person:david sanger

  • Truth in journalism
    http://warincontext.org/2014/02/12/truth-in-journalism

    In a report exemplifying the kind of journalism-as-stenography in which David Sanger specializes, comes this observation about the pressures under which Director of National Intelligence James Clapper now operates — thanks to Edward Snowden:

    The continuing revelations have posed a particular challenge to Mr. Clapper, a retired Air Force general and longtime intelligence expert, who has made no secret of his dislike for testifying in public. Critics have charged that he deliberately misled Congress and the public last year when asked if the intelligence agencies collected information on domestic communications. He was forced by the Snowden revelations to correct his statements, and he has been somewhat more careful in his testimony.

    “Critics have charged” that Clapper perjured himself in Congress, but as studiously impartial journalists, Sanger (and his colleague Eric Schmitt) are incapable of making any determination on that matter.

    #journalisme_MSM

  • The Lessons We Aren’t Learning from Iraq | Stephen M. Walt
    http://walt.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2013/03/21/the_dearth_of_strategy_on_syria

    If you want evidence of the tunnel vision that continues to dominate U.S. national security thinking, check out David Sanger’s news analysis yesterday http://seenthis.net/messages/123543 on the “lessons” of Iraq. Sanger checks in with various former policymakers to explore the different implications one might draw from the Iraq experience for the current situation in Syria. 

    As expected, there is some difference of opinion expressed by the various people that Sanger interviewed. But what’s striking is how the entire discussion of “lessons” revolves around tactical issues, and none of the people quoted in the article raise larger questions about how the United States is defining its role in the world or the broader goals it is trying to accomplish. Instead, they debate the reliability of pre-war intelligence, whether the U.S. can do a better job when it occupies other countries, or whether the U.S. can figure out ways to intervene in various places without getting sucked into costly quagmires. In short, it’s all about whether we can do these things differently and not about whether we should do them at all.