I saw this Front page NYT piece and just shook my head. Hewitt is right on this.
....Is it too much to ask opponents of the war to pause at least a day before exploiting the deaths of American soldiers for political purposes? Evidently yes. The New York Times' Richard Stevenson begins his "news analysis," titled "Bush's New Problem: More Carnage in Iraq Could Eclipse His Ambitious Domestic Agenda," this way this morning:
"The deadly attack on a United States military base in northern Iraq on Tuesday scrambled the Bush administration's hopes of showing progress toward stability there, while making clear that the war is creating a nasty array of problems for President Bush as he gears up for an ambitious second term.
Despite weathering criticism of his Iraq policy during the presidential campaign, Mr. Bush is heading into his next four years in the White House facing a public that appears increasingly worried about the course of events in Iraq and wondering where the exit is."
In the article's 17 paragraphs there is exactly one quote or other bit of evidence introduced to support this wildly ideological projection of the "reporter's" personal political hopes --a quote from Warren Rudman, in the very last paragraph, that says:
"The big risk for the president is that if this continues to escalate, it could overtake much of what he wants to do....If this is in some way a precursor of an escalation into a more sophisticated attack by the guerilla insurgents, it would make members of Congress very uneasy and the American people very uneasy."
That's it --that's Richard Stevenson's evidence for the proposition that "carnage" in Iraq is destroying Bush's second term which hasn't even begun yet. There's also this wonderful bit of fiction in the piece, a description of yesterday's rocket hit on the Mosul mess hall as evidence of "a shadowy, fast-evolving enemy that, as the Tuesday attack showed, continues to display a notable degree of resilience?"
That is what Lileks would brand "a terminal case of the stupids," as is the entire article. There's nothing wrong with writing up the difficulties of the occupation or of the transition to election or of the stakes involved.
But it isn't decent to rush such a piece into print claiming a nexus to a terrible loss of American life.
Not decent, but predictable. Go back to June 17, 2004, and you will find another Richard Stevenson piece predicting terrible political troubles for the president growing out of the Iraq war. Oh, and look who is quoted in defense of the proposition: Warren Rudman. "The problem the administration has is that the predicates it laid down for the war have not played out....That could spell political trouble for the president, there's no question."
It isn't surprising that the New York Times intends to attack the president throughout his second term and to try and turn Iraq into Vietnam. What's surprising is the baldness of the tactics, and their lack of art. Peddling the same old story line with the same old tired sources isn't going to impress anyone outside of the fever swamp. |
