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> President Barack Obama promised Mrs Merkel he knew nothing of the alleged phone monitoring, the magazine reports. He apologised to the German chancellor, it s

by 0p0p 13y ago

> President Barack Obama promised Mrs Merkel he knew nothing of the alleged phone monitoring, the magazine reports. He apologised to the German chancellor, it said. Plausible deniability?!? Wonder what else he "didn't know" and how he is justified in making sweepings statements if he is not sufficiently informed. It can't be "Don't worry, trust me" and "Oops, I didn't know" simultaneously.

MatthewPhillips 13y ago
I haven't been following the story close enough, but he never apologized for spying on U.S. citizens, he defended that, right?
growupkids 13y ago
Politician move #178, also know as the "Reagan Shim Sham": just say you don't know anything about it.
SideburnsOfDoom 13y ago
It's worth remembering that Barack Obama was not president of the US until 2008. It's safe to assume that in 2002 he was the subject of, not the instigator of, surveillance.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
sockypuppy 13y ago
> Wonder what else [Obama] "didn't know" Here's a laundry list from a libertarian / conservative commentator who often says insightful things even when I disagree with him: [Obama] was himself clueless as to the extent and severity of the problems in his signature legislation. Two weeks after the Benghazi massacre, he was still parroting the Susan Rice line about anti-Islamic videos, which the CIA knew within hours had had nothing to do with the murder of Ambassador Stevens. Obama had no idea for three years his IRS might be slow-walking Tea Party applications for tax exemptions. He wasn’t in the loop about Eric Holder’s phone taps on Fox News or the Associated Press. Nobody told him. The president has not been more deeply implicated in the scandals since re-election because he could credibly say, "How was I supposed to know what was going on?" Source: http://buchanan.org/blog/queen-obamaland-5957 http://buchanan.org/blog/queen-obamaland-5957
rdtsc 13y ago
That is not a bad response from his position. From say a game theoretic point of view. Imagine is he is not the president but say a mafia boss, maybe a powerful drug lord. And it turns out one of the drug mules for a competing drug gangs gets murdered by Obama's men. Now, war is about to start. And all the drug lords have a meeting. Obama can claim he didn't personally order the murder and he didn't know it was about to happen. He has men working for him who receive general instruction like "keep the product flowing no matter what cost" with specifically no concrete instruction (especially in written form). Now that protects him. If worse comes to worse, he can simply replace a scapegoat low level employee and keep the organization going forward. The same modus operandi is probably at play with regard to a lot of this stuff from the White House.
- hcarvalhoalves 13y ago
  OT: What a creativity for analogies.
- devcpp 13y ago
  On the other hand, the POTUS is at least supposed to look powerful in the eyes of the citizens. By recognizing that he doesn't know (and can't know) what's going on, he is announcing to the world that he is a puppet and that the POTUS is nothing but a servant to higher interests. Bad move by the puppet masters.

by 0p0p 13y ago

MatthewPhillips 13y ago

I haven't been following the story close enough, but he never apologized for spying on U.S. citizens, he defended that, right?

growupkids 13y ago

Politician move #178, also know as the "Reagan Shim Sham": just say you don't know anything about it.

SideburnsOfDoom 13y ago

It's worth remembering that Barack Obama was not president of the US until 2008. It's safe to assume that in 2002 he was the subject of, not the instigator of, surveillance.

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]

sockypuppy 13y ago

> Wonder what else [Obama] "didn't know" Here's a laundry list from a libertarian / conservative commentator who often says insightful things even when I disagree with him: [Obama] was himself clueless as to the extent and severity of the problems in his signature legislation. Two weeks after the Benghazi massacre, he was still parroting the Susan Rice line about anti-Islamic videos, which the CIA knew within hours had had nothing to do with the murder of Ambassador Stevens. Obama had no idea for three years his IRS might be slow-walking Tea Party applications for tax exemptions. He wasn’t in the loop about Eric Holder’s phone taps on Fox News or the Associated Press. Nobody told him. The president has not been more deeply implicated in the scandals since re-election because he could credibly say, "How was I supposed to know what was going on?" Source: http://buchanan.org/blog/queen-obamaland-5957 http://buchanan.org/blog/queen-obamaland-5957

rdtsc 13y ago

That is not a bad response from his position. From say a game theoretic point of view. Imagine is he is not the president but say a mafia boss, maybe a powerful drug lord. And it turns out one of the drug mules for a competing drug gangs gets murdered by Obama's men. Now, war is about to start. And all the drug lords have a meeting. Obama can claim he didn't personally order the murder and he didn't know it was about to happen. He has men working for him who receive general instruction like "keep the product flowing no matter what cost" with specifically no concrete instruction (especially in written form). Now that protects him. If worse comes to worse, he can simply replace a scapegoat low level employee and keep the organization going forward. The same modus operandi is probably at play with regard to a lot of this stuff from the White House.

hcarvalhoalves 13y ago
OT: What a creativity for analogies.
devcpp 13y ago
On the other hand, the POTUS is at least supposed to look powerful in the eyes of the citizens. By recognizing that he doesn't know (and can't know) what's going on, he is announcing to the world that he is a puppet and that the POTUS is nothing but a servant to higher interests. Bad move by the puppet masters.