”  Yes it is.  In response to a direct question about the role of enhanced interrogation in the bin Laden operation, then-CIA Director Leon Panetta confirmed that, “Obviously there was, there was some valuable intelligence that was derived through those kind of interrogations.” His immediate predecessor, Mike Hayden, was even more explicit, declaring, “Let the record show that when I was first briefed in 2007 about the brightening prospect of pursuing bin Laden through his courier network, a crucial component of the briefing was information provided by three CIA detainees, all of whom had been subjected to some form of enhanced interrogation.”  (Marc Thiessen, Washington Post, 11/15/2011)


The state-controlled media revives the dormant waterboarding issue expressly for the purpose of trying to make Republican candidates look bad. Good for most of them for standing up. And good for Thiessen for reminding the Washington Post that waterboarding is what got bin Laden; the event which the very same press will point to during the campaign season as proof of Obama's foreign policy competence. Can't have it both ways folks!