A major television network executive admits that his programming “just sucked.”

The French deny that they told Saddam to hang tough.

Twenty four years ago today, Islamic fanatics took American embassy personnel hostage in Tehran. They held them for over a year.

The Carter administration’s (non) response was the first of many demonstrations of American impotence toward the Islamic world that ultimately led Osama bin Laden to believe that he could murder thousands of Americans without consequence.

For what it’s worth, I answer Phil Bowermaster’s.

I just thought I’d pick up a new thread to move this discussion closer to blogtop.

Dave asked in comments there what Stasi-like files I was referring to. The story is here.

The records would stretch 91/2 miles if laid end to end, the officials said. They contain not only the names of nearly every Iraqi intelligence officer, but also the names of their paid foreign agents, written agent reports, evaluations of agent credentials, and documentary evidence of payments made to buy influence in the Arab world and elsewhere, the officials said.

The officials declined to name individuals who they believe received funds or to name the home countries of the alleged recipients. One official said the recipients held high-ranking positions and worked both in Arab countries and in other regions. A second official said the payments were the subjects of “active investigations” by U.S. government agencies.

The recipients of the Iraqi funds were described by U.S. officials not as formal intelligence agents, but as prominent personalities and political figures who accepted money from Iraq as they defended Hussein publicly or pressed his causes.

Taylor Dinerman has a review of a new book on the early space age over at The Space Review.

It looks like CBS won’t be airing that hatchet job on Reagan after all. I haven’t said much about this, but this is one aspect of the story that I’ve found galling from the beginning:

CBS lawyers had reviewed the miniseries and given it the go-ahead, but Moonves ordered lawyers to give it another look and for CBS to cut out certain portions.

This is most disingenuous. I assume that we are supposed to come away from this statement with the idea that it was fact checked. But in real fact, lawyers have nothing to do with facts–the only reason for a lawyer to look at it would be to determine if airing it would put CBS in legal jeopardy, not to determine whether it was factual or not.

Since Ronald and Nancy Reagan are public figures, there’s almost nothing that CBS could have aired that would have gotten them into hot water, from a libel standpoint. Having lawyers “give it a look,” is meaningless, because said lawyers would do so, and then simply inform the network execs what I just did–that they could air it without fear of a lawsuit, and facts be damned.

Had Moonves been honest, rather than a duplicitous worm, and wanted to reassure people that it was truly fair, he’d not have talked about lawyers. He’d have said, “we’ve had the script reviewed by historians and people who knew the Reagans closely, and they’ve assured us that it is historically accurate.”

But of course he couldn’t say that, because it would have been an outright lie, easily disprovable by talking to people like Lou Cannon. So instead he prevaricated, and hoped that no one noticed. Fortunately, he hoped wrong.

It looks like CBS won’t be airing that hatchet job on Reagan after all. I haven’t said much about this, but this is one aspect of the story that I’ve found galling from the beginning:

CBS lawyers had reviewed the miniseries and given it the go-ahead, but Moonves ordered lawyers to give it another look and for CBS to cut out certain portions.

This is most disingenuous. I assume that we are supposed to come away from this statement with the idea that it was fact checked. But in real fact, lawyers have nothing to do with facts–the only reason for a lawyer to look at it would be to determine if airing it would put CBS in legal jeopardy, not to determine whether it was factual or not.

Since Ronald and Nancy Reagan are public figures, there’s almost nothing that CBS could have aired that would have gotten them into hot water, from a libel standpoint. Having lawyers “give it a look,” is meaningless, because said lawyers would do so, and then simply inform the network execs what I just did–that they could air it without fear of a lawsuit, and facts be damned.

Had Moonves been honest, rather than a duplicitous worm, and wanted to reassure people that it was truly fair, he’d not have talked about lawyers. He’d have said, “we’ve had the script reviewed by historians and people who knew the Reagans closely, and they’ve assured us that it is historically accurate.”

But of course he couldn’t say that, because it would have been an outright lie, easily disprovable by talking to people like Lou Cannon. So instead he prevaricated, and hoped that no one noticed. Fortunately, he hoped wrong.

It looks like CBS won’t be airing that hatchet job on Reagan after all. I haven’t said much about this, but this is one aspect of the story that I’ve found galling from the beginning:

CBS lawyers had reviewed the miniseries and given it the go-ahead, but Moonves ordered lawyers to give it another look and for CBS to cut out certain portions.

This is most disingenuous. I assume that we are supposed to come away from this statement with the idea that it was fact checked. But in real fact, lawyers have nothing to do with facts–the only reason for a lawyer to look at it would be to determine if airing it would put CBS in legal jeopardy, not to determine whether it was factual or not.

Since Ronald and Nancy Reagan are public figures, there’s almost nothing that CBS could have aired that would have gotten them into hot water, from a libel standpoint. Having lawyers “give it a look,” is meaningless, because said lawyers would do so, and then simply inform the network execs what I just did–that they could air it without fear of a lawsuit, and facts be damned.

Had Moonves been honest, rather than a duplicitous worm, and wanted to reassure people that it was truly fair, he’d not have talked about lawyers. He’d have said, “we’ve had the script reviewed by historians and people who knew the Reagans closely, and they’ve assured us that it is historically accurate.”

But of course he couldn’t say that, because it would have been an outright lie, easily disprovable by talking to people like Lou Cannon. So instead he prevaricated, and hoped that no one noticed. Fortunately, he hoped wrong.

But if he were, it wouldn’t matter. So writeth Jonathan Rauch.

A worthy response to the nonsensical view that if only the U.S. had signed up for various international treaties, all would be right with the world, and we’d have our “friends” back.