I don’t normally respond to comments, but sometimes it’s worthwhile, and this may be a case in point. In a recent post I made the case that Obama is being treated differently than Bush, specifically citing the way Republican are trying to blame him for a thwarted attempt at terrorism, when Bush was given a pass for successful terrorist attacks. In the course of my post I noted that this was a terrorist attack “about which Obama appears to have gotten no warning”. A commenter of the right wing stripe upbraided me for not reading the news, asserting that “[i]n fact obama was briefed on this the Tuesday before Christmas.” (Apparently capital letters are beyond some people’s capacity to use).
When I read the comment I assumed it was bullshit, but I was frankly too lazy to look into it. However, when something falls into your lap you might as well use it. I recently came across this post at the Washington Monthly. The commenter was apparently referring to a Newsweek article titled Exclusive: Obama Got Pre-Christmas Intelligence Briefing About Terror Threats to ‘Homeland.’
As the folks at Politico point out (quoted at the Monthly) the title implied more than the article proved:
Did the December 22 briefing include a warning of an attack? No. It did not. And despite the provocative headline on his story, the Newsweek reporter does not report that there was one. Because he couldn’t. Because there wasn’t.
The meeting in question was one of a series held at Obama’s behest so that he is kept abreast of the issue. He was, in other words, merely doing his job, something Bush had a certain reluctance to do in the bests of times. Politico’s reporting merely confirms what I assumed, and the commenter merely reinforces my point: the right is certainly holding Obama to a standard wildly different than that it applied to Bush.
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