Doddering McBride

Over at my other site, a commenter points out that McBride totally misrepresents a statement made by Christopher Dodd. But why post as a comment when I can cannibalize it as a post?

Gotta love user generated content.

Here it is:

Something interesting on McBride's web site today. She writes this headline: "Dodd says 9/11 mastermind has "moral high ground" Over us."

Of course, that's NOT what Dodd said. Here are his actual words:

"Compare that case to the case of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who organized the attacks of 9/11. He was held in a secret prison, where he claims he was tortured severely. Whether he is lying or not, by our actions WE HAVE ALLOWED KHALID MOHAMMED TO CLAIM THE MORAL HIGH GROUND. Khalid Mohammed plays martyr to a world that is inclined to believe it.
Torture does not work."

Over at McBride's site the intrepid Mikal Matthias (something like that), makes the same point.
Jessica's defense:

Mathias, you are being way too kind to Dodd. Read it again. I admit I summed up the inference, but it's there. He's inferring pretty heavily that he agrees with KSM. It's obvious.

To Jessica's journalism students: Summing up inferences in the way Jessica does here is likely to get a call from the person you slandered, a lecture -- at a minimum -- from an editor and the undiluted joy of penning a big fat correction.

Journalists are not mindreaders. Least of all Jessica -- whose inability to understand "the noun, verb, 9/11" joke raises serious questions about her reading and listening comprehension, period.

UPDATE: Just an obvious point to Jessica's journalism students: saying and inferring -- even "inferring pretty heavily" -- are two different things.

UPDATE 2: A question for Jessica's students: Read the entire essay by Dodd (which the Brawler bets Jessica did not do) -- or this extended quote below -- and explain why it's clear that Dodd agrees with KSM:

President Bush believes he needs all this to keep us secure. I couldn't disagree more. Our courts have conducted more than one hundred terrorism trials since 9/11. They have done this without compromising the intelligence sources that keep us safe.

Consider the trial of Zaccarias Moussaoui. Lt. Cmdr. Swift is especially convincing on this point. President Bush's enablers, he writes, have "cited the prosecution of Zaccarias Moussaoui as an example of why the federal justice system does not work."

Lt. Cmdr. Swift writes, "I completely disagree. In fact, Moussaoui is the perfect victory. Our system is shown to be fair. The court...struck a balance that protects both our values and our security. We didn't lose anything. Moussaoui ultimately showed himself to be a fool--deranged, a joke, hardly someone that we'd think of as a great Middle East martyr. Ultimately he's imprisoned in a place where his name will be forgotten forever. How is that not a great victory?"

Compare that case to the case of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who organized the attacks of 9/11. He was held in a secret prison, where he claims he was tortured severely. Whether he is lying or not, by our actions we have allowed Khalid Mohammed to claim the moral high ground. Khalid Mohammed plays martyr to a world that is inclined to believe it.

Torture does not work.

Listen to the concerns of Lt. Gen. John Kimmons, the Army's Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence, said: "No good intelligence is going to come from abusive practices."

This is not some newly discovered conclusion - we have known this for years. What happened in 2002? That was the year a man named Ibn al-Sheikh al-Libi, an al-Qaeda paramilitary trainer, was tortured at our behest in Egypt. He confessed that Saddam Hussein trained al-Qaeda members in the use of weapons of mass destruction.

That so-called confession found its way into a speech that President Bush gave in October 2002, as part of his case to invade Iraq.

Remember the President's words: "Iraq has trained al-Qaeda members in bomb making and poisons and gases." In Colin Powell's speech to the Security Council justifying war, al-Libi's claim was the centerpiece.

It was also totally false.

Both the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency have found that it was a false confession elicited by torture.

The bolded sentence is 100% correct, by the way. Like it or not, the world's view of the U.S. is dimmer than it's been in many a decade, if ever. And we can thank George W. Bush for that.