Obama's Foreign Policy Guru Boasts of How the Administration Lied to Sell the Iran Deal

Can you please copy/paste the quotes from Ben Roads? It is agonizing to try to find them in this article as most are just pieces with the author's thoughts pushed in between. It's not clear at all what the argument is from the author vs Roads and I'm skeptical that Roads said Obama boasted however who knows with that giant blob of a fractured interview. It's funny that the 1st link you posted is an article about the 2nd but doesn't quote anything Roads says about the Iran deal.


A nice article of how annoying this article is to read:

Absurdity, self-regard, hypocrisy, chumminess between writer and subject -- it's all there.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...in-the-new-york-times-magazine-is-just-gross/

 

“All these newspapers used to have foreign bureaus,” he said. “Now they don’t. They call us to explain to them what’s happening in Moscow and Cairo. Most of the outlets are reporting on world events from Washington. The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old, and their only reporting experience consists of being around political campaigns. That’s a sea change. They literally know nothing.”

“We created an echo chamber,” he told the magazine. “They [the seemingly independent experts] were saying things that validated what we had given them to say.”

“We had test-drives to know who was going to be able to carry our message effectively, and how to use outside groups like [the anti-nuclear group] Ploughshares, the Iran Project and whomever else. So we knew the tactics that worked,” Rhodes says. Speaking of Republicans and other opponents, including Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Rhodes adds that he knew “we drove them crazy.”

Rhodes’s assistant, Ned Price, told the newspaper that the administration would feed “color” — background details — to their “compadres” in the press corps, “and the next thing I know, lots of these guys are in the dot-com publishing space, and have huge Twitter followings, and they’ll be putting this message out on their own.”

 

I don't really believe in any kind of personified God, but if i did I would thank him/her/it every day that Barack Obama is our President and Ben Rhoads is His/Her/Its servant.

 

How is our Nobel Prize winner president planning on stopping North Korea's 3rd nuclear test during his time in office? Does he have a framework set in place? Has anyone agreed to it? Or are the North Koreans going to get all antsy and start threatening South Korea and the US and we just put up with it because this guy won a Nobel Prize for what again?

 

build a wall and make mexico pay for it.

 

by bombing a hospital in Afghanistan

 

He is one step from blaming South Korea

 

You mean the one from last January? Probably with a time vortex machine he keeps at area 51. Of course if he's going to use that he should probably go back to the Bush Era when Dick Cheney allowed them to become a nuclear power

 

Well a nuclear test is like an AIDS test, you should only worry about the results if they're white.

 

this is b**** ass niga talk right here folks

 

It's hard to stop the 3rd test once the first two have already happened. That's whatcha call a nuclear deterrent. You're welcome.

 

I guess you don't find it disturbing that our media is no better than Baghdad Bob...

I do.

I am happy to know that all this time that I've pictured you worshiping a picture of Obama in a small dark room with candles and such... I had it right.

 

Its funny (in a sad sort of way) the effort wasted on trying to find any criticism of President Obama.

At the same time, it must be doubly frustrating as the President's job approval is so high. He now has a higher job approval than ex-President Reagan (May 2016 53% to May 1998 51%) and trails only Eisenhower (64%) and Clinton (57%).

 

Did you read the article? Ben Rhodes wasn't selling yellowcake in Niger or claiming they had WMD's.

What he did do was figure out how to manipulate the media in getting the White House's message and through that saved us from another disastrous war.

 

And please do tell what you propose to stop them from doing that nuclear test? Maybe drop a bomb on them?

 

Ben Rhodes is a total self absorbed prick. Spiteful and smug

And this is coming from somebody who knew him in college - he's a Rice grad.

 

Yeah, you'll get no real answer. Just complaining that Obama can't figure out a path that nobody else seems to be able to figure out.

Kudos to Sam for pointing out when they went nuclear and on which watch.

I didn't find this article in the OP about "Lied" (sic) at all, so the thread title needs a tweak. Are they supposed to deal with the modern media in a clueless, non-strategic way, kind of like those early Taliban press conferences? God but those were good.

 

It doesn't matter what he was selling, he was selling the message that what our administration decides is beyond reproach and the media is no longer there to provide transparency because they are an echo chamber. This is a fine situation as long as you trust your administration but administrations change.

 

Agree with your basic criticism (and that of others) of the media.

The article does a nice job, in particular, of painting how pathetic the media now is when it comes to international reporting and any really detailed reporting at all.

We are ALL to blame, however. Americans don't watch or read long-form careful, fact-filled reporting. They select "news" that contains cleavage, shouting blowhards, and celebrity updates.