Maybe we shouldn't be so hard on those grasping bureaucratic self-aggrandizers; maybe they just can't help themselves

Republicans, quick to claim that torture works -- though of course this country doesn’t torture, but if it did, that would have been the key to getting clues to Osama’s hideout -- said Obama just followed the map President Bush II handed him.

Democrats countered by reviving the failure to get Osama on Tora Bora.

Some folks tried to give President Clinton credit as well, since he launched that missile attack against bin Laden in 1998 and the early CIA operation tracking bin Laden. Others note that John F. Kennedy, in 1962, set up the SEAL teams that carried out the operation. And FDR set up the precursor to the CIA.

We’re pretty sure President Millard Fillmore had a hand in all this too, but still checking that out.

-- from Al Kamen's washingtonpost.com "In the Loop"
report, "Jousting over credit for getting Osama"

by Ken

Further to my rueful note last night about the apparently infinitely changing story of Seal Team Six's Amble in Abbottabad, I was going to write a post about the hopelessness of puzzling out, even as we're inundated with dozens if not hundreds of "inside" accounts, most of which don't have a lot more in common than the names "Osama bin Laden," "Abbottabad," and "Barack Obama," that the chance of piecing together what actually happened -- what led up to it, how it was planned and executed, who was involved in what ways, etc. -- at any time in the near future is nonexistent, because all those insider accounts are at best tainted with and more likely awash in raw self-interest on the part of the various parties participating in the "information" chains of each of these stories.

In the paragraphs I've quoted above from Al Kamen's report on the Village jousting tournament, Al touches on only the grandest and most obvious playgrounds for self-promotion: the question of who gets "credit" and the lurking issue of what the Amble in Abbottabad "proves" about the value of torture -- "though of course," as Al points out, "this country doesn’t torture, but if it did, that would have been the key . . ."

In fact, these issues are only the tiniest tip of the agenda iceberg. Anyone who delves even lightly into such matters knows that there are hundreds if not thousands of strands of policy doctrine at issue among people who have their hooks in (or hope to get their hooks into) the national-security gravy train -- er, apparatus. Often the disputes do appear to be matters of philosophical or practical belief; often they appear to be pissing matches for personal aggrandizement. In the national-security wars -- as, I suppose, in most bureaucratic infights -- the line between the two is microscopically thin.

Eventually historians will probably be able to . . . well, not construct a plausible narrative, but at least chart the principal areas of contention and who was lined up where and why. For now, I guess we could take the Bob Woodward Approach to History and assume that if we gather enough of these self-aggandizing (or enemy-punishing) testimonies, the biases will somehow or other cancel each other out, though instinct says that instead the "consensus" will actually be the views expressed by the canniest self-aggrandizers.

Which means that the only thing we have to go on as we sift through these unharmonious inside accounts is what we would like to be true -- in otherwise, the Modern Orthodox Right-Wing Approach to History.

If I had gone ahead and written that post, I might have pointed out that one thing we can be sure of is that the pro-torture crowd will be claiming vindication, whereas it seems to all but certain that any "information" allegedly gleaned through torture could have been obtained faster and more accurately by persons with genuine competence in interrogation, and almost certainly the case that any such information had weeded out of doodyloads of misinformation which quite likely delayed the discovery of the cunningly hidden bin Laden by years.

(Of course, even as the drones of the Bush-Cheney national-security team rise from their slimy holes to claim credit for putting the discovery process in motion, I suppose it would be too much to expect them for once in their miserable lives to stop lying and admit that they not only stopped looking for bin Laden but didn't want to find him, given all the awkwardnesses that would have caused their patrons, starting with the Bush regime's butt-licking relationship with the Saudi royal family. But there's no self-aggrandizer like a right-wing self-aggrandizer, for whom "lying" is just an unkind work for "speaking.")

Still, I can't claim much beyond my biases in support of my assumptions, though they seem to me way better biases than those of the legions of right-wing crackpots and thugs who love them some torture, and think that an orgy of ignorance and insanity like 24 is a slice of life. Well, for people who judge human nature by their own, it really is a mélange of ignorance and prejudice leavened by savagery and psychosis.

So I asked myself what the point would even be in trying to write that post, and will instead confine myself to a small instance of pathological self-aggrandizement on the local level.

MAYBE THE SELF-AGGRANDIZERS
JUST CAN'T HELP THEMSELVES

This isn't exactly breaking news, since it happened on April 18, but it just hit my e-mailbox in a May 4 NYC Dept. of Parks and Recreation e-newsletter. Do you notice anything odd about this first paragraph of the Parks release, ""?

Parks Renames S.I. Field In Honor Of Fallen 9/11 Firefighter

Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe joined Assembly Member Matt Titone, Council Member Deborah Rose, FDNY Staten Island Borough Commander Michael Marrone and members of the Margiotta family on April 18 to cut the ribbon on a new synthetic turf field at Prall Playground. The field was named in honor of Charles Margiotta, a local fireman who lost his life at the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. Staten Island Pipes and Drums performed “God Bless America” and “America the Beautiful” at the ceremony.

Let me put it another way. What do the following people have in common?

Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe
Assembly Member Matt Titone
Council Member Deborah Rose
FDNY Staten Island Borough Commander Michael Marrone

Answer: These folks who bestirred themselves to show up for the April 18 photo op are all, apparently, more important even than "members of the Margiotta famliy," let alone Lieut. Charles Margiotta himself, the "fallen 9/11 firefighter" of the headline, for whom the new synthetic-turf field was being named. (After we finally learn his name in paragraph 1, we learn in paragraph 2  that, according to Commissioner Benepe, he was "a true hero who served our city admirably." Eventually, in paragraph 4, we learn that he was a fire lieutenant and 20-year veteran of the FDNY.)

I suppose I'm just being cranky. After all, Commissioner Benepe, Assembly Member Titone, Council Member Rose, and Borough Commander Marrone didn't write this release. They just made sure, or more likely had their people make sure, that their names were spelled right. They might even have the good grace to be embarrassed if it were pointed out to them that the press-release writer judged their names more important than that of the "true hero."

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