Dan Froomkin's Last Column for the Washington Post

[WilliamPitt]

...FYI, there is 0% Michael Jackson stuff in this thread...

White House Watched
By Dan Froomkin

Today's column is my last for The Washington Post. And the first thing I want to say is thank you. Thank you to all you readers, e-mailers, commenters, questioners, Facebook friends and Twitterers for spending your time with me and engaging with me over the years. And thank you for the recent outpouring of support. It was extraordinarily uplifting, and I'm deeply grateful. If I ever had any doubt, your words have further inspired me to continue doing accountability journalism. My plan is to take a few weeks off before embarking upon my next endeavor -- but when I do, I hope you'll join me.

It's hard to summarize the past five and a half years. But I'll try.

I started my column in January 2004, and one dominant theme quickly emerged: That George W. Bush was truly the proverbial emperor with no clothes. In the days and weeks after the 9/11 terror attacks, the nation, including the media, vested him with abilities he didn't have and credibility he didn't deserve. As it happens, it was on the day of my very first column that we also got the first insider look at the Bush White House, via Ron Suskind's book, The Price of Loyalty. In it, former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill described a disengaged president "like a blind man in a room full of deaf people", encircled by "a Praetorian guard,” intently looking for a way to overthrow Saddam Hussein long before 9/11. The ensuing five years and 1,088 columns really just fleshed out that portrait, describing a president who was oblivious, embubbled and untrustworthy.

When I look back on the Bush years, I think of the lies. There were so many. Lies about the war and lies to cover up the lies about the war. Lies about torture and surveillance. Lies about Valerie Plame. Vice President Dick Cheney's lies, criminally prosecutable but for his chief of staff Scooter Libby's lies. I also think about the extraordinary and fundamentally cancerous expansion of executive power that led to violations of our laws and our principles.

And while this wasn't as readily apparent until President Obama took office, it's now very clear that the Bush years were all about kicking the can down the road – either ignoring problems or, even worse, creating them and not solving them. This was true of a huge range of issues including the economy, energy, health care, global warming – and of course Iraq and Afghanistan.

The rest: http://voices.washingtonpost.com/white-house-watch/white-house-watched.html

[eleny]

1. What a terrific column

I like the line describing some journalists, "...who served as stenographers to liars".

[blm]

4. unfortunately, a couple famous Dems did, too, vigorously defending Bush's Iraq decision

even as the 2004 Dem nominee was attacking those decisions. If journalists were stenographers to Bush's lies, then a few famous Dems, especially one who had presidential access to Iraq intel, made sure the lies had bi=partisan support.

[joeybee12]

2. K&R..great, great stuff...n/t

[peace frog]

3. Wherever Froomkin writes

I'll continue to read him. WaPo needs Froomkin more than he needs them. Watch their readership sink now that he's gone. Dumbshits.

[BlueMTexpat]

6. +1!

Dan is appreciated by many of us. But a WaPo that can continue to keep on staff BushCo cheerleader neocon a**hole idiots like Krauthammer and hypocrites like George Will (I still haven't forgotten Will's sitting in on Reagan's debate preps, knowing all the time that the Repubs were using Carter's stolen briefing book) is certainly no place for him. Between the two of them, there isn't enough for even one tiny ethic.

If Dionne and Robinson also leave, the WaPo is dead so far as I'm concerned. Except perhaps for the interactive Sudoku. And that's only a perhaps.

[pleah]

5. K&R

[Technowitch]

7. Can't we help get him a job writing elsewhere?

I mean, seriously, Froomkin helped me keep my sanity during the non-stop outrages of the Bush Administration.

There has got to be a web publication of some kind out there willing to put him and his mad writing skills on a payroll, no?

[WilliamPitt]

8. I strongly doubt he will need help landing a new gig.

His work speaks for itself, and somebody somewhere will pick him up. The Nation, the Progressive, TPM, Newsweek, Time, someone will hire him. We'll have Froomkin articles to read again before football season starts, I'm mortally sure of it.

[MasonJar]

9. Thank you, Dan. We will be looking for your next assignment with

great enthusiasm...that is, by the way, the royal we.

[DainBramaged]

10. He can also be found here.

http://www.niemanwatchdog.org/index.cfm

http://blog.niemanwatchdog.org/?p=1083