Who Was Behind The WaPo Torture Propaganda Piece?

by Andrew

We don't know; but we do know that this morning's story - with no new details except anonymous torturers spinning facts from CIA docs that the docs themselves say prove nothing about the effectiveness of torture - is curiously constructed, placed, and by-lined. Ben Smith:

The story ... bears all the marks of some complicated internal discussions over at the Post, which has been on the defensive since its reporting in the run up to the Iraq war. A sign of the internal focus on the piece: The story -- appearing as the paper's top story on an off day, a Saturday -- has three major bylines and just a tagline from national security reporter Walter Pincus.

It read, as Greenwald notes, like an op-ed from John Bolton, and not something that a serious reporter like Pincus would have written. It is as risible a piece of journalism as this other recent excrescence - another op-ed dressed up as reporting here. Mercifully, the readers are not unaware of its quality.