Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) said: “Talk about not seeing the forest for the trees. The real story is those jails.”

he’s calling it like it is, and frankly I admire him for that.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/…..764_2.html

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/200…..0bQ–

Just a hunch. Was he even there?

The Post article simply does not look like something that was dashed off in less than one day on the basis of a leak from a Senator or hill staffer. To the contrary, looking first just at the substance of the thing, it appears to be a throughly researched piece, with a great deal of background and context woven into it, not simply a wad of Capitol Hill dish. Moreover, even allowing for some of the, shall we say, vagaries of how reporters describe anonymous sources, the piece is sourced variously to: “U.S. and foreign officials familiar with the arrangement”; “current and former intelligence officials and diplomats from three continents”; “officials familiar with the program”; “current and former and U.S. and foreign government and intelligence officials”; “four current and former officials”; and, more specifically, in some instances to “a former senior intelligence officer who worked in the CIA’s Counterterrorist Center”; “another former senior CIA official”; and “a senior CIA officer.” If we were dealing with Judith Miller rather than Dana Priest, I might be less credulous, but I’d say it is very safe to say that Priest has at least four sources, probably more — at a minimum, two distinct former CIA officials (part of the Goss purge, no doubt), one current CIA official (that’s one brave hombre), one or more current or former State officials. I would like to think that there’s somebody at Justice with a conscience and a set of cojones as well.

I listened to Dana Priest’s interview on the Diane Rehm show last week, and in it Priest convincingly and credibly painted a picutre of a story that has been long in the making, based on disclsoures from a variety of long-cultivated sources. She was rather cagey when asked why those sources suddenly decided to talk about the black sites; her response was that it was due to the dogged pursuit of the information (or words to that effect), which is certainly tantalizing. But I was convinced — especially having read the article — of her veracity on the matter of the article’s development.
Now none of this excludes the possibility that one of Priest’s sources was a GOP Senator or Hill staffer. Indeed, some of the information reported smells like it might have come from the Hill (e.g., “[t]he CIA and the White House . . . have dissuaded Congress from demanding that the agency answer questions [about the treatment of CIA-held prisoners] in open testimony” or “[m]ost of the facilities were built and are maintained with congressionally appropriated funds, but the White House has refused to allow the CIA to brief anyone except the House and Senate intelligence committees’ chairmen and vice chairmen on the program’s generalities”). But what I have briefly cataloged above certainly leads me to doubt that a Hill souce — if one does exist — was anything like the prime source for the piece.
It also is possible that Lott knows more than he is letting on and that he actually does have some inside info on a GOP leak. But color me very, very suspicious. Let’s hope Lott’s not handing the Democrats a boomerang.

The man knows the old horror movie axiom that you don’t just stick the knife in, ya gotta twist that sucker for maximum impact.

Absolutely Machiavellian. A nice shot, well played. Gotta hand it to him. It’s as good as anything Rove ever came up with.

On another front, remember that second batch of Abu Ghraib photos/videos that are due to be released in about a week? Maybe the Senate is finally waking up to the fact that there is about to be huge fallout (hence last week’s closed door session, Cheney’s desperate CYA adventures, etc.)

Maybe the CIA leaked it- they HATE Cheney.

Ya know, maybe Lott leaked it his own self. He has been shivving Frist and co. for some months now, and with unseemly pleasure too.

Maybe he was in on the meeting with Cheney, said to himself, “this guy is fucking insane!”, leaked the info to the WaPo, and then when Frist and Hastert got all happy with the idea that they could maybe get everyone’s mind off, well, other stuff, Lott went back around to CNN and shivved them again.

It’s evil, and probably not true, but I like the sound of it.