0 Responses to “LIVE BLOG: Take Reconciliation Off the Table”

1. Herb says:

   June 22, 2008 at 6:10 pm

   Seems too easy to note that almost all of the sourcing for this are anon agency sources, tho some are named (which is unusual for the times). Why is Martinez’ name vital to the credibility of the story while actual sources are not so vital?
2. SteveMG says:

   June 22, 2008 at 7:07 pm

   If you remove Martinez’s name and substitute his initials or a pseudonym, how is the story diminished? Or reversing things, how is the addition of Martinez’s name important to the story?

   In either case, it seems to me that the story is neither enhanced or diminished by this fact. Okay, perhaps, to be charitable, marginally improved.

   Looks to me like a little bit of chest-thumping (or nose-thumbing, choose your body part) by the Times against the government. That may be important for a future story; but not this one.
3. steve says:

   June 22, 2008 at 9:06 pm

   Wo. A conservative blog that recognizes Blackwater caused problems in Iraq. Almost all of us ex-military knew that. I didnt realize you were now listening to the troops as well as supporting them.

   Steve
4. J.E. Dyer says:

   June 22, 2008 at 10:17 pm

   Tell it to Congress, about the “outsourcing” to contractors. It does save the government money to get work performed through contracts — lots of money. Once a GS-13 is out the door and working as a contract employee, all his employee expenses, AND HIS PENSION PLAN, are the contractor’s problem. Keep him around until he can retire as a GS-15, or makes the jump to SES, and the government will be shoveling buttloads of money at him until the day he dies.

   If you don’t want federal agencies to see things that way, don’t shout at them. Shout at Congress. It’s Congress that mandates doing more with less, for the agencies that actually have to puke out an identifiable product, like the military, intelligence, DHS, and the FBI. You want federal employees instead of contractors, you have to commit the funds for federal employees, not contractors. Congress has been obsessed with smart contracting for years; it got a big boost when Al Gore reinvented government in the mid-1990s. It’s an institution now.
5. bd says:

   June 23, 2008 at 12:00 am

   I’m unclear as to what the problem is with the private contractors in this case. It is not specified, just assumed.
   Also, congratulations to William Kristol and David Brooks, who receive large(probably six-figure) salaries from a transnationalist publication that constantly undercuts this country. Enjoy your blood money.
6. Dee says:

   June 23, 2008 at 12:32 am

   You’re right on the money Dyer, a good deal of it has to do with the money.

   Also it’s easier (re: less politically dangerous) for Congress and the Executive branches to get rid of any contractors who’ve broken their contractual agreements, or have been made to look as if they’ve been operating with an “appearance of impropriety”, than it is for them to fire an entire branch filled with unionized “lifer” employees.
7. Old Soldier says:

   June 23, 2008 at 5:49 am

   Seems to me that the point of this post was the perfidy of the NYT, not the use of contractors. That’s a distractor, in my opinion. The NYT has dedicated itself to exposing as many of this country’s operational secrets as it can get. That has to be stopped. There are laws, and they need to brought to bear on this campaign by the NYT.