[Politech] Weekly column: "In the name of national security"

From: Declan McCullagh (declan@private)
Date: Mon Nov 03 2003 - 10:12:06 PST

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    http://news.com.com/2010-1028_3-5101121.html
    
    In the name of national security
    November 3, 2003, 6:37 AM PT
    By Declan McCullagh
    
    Nobody likes to be criticized in public, especially all those politicians 
    in Washington who fervently hope to be re-elected.
    
    But the Bush administration has taken the desire to avoid critical 
    commentary to an extreme. In incident after troubling incident, federal 
    agencies have been quietly censoring information that previously had been 
    available on their Web sites and otherwise curbing public oversight.
    
    About a week ago, the U.S. Army surreptitiously pulled the plug on one of 
    its more popular Web sites, call.army.mil, after The Washington Post wrote 
    about a report that had been posted on it.
    
    The Post's October 25 article said "the U.S. military intelligence 
    gathering operation in Iraq is being undercut by a series of problems in 
    using technology, training intelligence specialists and managing them in 
    the field," citing the report prepared by the Center for Army Lessons 
    Learned at Fort Leavenworth, Kan. The report, which the Post had the 
    foresight to mirror on its own Web site, talked about the "poor quality" of 
    mission planning and "marginally effective" training for certain reserve 
    troops.
    
    The report was not classified. It was merely a sober analysis of the Army's 
    problems in Iraq. It had the ring of truth to it, unlike Defense Secretary 
    Donald Rumsfeld's appearance on NBC's "Meet the Press" on Sunday, which he 
    used to blandly reassure viewers. "We can win this war. We will win this 
    war," he said.
    
    [...]
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