The Pro-War Press Breaks With Bush

[curtoid]

For everyone who thinks that the US media has made too much out of the prison abuse story, and are willing to dismiss all of "the foreign press" because the obviously hate us, here's a link to an interesting Washington Post story (you will have to sign up):

In the ranks of journalism, they were the coalition of the willing: the newspapers that supported President Bush's decision to invade Iraq in March 2003. These news outlets made the case for overthrowing Saddam Hussein, often in the face of strong anti-war feelings in their countries. Their editorials lent credibility and moral support to the White House's claims that the U.S.-led war had international backing. Today, they are having second thoughts. (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A23235-2004May13.html)

Meanwhile back at home, this story will not go away, regardless of how many talk radio show blabbermouths whine about it (my own editorial). Does Rummy have to go? Is he going to hurt Bush more or less if he is still around in November?

Bush might dodge a bullet if the economy and jobs continue to improve (it is interesting that consumer confidence seemed to be higher when the economy was in the toilet than it does now), but there is not marked improvement with Iraq by November (and there's no real reason to believe that's going to happen, despite the June 30th hand-over), the public opinion on this war may firmly be in the "anti" column.

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This message was edited by curtoid on 5-13-04 @ 10:14 AM

[Tall_James]

In the ranks of journalism, they were the coalition of the willing: the newspapers that supported President Bush's decision to invade Iraq in March 2003.

It may be just me but I find this statement highly hypocritical considering where it came from. Most newpapers have some form of political agenda, be it left or right, due to the leanings of the ownership and editorial staff.

The Washington Post describing other press outlets as political lackeys ("coalition of the willing")? Mr. Pot - I'd like to introduce you to Mr. Kettle.


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Say, that reminds me! How'd you get that kid s'darned fast? Me'n Dottie went in to adopt on account of
something went wrong with my semen, and they told us five years' wait for a healthy white baby! I said healthy
white baby! Five years! Okay, what else you got? Said, two Koreans and one Negro bom with the heart outside.

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[Teenweek]

Don't the Washington Post and NY Times work for John Kerry or does it just seem that way. And yes you can say the NY Post works for George Bush.

[curtoid]

WOW!

Did either of you actually read past the quote or that it was from The Washington Post???

* "coalition of the willing" was the name Bush gave those who were on the U.S.'s side of the war, it was not a swipe.

* The Washington Post supported the war; some of their regular contributors on the op-ed page include righties like George Will and that guy in the wheel chair that's always on Fox news, among many, many others.

* This particular column, and another one by Howard Kurtz, does an amazing job of documenting on the media and how it reports on politics.

Sheeeeeesh...



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This message was edited by curtoid on 5-13-04 @ 11:12 AM

[Tall_James]

"coalition of the willing" was the name Bush gave those who were on the U.S.'s side of the war, it was not a swipe.

If that was the case, The Post should have put quotes around "coalition of the willing". No quotes means that they are making the descriptive statement.


The Washington Post supported the war; some of their regular contributors on the op-ed page include righties like George Will and that guy in the wheel chair that's always on Fox news, among many, many others.

I did not question whether or not they supported or did not support the war. I just questioned the Washington Post (and any other news outlet - left or right) who comment on the impartiality of competing news organizations while claiming the impartiality that is supposed to be the benchmark of journalistic integrity.

Sheeeeeesh...

Great Googley Moogley!


<img src=http://home.comcast.net/~jamesgpatton/tj2_sig.gif>

Say, that reminds me! How'd you get that kid s'darned fast? Me'n Dottie went in to adopt on account of
something went wrong with my semen, and they told us five years' wait for a healthy white baby! I said healthy
white baby! Five years! Okay, what else you got? Said, two Koreans and one Negro bom with the heart outside.

[center]The Best Blog You're Not Reading (http://cheeseeatingbird.blogspot.com)

[Yerdaddy]

I used to dismiss the Washington Post and other "corporate media outlets" as right-wing biased. Truth is I was too lazy to read them. Now I read the Post daily and I think it's probably the best newspaper in America. And since I've become a reader I've been waiting for someone to make a valid case to support the claims of the left or the right that it serves the others' political agenda.

That piece of shit in the wheelchair is Charles Krauthammer.

<a href="http://www.armytimes.com/story.php?f=1-292925-2903288.php" target="_blank">The Army Times</a> editorial calling for "relieving top leaders from duty in a time of war."

Around the halls of the Pentagon, a term of caustic derision has emerged for the enlisted soldiers at the heart of the furor over the Abu Ghraib prison scandal: the six morons who lost the war.

Indeed, the damage done to the U.S. military and the nation as a whole by the horrifying photographs of U.S. soldiers abusing Iraqi detainees at the notorious prison is incalculable.

But the folks in the Pentagon are talking about the wrong morons.

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Fuck it from behind.

[Tall_James]

I'm not accusing the Post of bias. I'm accusing EVERY media outlet of some level of bias - be it right or left.

I'm just a cynic.




<img src=http://home.comcast.net/~jamesgpatton/tj2_sig.gif>

Say, that reminds me! How'd you get that kid s'darned fast? Me'n Dottie went in to adopt on account of
something went wrong with my semen, and they told us five years' wait for a healthy white baby! I said healthy
white baby! Five years! Okay, what else you got? Said, two Koreans and one Negro bom with the heart outside.

[center]The Best Blog You're Not Reading (http://cheeseeatingbird.blogspot.com)

[jeffdwright2001]

Mark Twain:

It has become a sarcastic proverb that a thing must be true if you saw it in a newspaper. That is the opinion intelligent people have of that lying vehicle in a nutshell. But the trouble is that the stupid people--who constitute the grand overwhelming majority of this and all other nations--do believe and are moulded and convinced by what they get out of a newspaper, and there is where the harm lies.
- "License of the Press" speech

My thoughts (these are general in nature and not directed to anyone's specific comments or even this particular thread):
I'm afraid that too often we are quick to pick our poll results or newspaper stories/quotations based upon how effectively they bolster our own thoughts and opinions.

Much like the religious zealot who has chosen specific passages from their tomb of choice, we charge forth in our arguements bolstered by the printed word. Yet we carelessly neglect the issue itself. Most events are "of the moment" meaning that decisions should be made with consideration of the past and an eye to the future. BUT, once decisions are made, they are essentially a thing of the past and the event that was "of the moment" has now changed. Circumstances around it may have been altered, new information may have come to light. And yet, somehow we continue pushing forward with our eyes closed and our fists clutching our "information" like it's a grenade we are ready to unleash on anyone who questions our current actions.

Sadly it seems much easier to let go of our analytical capabilities than to let go of our pride. It's the same problem that has keeping warring countries from establishing peace and continuing their century old conflicts. It's the same problem that causes religious factions to blast each other figuratively and literally.

I find it a little encouraging that the Washington Post is taking another look at its stance, but I'm fairly sure that they will take an enormous amount of heat from folks on both sides of the fence. There is a world of difference between our theoretical opinions and those that we are forced to make once an incident hits close to home. As mentioned in another thread, it's one thing to think of killing in an abstract fashion (or on such large scale numbers that we can't really wrap our mind around it). It's another when an individual death crosses our path through either a video or even closer through someone we intimately know.

My apologies, this should probably have been written in a blog, but there it is.

[Yerdaddy]

And if a frog had wings he wouldn't bump his ass a-hoppin'.

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Fuck it from behind.

This message was edited by Yerdaddy on 5-13-04 @ 12:02 PM

[TheMojoPin]

"If I had a fancy physics laboratory, I could prove to you an elephant could hang off a cliff with his tail tied to a dandelion!"

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1979 << December boys got it BAD >> "You can tell some lies about the good times we've had, but I've kissed your mother twice...and now I'm working on your dad..."

[Doomstone]

Stolen from various blogs...

Tucker Carlson (http://www.observer.com/pages/nytv.asp)


"I think it's a total nightmare and disaster, and I'm ashamed that I went against my own instincts in supporting it," he said. "It's something I'll never do again. Never. I got convinced by a friend of mine who's smarter than I am, and I shouldn't have done that. No. I want things to work out, but I'm enraged by it, actually."


David Brooks (http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/08/opinion/08BROO.html?ex=1399348800&en=e8d90209f1253497&ei=5007&partner=USERLAND)


"We've got to acknowledge first that the old debates are obsolete. I wish the U.S could still go off, after Iraq, at the head of "coalitions of the willing" to spread democracy around the world. But the brutal fact is that the events of the past year have discredited that approach. Nor is the U.N. a viable alternative. A body dominated by dictatorships is never going to promote democratic values. For decades, the U.N. has failed as an effective world power."


George Will (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A64323-2004May3.html)


"This administration cannot be trusted to govern if it cannot be counted on to think and, having thought, to have second thoughts....Being steadfast in defense of carefully considered convictions is a virtue. Being blankly incapable of distinguishing cherished hopes from disappointing facts, or of reassessing comforting doctrines in face of contrary evidence, is a crippling political vice."


Andrew Sullivan (http://www.andrewsullivan.com/index.php?dish_inc=archives/2004_05_09_dish_archive.html#108415840160364769)


"The one anti-war argument that, in retrospect, I did not take seriously enough was a simple one. It was that this war was noble and defensible but that this administration was simply too incompetent and arrogant to carry it out effectively. I dismissed this as facile Bush-bashing at the time. I was wrong. I sensed the hubris of this administration after the fall of Baghdad, but I didn't sense how they would grotesquely under-man the post-war occupation, bungle the maintenance of security, short-change an absolutely vital mission, dismiss constructive criticism, ignore even their allies (like the Brits), and fail to shift swiftly enough when events span out of control."


Fareed Zakaria (http://msnbc.msn.com/id/4933882/)


"On almost every issue involving postwar Iraq-troop strength, international support, the credibility of exiles, de-Baathification, handling Ayatollah Ali Sistani-Washington's assumptions and policies have been wrong. By now most have been reversed, often too late to have much effect. This strange combination of arrogance and incompetence has not only destroyed the hopes for a new Iraq. It has had the much broader effect of turning the United States into an international outlaw in the eyes of much of the world."


Robert Kagan and William Kristol (http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/004/056mvrqy.asp)


"The Bush administration seems not to recognize how widespread, and how bipartisan, is the view that Iraq is already lost or on the verge of being lost. The administration therefore may not appreciate how close the whole nation is to tipping decisively against the war."


Tom Friedman (http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/13/opinion/13FRIE.html?hp)

[quote]
It is time to ask this question: Do we have any chance of succeeding at regime change in Iraq without regime change here at home?

"Hey, Friedman, why are you bringing politics into this all of a sudden? You're the guy who always said that producing a decent outcome in Iraq was of such overriding importance to the country that it had to be kept above politics."

Yes, that's true. I still believe that. My mistake was thinking that the Bush team believed it, too. I thought the administration would have to do the right things in Iraq - from prewar planni

[NewYorkDragons80]

Most newpapers have some form of political agenda, be it left or right, due to the leanings of the ownership and editorial staff.
I agree 100%. There is no concerted media bias either way, it depends on who owns the paper.

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[TheMojoPin]

No, there IS a universal media bias...wherever the money goes, so shall they follow.

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1979 << December boys got it BAD >> "You can tell some lies about the good times we've had, but I've kissed your mother twice...and now I'm working on your dad..."