The selling of the war: Olbermann

Video: The selling of the war

MSNBC

May 1: In his speech, President Bush equated the terrorists in Iraq with the terrorists from Sept. 11. Is anyone buying it? "Countdown" host Keith Olbermann talks with Frank Rich of The New York Times.

The Hearing's Revelations -- Why They Matter

UPDATE: Larry Johnson just told me that he will be a guest on Countdown with Keith Olbermann tonight to discuss the hearing. And, Howie In Seattle sent me a link to the video of the full session, at YouTube.

By SusanUnPC ... These are among the key revelations and facts that came out of today's hearing.

1. General Michael Hayden, Director of the Central Intelligence Agency -- appointed twice to top positions by President George W. Bush -- stated for today's record that Valerie Plame Wilson's status as a CIA employee was "under cover" and that her employment was "classified information."
2. Politics must not interfere with the vital business of intelligence agencies because the president must be able to make decisions about national security based on intelligence analysis that is unbiased.
3. It is shocking that officials in the Bush administration carelessly batted about the name of a CIA employee without regard for her employment status or the confidentiality of her daily work.
4. A long career was ruined in an instant after Bush administration officials calculatedly disclosed Valerie Plame Wilson's employment with the CIA in an attempt to discredit her husband's conclusions after his trip to Niger.
5. The hearing provided further evidence that someone in Dick Cheney's office called a low-level CIA employee and put unprecedented pressure on him to get information about any Iraqi dealings with Niger, and it was that pressure that led to the CIA dispatching Ambassador Joseph Wilson to Niger. (Larry Johnson will have further insights on this point.)

1) General Michael Hayden, Director of the Central Intelligence Agency -- appointed twice to top positions by President George W. Bush -- stated for today's record that Valerie Plame Wilson's status as a CIA employee was "under cover" and that her employment was "classified information."

In his opening statement today, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA), Chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, revealed that he had met personally with Gen. Hayden and discussed with Gen. Hayden what could and could not be revealed in the hearing. Rep. Waxman read this statement directly from Gen. Hayden:

During her employment at the CIA, Ms. Wilson was under cover.

Her employment status with the CIA was classified information prohibited from disclosure under Executive Order 12958.

At the time of the publication of Robert Novak's column on July 14,2003, Ms. Wilson's CIA employment status was covert.

This was classified information.

Ms. Wilson served in senior management positions at the CIA, in which she oversaw the work of other CIA employees, and she attained the level of GS-14, step 6 under the federal pay scale.

Ms. Wilson worked on some of the most sensitive and highly secretive matters handled by the CIA.

Ms. Wilson served at various times overseas for the CIA.

Without discussing the specifics of Ms. W'ilson's classified work, it is accurate to say that she worked on the prevention of the development and use of weapons of mass destruction against the United States.

In her various positions at the CIA, Ms. Wilson faced significant risks to her personal safety and her life.

She took on serious risks on behalf of her country.

Ms. Wilson's work in many situations had consequences for the security of her colleagues, and maintaining her cover was critical to protecting the safety of both colleagues and others.

2) Politics must not interfere with the vital business of intelligence agencies because the president must be able to make decisions about national security based on intelligence analysis that is unbiased.

Valerie Plame Wilson, in her opening statement today, explained the essential need for intelligence analysis untainted by politics:

[T]estimony in the criminal trial of Vice President Cheney's former Chief of Staff, who has now been convicted of serious crimes, indicates that my exposure arose from purely political motives.

Within the CIA, it is essential that all intelligence be evaluated on the basis of its merits and actual credibility. National security depends upon it. The tradecraft of intelligence is not a product of speculation. I feel passionately as an intelligence professional about the creeping, insidious politicizing of our intelligence process. All intelligence professionals are dedicated to the ideal that they would rather be fired on the spot than distort the facts to fit a political view. Any political view or any ideology.

As our intelligence agencies go through reorganizations and experience the painful aspects of change, and our country faces profound challenges, injecting partisanship or ideology into the equation makes effective and accurate intelligence that much more difficult to develop.

Politics and ideology must be stripped completely from our intelligence services or the consequences will be even more severe than they have been and our country placed in even greater danger.

It is imperative for any President to be able to make decisions based on intelligence that is unbiased. The Libby trial and the events leading to the Iraq War highlight the urgent need to restore the highest professional standards to intelligence collection and analysis and the protection of our officers and operations. The Congress has a Constitutional duty to defend our national security and that includes safeguarding our intelligence. That is why I am grateful for this opportunity to appear before this Committee today and to assist in its important work.

3) It is shocking that officials in the Bush administration carelessly batted about the name of a CIA employee without regard for her employment status or the confidentiality of her daily work.

Again, in her opening statement, Valerie Plame Wilson directly addressed the carelessness -- I would add the adjective venal to carelessness -- of members of the Bush administration -- all of whom had "signed oaths to protect national security secrets":

In the course of the trial of Vice President Cheney's former Chief of Staff, Scooter Libby, I was shocked at the evidence that emerged. My name and identity were carelessly and recklessly abused by senior government officials in both the White House and the State Department. All of them understood that I worked for the CIA, and having signed oaths to protect national security secrets, they should have been diligent in protecting me and every CIA officer. The CIA took great lengths to protect all of its employees, provided at significant taxpayer expense, painstakingly devised creative covers for its most sensitive staffers.

The harm that is done when a CIA cover is blown is grave, but I can't provide details beyond that in this public hearing. But the concept is obvious. Not only have breaches of national security endangered CIA officers, it has jeopardized, even destroyed entire networks of foreign agents, who in turn risk their own lives and those of their families to provide the United States with needed intelligence. Lives are literally at stake. Every single one of my former CIA collegues, my fellow covert officers, to analysts to technical operations officers, even the secretaries, understand the vulnerabilities of our officers and recognize that the travesty of what happened to me could happen to them.

We in the CIA always know that we might be exposed and threatened by foreign enemies. It was a terrible irony that administration officials were the ones who destroyed my cover.

I would like to add this: We have a single instant case in which the identity of a CIA officer was outted by the administration. But what of the countless other CIA and other intelligence agency officers?

What concerns have all of those thousands of officers had -- since the day that Valerie Plame Wilson's cover was destroyed -- that they might meet the same fate if somehow they or one of their family members raised the ire of the Bush administration?

And what concerns have been raised for all of the thousands of contacts and "assets" of these intelligence officers, in all of the U.S. intelligence agencies? Are they nervous that their U.S. intelligence officer will have his or her work exposed for political reasons? Has this further chilled the vital dissemination of information heretofore exchanged under risky circumstances?

As Rep. Waxman said, based on his conference with Gen. Hayden:

Ms. Wilson's work in many situations had consequences for the security of her colleagues, and maintaining her cover was critical to protecting the safety of both colleagues and others.

That security is gone. That safety is gone. And who among the thousands of intelligence officers and their "assets" know who next might get the Bush administration "treatment" which destroys their security and their safety?

4) A long career was ruined in an instant after Bush administration officials calculatedly disclosed Valerie Plame Wilson's employment with the CIA in an attempt to discredit her husband's conclusions after his trip to Niger.

Valerie Plame Wilson no longer works for the Central Intelligence Agency. That fact tells the story. But her opening statement again reveals the loss to Mrs. Wilson of her career, and the loss to the American people of the product of her career work:

I worked on behalf of the national security of our country, on behalf of the people of the United States until my name and true affiliation were exposed in the national media on July 14, 2003, after a leak by administration officials. ...

In the run-up to the war with Iraq, I worked in the Counter Proliferation Division of the CIA, still as a covert officer, whose affiliation with the CIA was classified. I raced to discover solid intelligence for senior policy makers on Iraq's presumed weapons of mass destruction programs. While I helped to manage and run secret worldwide operations against this WMD target from CIA headquarters in Washington, I also traveled to foreign countries on secret missions to find vital intelligence.

I love my career because I love my country. I was proud of the serious responsibilities entrusted to me as a CIA covert operations officer. ... [A]ll of my efforts on behalf of the national security of the United States, all of my training, all of the value of my years of service were abruptly ended when my name and identity were exposed irresponsibly.

Chairman Waxman went further:

The disclosure of Ms. Wilson's employment with the CLA had several serious effects.

First, it terminated her covert job opportunities with CIA.

Second, it placed her professional contacts at greater risk.

And third, it undermined the trust and confidence with which future CIA employees and sources hold the United States.

This disclosure of Ms. Wilson's classified employment status with the CIA was so detrimental that the CIA filed a crimes report with the Department of Justice.

Before the Iraq War, I heard from former weapons inspector Scott Ritter and some far-left critics that Saddam Hussein had no WMDS (weapons of mass destruction). But I found it difficult to believe, back then, that Saddam Hussein had destroyed every remnant of his WMD programs -- that he, for instance, didn't at least have some aging chemical weapons lying around. It just didn't make sense, given what I knew of the Iraqi leader. (What I did know, back then, was that that even if he did have some WMDs, he wasn't an imminent threat to the United States, and that the U.S. should instead dedicate itself to eradicating the Al Qaeda terrorist network. And what I know now is that Saddam had a powerful reason for not revealing that he had no WMDs: He had to keep Iran, his fiercest regional enemy, in fear of his military might and future WMD attacks. The myth of his WMD program was Saddam's deterrent to attack from Iran.)

What I'm trying to say is this: I had no way, myself, of independently verifying the status of Saddam's WMD programs.

As an ordinary American citizen, I therefore relied -- and gave my confidence to -- the unknown-to-me intelligence officers who could concentrate full-time, with numerous secret assets, on determining the status of Saddam's WMD holdings.

Back then, I had no idea that there was a woman named Valerie Plame Wilson who was working constantly on ferreting out the facts about Saddam's WMD program -- facts that the president could assess rationally, beyond any political considerations.

I had no idea there was a woman named Valerie Plame Wilson who "helped to manage and run secret worldwide operations against this WMD target from CIA headquarters in Washington [and who] also traveled to foreign countries on secret missions to find vital intelligence."

But I assumed, as would any citizen, that there were intelligence officers hard at work on the issue.

I didn't need to know their names. I wouldn't want to know their names. But, if somehow I had learned their names and known what they did, I would have never -- ever -- revealed those identities to anyone. Why? Because it's old-fashioned "loose lips sink ships" common sense.

While it was an honor to hear her testimony today, I wish I had never heard of Valerie Plame Wilson. And I wish she were still doing her job. It sickens me that Bush administration officials, for the most base political reasons, destroyed the career of this woman who was doing the work I, and all of you, were counting on.

Each of us U.S. citizens pays these officers for that work. We entrust these officers to give our political leaders accurate information.

We further entrust our political leaders -- no matter their political party or particular ideological bents -- to assess intelligence data and analysis in an unbiased manner and to protect those intelligence officers and their assets who are devoting, and risking, their lives to provide and analyze raw data.

Otherwise, our nation would end up going to war for false reasons, and our military forces would die unnecessarily.

Otherwise, our standing among the nations of the world would be irrevocably threatened, and our nation, for the near and perhaps distant future, weakened and thereby endangered.

And we would be the "lonely America" -- with its weakened, politicized, watching-their-backs intelligence agencies and military forces -- plunged into a "spreading and deepening quagmire" that Zbigniew Brzezinski spoke of at a recent hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

It mattered that Valerie Plame Wilson's identity was exposed for venal political purpose and her career destroyed.

It mattered for the sake of our national security.

Posted by SusanUnPC, SusanUnPCatgmaildotcom, on Friday, 16 March 2007 at 16:54 | Permalink

Olbermann on Bush: 'Dangerous', 'Messianic'

09:32

Bush's strategy fails because it depends on his credibility

Bush's legacy: The president who cried wolf

Olbermann: Bush's strategy fails because it depends on his credibility

SPECIAL COMMENT

By Keith Olbermann

Anchor, 'Countdown'

Updated: 8:05 p.m. MT Jan 11, 2007

Only this president, only in this time, only with this dangerous, even messianic certitude, could answer a country demanding an exit strategy from Iraq, by offering an entrance strategy for Iran.

Only this president could look out over a vista of 3,008 dead and 22,834 wounded in Iraq, and finally say, “Where mistakes have been made, the responsibility rests with me” — only to follow that by proposing to repeat the identical mistake ... in Iran.

Only this president could extol the “thoughtful recommendations of the Iraq Study Group,” and then take its most far-sighted recommendation — “engage Syria and Iran” — and transform it into “threaten Syria and Iran” — when al-Qaida would like nothing better than for us to threaten Syria, and when Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad would like nothing better than to be threatened by us.

This is diplomacy by skimming; it is internationalism by drawing pictures of Superman in the margins of the text books; it is a presidency of Cliff Notes.

And to Iran and Syria — and, yes, also to the insurgents in Iraq — we must look like a country run by the equivalent of the drunken pest who gets battered to the floor of the saloon by one punch, then staggers to his feet, and shouts at the other guy’s friends, “Ok, which one of you is next?”

Mr. Bush, the question is no longer “what are you thinking?,” but rather “are you thinking at all?”

“I have made it clear to the prime minister and Iraq’s other leaders that America’s commitment is not open-ended,” you said last night.

And yet — without any authorization from the public, which spoke so loudly and clearly to you in November’s elections — without any consultation with a Congress (in which key members of your own party, including Sens. Sam Brownback, Norm Coleman and Chuck Hagel, are fleeing for higher ground) — without any awareness that you are doing exactly the opposite of what Baker-Hamilton urged you to do — you seem to be ready to make an open-ended commitment (on America’s behalf) to do whatever you want, in Iran.

Our military, Mr. Bush, is already stretched so thin by this bogus adventure in Iraq that even a majority of serving personnel are willing to tell pollsters that they are dissatisfied with your prosecution of the war.

It is so weary that many of the troops you have just consigned to Iraq will be on their second tours or their third tours or their fourth tours — and now you’re going to make them take on Iran and Syria as well?

Who is left to go and fight, sir?

Who are you going to send to “interrupt the flow of support from Iran and Syria”?

Laura and Barney?

The line is from the movie “Chinatown” and I quote it often: “Middle of a drought,” the mortician chuckles, “and the water commissioner drowns. Only in L.A.!”

Middle of a debate over the lives and deaths of another 21,500 of our citizens in Iraq, and the president wants to saddle up against Iran and Syria.

Maybe that’s the point — to shift the attention away from just how absurd and childish this latest war strategy is, (strategy, that is, for the war already under way, and not the one on deck).

We are going to put 17,500 more troops into Baghdad and 4,000 more into Anbar Province to give the Iraqi government “breathing space.”

In and of itself that is an awful and insulting term.

The lives of 21,500 more Americans endangered, to give “breathing space” to a government that just turned the first and perhaps the most sober act of any democracy — the capital punishment of an ousted dictator — into a vengeance lynching so barbaric and so lacking in the solemnities necessary for credible authority, that it might have offended the Ku Klux Klan of the 19th century.

And what will our men and women in Iraq do?

The ones who will truly live — and die — during what Mr. Bush said last night will be a “year ahead” that “will demand more patience, sacrifice, and resolve”?

They will try to seal Sadr City and other parts of Baghdad where the civil war is worst.

Mr. Bush did not mention that while our people are trying to do that, the factions in the civil war will no longer have to focus on killing each other, but rather they can focus anew on killing our people.

Because last night the president foolishly all but announced that we will be sending these 21,500 poor souls, but no more after that, and if the whole thing fizzles out, we’re going home.

The plan fails militarily.

The plan fails symbolically.

The plan fails politically.

Most importantly, perhaps, Mr. Bush, the plan fails because it still depends on your credibility.

You speak of mistakes and of the responsibility “resting” with you.

But you do not admit to making those mistakes.

And you offer us nothing to justify this clenched fist toward Iran and Syria.

In fact, when you briefed news correspondents off-the-record before the speech, they were told, once again, “if you knew what we knew … if you saw what we saw … ”

“If you knew what we knew” was how we got into this morass in Iraq in the first place.

The problem arose when it turned out that the question wasn’t whether we knew what you knew, but whether you knew what you knew.

You, sir, have become the president who cried wolf.

All that you say about Iraq now could be gospel.

All that you say about Iran and Syria now could be prescient and essential.

We no longer have a clue, sir.

We have heard too many stories.

Many of us are as inclined to believe you just shuffled the director of national intelligence over to the State Department because he thought you were wrong about Iran.

Many of us are as inclined to believe you just put a pilot in charge of ground wars in Iraq and Afghanistan because he would be truly useful in an air war next door in Iran.

Your assurances, sir, and your demands that we trust you, have lost all shape and texture.

They are now merely fertilizer for conspiracy theories.

They are now fertilizer, indeed.

The pile has been built slowly and with seeming care.

I read this list last night, before the president’s speech, and it bears repeating because its shape and texture are perceptible only in such a context.

Before Mr. Bush was elected, he said nation-building was wrong for America.

Now he says it is vital.

He said he would never put U.S. troops under foreign control.

Last night he promised to embed them in Iraqi units.

He told us about WMD.

Mobile labs.

Secret sources.

Aluminum tubes.

Yellow-cake.

He has told us the war is necessary:

Because Saddam was a material threat.

Because of 9/11.

Because of Osama Bin Laden. Al-Qaida. Terrorism in general.

To liberate Iraq. To spread freedom. To spread Democracy. To prevent terrorism by gas price increases.

Because this was a guy who tried to kill his dad.

Because — 439 words in to the speech last night — he trotted out 9/11 again.

In advocating and prosecuting this war he passed on a chance to get Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi.

To get Muqtada Al-Sadr. To get Bin Laden.

He sent in fewer troops than the generals told him to. He ordered the Iraqi army disbanded and the Iraqi government “de-Baathified.”

He short-changed Iraqi training. He neglected to plan for widespread looting. He did not anticipate sectarian violence.

He sent in troops without life-saving equipment. He gave jobs to foreign contractors, and not Iraqis. He staffed U.S. positions there, based on partisanship, not professionalism.

He and his government told us: America had prevailed, mission accomplished, the resistance was in its last throes.

He has insisted more troops were not necessary. He has now insisted more troops are necessary.

He has insisted it’s up to the generals, and then removed some of the generals who said more troops would not be necessary.

He has trumpeted the turning points:

The fall of Baghdad, the death of Uday and Qusay, the capture of Saddam. A provisional government, a charter, a constitution, the trial of Saddam. Elections, purple fingers, another government, the death of Saddam.

He has assured us: We would be greeted as liberators — with flowers;

As they stood up, we would stand down. We would stay the course; we were never about “stay the course.”

We would never have to go door-to-door in Baghdad. And, last night, that to gain Iraqis’ trust, we would go door-to-door in Baghdad.

He told us the enemy was al-Qaida, foreign fighters, terrorists, Baathists, and now Iran and Syria.

He told us the war would pay for itself. It would cost $1.7 billion. $100 billion. $400 billion. Half a trillion. Last night’s speech alone cost another $6 billion.

And after all of that, now it is his credibility versus that of generals, diplomats, allies, Democrats, Republicans, the Iraq Study Group, past presidents, voters last November and the majority of the American people.

Oh, and one more to add, tonight: Oceania has always been at war with East Asia.

Mr. Bush, this is madness.

You have lost the military. You have lost the Congress to the Democrats. You have lost most of the Iraqis. You have lost many of the Republicans. You have lost our allies.

You are losing the credibility, not just of your presidency, but more importantly of the office itself.

And most imperatively, you are guaranteeing that more American troops will be losing their lives, and more families their loved ones. You are guaranteeing it!

This becomes your legacy, sir: How many of those you addressed last night as your “fellow citizens” you just sent to their deaths.

And for what, Mr. Bush?

So the next president has to pull the survivors out of Iraq instead of you?

Video

© 2007 MSNBC Interactive

Video: Olbermann rips Gingrich's 'sinister vision'

0lberm4nn warns of Gingrich 'sinister vision' for The World

08:23

Keith Olbermann's gloves come off

Anti-Bush views have driven up the ratings of the former sportscaster's MSNBC show.
By Matea Gold
Times Staff Writer

November 27, 2006

SECAUCUS, N.J. -- The Democrats may have wrested back control of power in Congress, but that hasn't quieted the ire of Keith Olbermann.

Last week, he delivered one of his trademark blistering critiques of the country's leadership — this time charging that President Bush failed to learn the lessons of Vietnam by perpetuating the "monumental lie that is our presence in Iraq." And don't think the victors of the midterm election are going to escape his sharp tongue.

"If the Democrats don't undo a lot of the things that have been done, like the Military Commissions Act and many of the other infringements on freedom, as I see it, there will be a special comment with their name on it," Olbermann vowed on a recent afternoon, wearing a crisp, striped shirt and suspenders, his large frame hunched over his desk at the cable news network's Secaucus headquarters.

The 47-year-old broadcaster's "special comments" are not a regular feature on "Countdown With Keith Olbermann," the dramatically intoned, fast-paced mélange of politics and pop culture that he has anchored since 2003 and that recently emerged as MSNBC's top-rated show. (The newscast airs at 5 p.m. on the West Coast, with a repeat at 9 p.m.)

But Olbermann's occasional soliloquies — typically a no-holds-barred excoriation of the Bush administration — have dramatically elevated his profile in the last several months, especially in the liberal blogosphere, and helped drive up the ratings for the third-place cable news network.

The longtime sportscaster, who doesn't vote and eschews any political identity — "I may be a Whig, possibly a Free-Soiler," he quipped — has nevertheless become an unexpected folk hero for the frustrated left. One woman approached him in a New York restaurant recently and burst into tears as she thanked him.

"People just think, 'He speaks for me,' " said Jane Hamsher, a Mill Valley, Calif., author who runs a liberal blog at firedoglake.com. "There was no resonance within the media for their perspective, and suddenly Keith came on the scene and gave voice to these long-simmering feelings of disgust with the war."

Olbermann said he never set out to court disaffected liberals.

"But there's a time when what you're covering ceases to look like news and begins to look like history," he said. "And you say, well, it doesn't matter how people might brand me or respond to this — I feel as if something very important is not being said."

It's perhaps a sign of the recent shift in the country's political mood that his message has translated into ratings.

"Countdown's" audience has grown by 21% this year compared with the same point last year, while its cable news competitors have lost viewers at that hour, according to Nielsen Media Research.

With an average nightly viewership of 464,000, Olbermann lags far behind Fox News' Bill O'Reilly, whose audience has averaged nearly 2.15 million viewers this year. But the MSNBC host is creeping up on second-place CNN. In October, "Countdown" edged out "Paula Zahn Now" by 11,000 viewers.

His gains come as all of MSNBC's ratings are on an upswing, a fact that has triggered no small amount of jubilation at the perpetually last-place network.

"MSNBC is now a player in the competitive world of cable news in a way that we have not been for many, many years, and that's a really big deal," said General Manager Dan Abrams, the network's onetime legal affairs anchor who was tapped to run the channel in June.

Abrams said MSNBC is finally finding its identity, which he described as "NBC News' younger brother or sister."

"It doesn't mean the older sibling is more intelligent or better at what they do," he added. "It just means they've been doing it longer. We may be a little brasher, a little more petulant, but we are one family."

Election coverage

Abrams credits Olbermann with a large share of the network's recent success, so much so that he paired the longtime ESPN host with Chris Matthews to anchor the network's election night coverage — potentially risky, considering Olbermann's outspoken political views.

"Anyone who watches what Keith did on election night can't possibly suggest that he was cheerleading for the Democrats," Abrams said.

MSNBC more than doubled its viewership compared with the 2002 midterms. And its share of the cable news audience in prime time also increased, from 15% four years ago to 25% this year.

Olbermann is negotiating a new contract with MSNBC; his current one expires in March.

"It is, to some degree, a perfect setup," he said of his relationship with the network. "They leave me alone, I leave them alone, and I deliver what they need, both in terms of journalism and the money end of it, the ratings."

As his profile has risen, so has criticism of his provocative style. This summer, amid an on-air feud with O'Reilly, he addressed a gathering of television critics by donning a mask of the Fox News host and giving a Nazi salute.

A network spokesman said the gesture was intended as a satirical comment.

Robert Cox, who runs Olbermann Watch, a critical blog that monitors the cable news host's comments, said that Olbermann employs some of the same tactics that he decries.

"I think at the end of the day he has, by and large, become that which he has criticized — a demagogue like Bill O'Reilly," said Cox, a management consultant in New Rochelle, N.Y.

Olbermann rejects the comparison.

"I'm not trying to whip up a political frenzy," he said. "If I was out there every night beating people over the head with this, I would become a Rush Limbaugh. That's not my goal. I don't make the facts up to fit the political viewpoint that happens to parallel what it is I'm trying to express."

A longtime sportscaster who first got a show at MSNBC when he joined NBC Sports in 1997, Olbermann devotes nearly the same amount of time on "Countdown" to the tabloid stories, such as the latest Tom Cruise gossip, as to stories about Iraq.

When he's not lecturing Bush, he wears a perpetually amused expression on the air and casually tosses papers off his desk.

He said he doesn't vote because he doesn't want to be accused of having "a horse in the race." But he decided to give an on-air commentary last year after Hurricane Katrina, outraged by the lackluster federal reaction.

"We went on the air with it on Monday and got a response, and management was in here on that Tuesday saying, 'Could you do that on a regular basis?' " he recalled. "And I said, 'No, I have no intention of doing that on a regular basis.' "

The urge to speak out struck him again in late August, ashe sat on a plane on the runway at LAX and read an account ofa speech in which Secretaryof Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld equated critics of the Bushadministration to Nazi appeasers.

Response to Rumsfeld

Infuriated, he spent his flight scribbling out a response in which he compared Rumsfeld's attack on Bush's opponents to the way Neville Chamberlain attempted to marginalize Winston Churchill in the run-up to World War II.

"Dissent and disagreement with government is the life's blood of human freedom and not merely because it is the first roadblock against the kind of tyranny the men Mr. Rumsfeld likes to think of as his troops still fight this very evening in Iraq," he wrote in the essay he delivered that night on the air. "It is also essential, because just every once in a while it is right, and the power to which it speaks is wrong."

His commentary was downloaded more than 300,000 times from the website Crooks and Liars, with liberal bloggers tagging it Olbermann's "Murrow moment."

When the cable host participated in a live chat at firedoglake.com this month, he was peppered with gushing messages, including one from former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, who thanked him for "all you are doing to reenergize the fourth estate and its role to be a skeptic of authority."

That includes the new Democratic leadership in Congress.

"They're serving as a balancing factor, a check and a balance against anybody being carted out of Gitmo without a hearing," Olbermann said. "But that's an interim measure. We have to do things to protect the Constitution.

"And if they don't," he added in a mock stentorian voice, "damn it, I will!"

matea.gold@latimes.com
http://www.calendarlive.com/printedition/calendar/cl-et-olber27nov27,0,6528595.story?track=tothtml