What, regarding Gannon, would hurt this administration?

[Dawgs]

If discovered, could it be one of the following?

- Rove used Gannon to plant CBS letters.
- Gannon was given information only top officials knew.
- Gannon was scapegoat reporter for all of the misinformation coming out of administration(during campaign) - maybe connections to Drudge.
- Rove connection with SBVT, Gannon, Hannity, Rush.
- Rove/Bush/Gannon relationship(non-sexual) that gave Gannon special clearance as BS reporter... or Talon was started and orchastrated by Rove.
- Rove/Bush/Gannon relationship(SEXUAL).
- Others in the media have a similar relationship with the Bush administration.

Others?

Of course the problem is that the media will portray Bush as the victim... 'it's all the liberal bloggers fault'.

[Walt Starr]

1. If he was given access to classified information by KKKarl Rove

Bringin Rove down would be a defacto destruction of this regime.

[FreedomAngel82]

16. Without Rove

taking care of business they would be screwed. That would be a huge victory for us.

[Ironpost]

22. and that is exactly what we need to do

when karl goes down so does the chimp

[H2O Man]

2. The truth

will "hurt" this administration.

[Dawgs]

3. Well it hasn't yet.

The truth keeps getting ingnored. It has to be undeniable facts/truth that the media CANNOT ignore.

[H2O Man]

5. Very little

truth about Gannon has been reported. Other than his "work" as a journalist, all that is "known" about him is that which he posted on the web. Hence, it would be premature to say that the truth about Gannon has been ignored. The fact that it remains unknown at this point is telling.

[BOSSHOG]

4. I'm always fascinated at how the right wing mind works

Gannon could not join the military much less get a security clearance in the armed services nor can he get married as a homosexual. Conservatives bleat their strong support for The Military and Family Values but all of a sudden Gannon's whoring is none of our business?? And if a person puts naked pictures of himself on the WORLDWIDE WEB, its a private issue?? And its a wonder why such people beam and shine when it is pointed out bush got elected because of the vast numbers of ignorant citizens of this country. Said citizens make it extremely easy for the administration to get away with so much.

[PATRICK]

7. Some connection to WH culture

Bush's uniform sex thing. Powell's Village People performance in Asia. The weird similarity in draft dodging male insecurity and need for aggressive dominance in the entire WH crew.

Maybe it's even deeper than a sex scandal per se and more specifically pointed than a psychological profile of general pathology.

Was Gannon also a blackmail tool among the the press and Foggy Bottom crowd? Besides stupidity there is also the uniquely Bushco strategy of keeping a lot of the dramatic scandal in the open so that it actually helps hide more serious matters. Vote fraud, 911, well almost ALL Bush matters are handled in this way. Plausible deniability includes having a weak liability become a clouding asset when a much more major crime is being committed or a high office is being sought. It is plausibly dumb and lazy, but it works so well they put up with the endless trickles of shame and revelations. It is the boldest type of cover-up but the media always stoops to the occasion to make the absurdity work. Soon the scandal becomes a harmless footnote and the truth "unimaginable".

[BurtWorm]

6. Frankly, I don't think Gannon is the key to hurting this administration.

In fact, I think there's a greater danger that obsession with Gannon could turn around and bite DU and other Gannon-crazed blogs on the ass.

[siliconefreak]

8. yep

I agree. The Gannon story dominates the DU board. I, for one, have better things to think about.

[DefenseLawyer]

13. "Frankly I don't think some second rate burglary

over at the Watergate is the key to hurting this administration. Even if it was politically motivated and carried out by some over-zealous Republicans, you can't blame the President for every crazy thing members of his party may do." I get your point, by my point is, you never know.

[BurtWorm]

15. You never know if Martians are controlling our minds from outer space

either. :think:

[DefenseLawyer]

21. I guess you don't

but if your point is the idea of a scandal in the White House that starts from a less than obvious source is only "tin foil hat" territory, I just think you are wrong about that. Whether it is the plumbers or Ollie North, history doesn't agree with you either. If it can be shown that the White House set up Talon News as part of a coordinated disinformation effort, with paid "reporters" putting out false information or "leaking" privileged information, those are serious charges. Martians didn't break into the DNC in '72.

[BurtWorm]

24. I usually have a good nose for legitimate scandal, and this one doesn't

smell right. Not that it smells all that wonderful, but it doesn't have the full frangrance of major political scandal. I suspect a lot of people are dying for someone or something to come along that will vindicate their desire to see the Bushists get what's coming to them. This is a generally corrupt administration, but they may not have any Watergates or Iran-Contras, or even Monica Lewinskys to bring them down. I think they spread their corruption far and wide and really thin. There may never be that satisfying moment when they "get caught." I hope I'm wrong. I would love to see them eating crow and their own shit. I don't think this will lead to that moment of satisfaction.

[DefenseLawyer]

27. I don't disagree with you actually

but still, I don't think one can always predict. I still maintain that no one that learned about the Watergate break-in the next day said it would result in Nixon's resignation. I just don't see the harm in digging. If nothing else it has given folks a burst of energy.

[H2O Man]

28. Of course, it depends

on if one finds a blow job more offensive than exposing the identity of a CIA operative. There are things such as the neocon spy scandal and the forged yellow cake documents .... both of which have the potential to be more significant than Monica's dress. Of course, I could be incapable of seeing this objectively.

[BurtWorm]

29. I wish there was as much energy being devoted to finding out

how involved Negroponte was in the Nicaraguan death squads, or Gonzalez in the torture memos, or Rove and Libby in the Plame outing. But that's just me. ;)

[H2O Man]

30. I 'spect we agree

on that. I just think it's harder to find the truth when there are prostitures walking in off the street, dressed like journalists. And when there is reason to believe that some in the administration are using the services of the "prostitute," I think that it's worth our time to examine all the possibilities. I haven't seen any posts that say "Gannon is definitely this (or that)"; hence, I don't think that there is any reason to worry that examining the possibilities will come back to bite anyone's ass, as you have suggested. Rather, I believe that not using DU as a place to kick around possibilities would pose the greater risk.

[BuyingThyme]

14. I disagree. I think the blogs have already been vindicated.

(Relatively speaking.)

I would go as far as to speculate that the Bush tapes may have been released to divert attention from JimJeff. I can't say for sure that that is the case, but I can say with ABSOLUTE CERTAINTY that those tapes were scripted for a similar purpose.

BUSH: I don't want kids to use drugs!
TRANSLATION: Yes, I am a drug addict.

BUSH: I won't discriminate!
TRANSLATION: Yes, I am a bigot and I used the words 'faggot' and 'nigger' a lot.

How noble.

[H2O Man]

17. Just for fun,

could you give three examples of how this dangerous "obsession with Gannon could turn around and bite DU and other Gannon-crazed blogs on the ass"?

[BurtWorm]

20. One should really suffice, because it's all it will take.

Suppose the evidence continues to pile up showing that I've been right all along, that Gannon is merely a dumb freeper who got caught by left-wing bloggers being a dumb freeper and Republican shill in press conferences and trying to pretend he wasn't selling his services as a "hot military stud"--but that's about all anyone's going to get out of him because that is ALL there is to him. Suppose, however, that the Gannon-crazed continue to ignore this evidence and continue to make extraordinary claims about his involvement with the Bush administration, saying, as all conspiracy theorists always say, that absence of evidence isn't evidence of its absence and that it will just turn up eventually to vindicate you all. Well suppose that day just never ever comes. Won't you all start looking no better than the freepers themselves, who started their existence as Clinton-hating conspiracy theorists? Who takes freepers seriously, besides other freepers? Is the day going to come when DU--or the Gannon-obsessed, Bush-hating left--becomes watchword for "nuts?"

That's the danger I see. Someone else in GD started a thread citing an external article or blog where DUers were praised for being a nation of citizen journalists--maybe it was written in praise of DUers' work on the Gannon case I'm critical of, I don't know. But I have always been proud to be associated with this nation of citizen journalists, this collaborative team of investigators, who frequently make major discoveries about things like the corrupt electronic voting system, the phony case for war in Iraq, etc., etc., etc. What a shame if all that high-caliber work were to be overshadowed by a wild goose chase that served only to besmirch DU's good name.

[H2O Man]

23. Okay .....

still waiting for one ....... (grin) I've always had respect for you, and still do, but I think that what you have said here is weak. There are numerous theories on DU I do not subscribe to, but for the life of me, I couldn't imagine putting the effort in to try to get people to stop discussing or considering them that you have on this one. A number of people from the House & Senate have expressed interest in the case, and quite a few journalists have, too. I think that DU will be safe, even if a number of people on here aren't as willing as you to assume there is absolutely nothing to this story but a prostitute who wandered into White House press conferences.

[BurtWorm]

25. You could be right.

I was stepping away from it, but then I saw a vindication for my own theory in the story that Gannon read the WSJ article. And I saw how people were reading that, and it disappointed me. But I'll back off. It would just be awfully sad if nothing comes of all this poking around Gannon and people STILL say "just wait..." And believe me, they will. We'll be just waiting and just waiting and just waiting...

[H2O Man]

26. Well

they arrested a fellow on charges of murdering his SO/wife and her young child this morning in Texas. And within 90 minutes, the news was able to report more about this fellow's background than has been reported about Gannon's. Still, the only things that are really known are that he was a journalist and that there are some curious things he posted on the web. You may, of course, be correct: that doesn't mean that there is anything more to his background that would suggest he is more than a common prostitute. But that is usually fairly well-documented by the time a person is 47.

[illflem]

9. That Gannon and KKarl announce their plans to marry

[Toucano]

10. Money.

How was a "volunteer" reporter paying his rent?

If taxpayer money made it's way to this guy - that ought to make America blow a gasket.

But there's been a lot of un-blown gaskets in recent years.

[katsy]

11. None of the above...

I hope I'm wrong.

Deception after deception, lie after lie, crime after crime, smear after smear... every one of these stories has accomplished nothing. There's no collective outrage from the public. There's no big push to hold anyone in this administration accountable.

IMO, most Americans have very little time to examine facts and the neocons have successfully fed them a distorted interpretation of issues in "soundbytes". Neocons are in total control of shaping public opinion. Just look at the number of young people, typically Democratic, that are open to the dismantling of SS! They are enamoured with the neocon definition of an "ownership" society.

Big money will bury the facts. Multi-national corporations, bankers, rw fundamentalist leaders, big energy, pharma/insurance will allow only the flow of info they deem benign to their interests. They will smear and discredit opposition. And controlling the message is one area where they have excelled.

Most Americans, to their credit, do not discriminate against homosexuals. They have no problem with a gay reporter. It would be to the neocons advantage to keep the focus of this story on this one point alone (i.e., "we don't discriminate against gay people"). Will the average American have the time or energy to research the facts surrounding the gannon story? My guess is they'll only catch the soundbytes the neocons want them to hear. And the neocons have the money to bury (or blur) the facts.

Look at the halliburton scandals... the war based on lies... the outsourcing... the war profiteering... out-of-control corporatism... the deficit... *'s awol status from the ang. There's so many scandals here and not ONE, not one has motivated the American people to find their collective voice and demand accountability from their representatives.

I want to be wrong. The alternative is frightening.

[DefenseLawyer]

12. I think if it could be PROVED

that Rove planted the Rather documents, and the key word here is proved, he would lose his job. But I'm not holding my breath.

[HereSince1628]

18. If Rove PAID Gannon to plant CBS story

I think that would hurt.

[HereSince1628]

19. "Gannon is an active duty SEAL, assigned to HSD"

That would hurt