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Times Watch for
December 2, 2003
Bush's "Top Gun" Landing a Real Turkey
Not even his unprecedented Thanksgiving with troops in Baghdad bought Bush holiday goodwill from the Times. In Sunday's Week in Review, John Kifner tees off on the already famous photo of Bush holding a Thanksgiving turkey on a platter during the president's surprise visit to Baghdad. Kifner segues quickly to another famous Bush image: "But, in a sense, it was also a corrective to an earlier image artfully arranged by Mr. Bush's handlers: his swaggering arrival in a flight suit on an aircraft carrier outfitted with a banner reading 'Mission Accomplished.'"
Kifner again relates the death toll to soldiers post-"flight suit": "Since the President declared major hostilities over on the flight deck that May 1, at least 287 service personnel have been killed in steadily mounting attacks--nearly twice as many as in the war itself. November has been the deadliest month, with more than 60 soldiers killed in hostile actions, more than in any other month. The so-called 'Top Gun' landing had clearly been designed as a triumphal image that would play a prominent part in the president's re-election campaign. Instead, it now seems a symbol of the naïve, almost willful, optimism that has marked the administration's plan to overthrow Saddam Hussein and, in so doing, usher in a new era of democracy in the Middle East. Indeed, that footage will now almost inevitably figure in the campaign of whomever the Democrats finally nominate."
For the rest of Kifner on the imagery of Bush at war, click here.
• Baghdad | George W. Bush | Iraq War | John Kifner | Thanksgiving
Propping Up Prospects for a Left-Wing "Peace" Deal
Euro-based reporter Elaine Sciolino files a Mideast story on an unofficial peace deal being hashed out in Geneva between liberal Israelis and some Palestinians (though Sciolino, of course, doesn't use the term "liberal" to describe the unofficial effort). In Tuesday's edition she asserts: "In a sense, the pact was as much a rebuke of the hard-line policies of the Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon, as it was a blueprint for a Middle East peace agreement. But it was welcomed as a good starting point for negotiations."
As Times Watch noted the last time the Times tried to push this left-wing peace deal, the Geneva Accord is considered so pro-Palestinian in Israel that even the liberal Ehud Barak (the former Labor Israeli prime minister who participated in Bill Clinton's Camp David "peace" deal) criticizes it as "irresponsible and damaging to the State of Israel." Today's Times editorializes in favor of the Accord as well (the headline reads "A Fine, Unofficial Mideast Peace Deal.")
Showing she's absorbed the lessons of previous Times reporting from Israel, Sciolino displays moral equivalence, weighing the lives of Palestinian terrorists and Israeli civilians as equally dear and refusing to assign blame for suicide bombings: "There has been a virtual absence of peace talks between Israelis and Palestinians since the start of the Palestinian uprising in September 2000. More than 2,200 Palestinians and more than 800 Israelis have died in the relentless violence."
Sciolino concludes with a long excerpt from ex-president Jimmy Carter: "In an interview, Mr. Carter criticized both leaders in the region for not moving forward aggressively to make peace and the Bush administration for what he called its 'bias' toward Israel. He speculated that history might have been different if he had been re-elected president in 1980. 'Had I been elected to a second term, with the prestige and authority and influence and reputation I had in the region, we could have moved to a final solution,' he said."
(Note Carter's extremely poor choice of words to describe an agreement involving Jews. Shouldn't diplomats, even free-lancers like Carter, be, you know, diplomatic?)
For the rest of Sciolino on the Geneva Accord, click here.
• Geneva Accord | Israel | Middle East | Peace Talks | Elaine Sciolino
An Officially Unofficial Middle East Peace Deal
A Monday story by James Bennet, "Quiet Times in the Mideast Encourage Official and Unofficial Efforts for a Cease-Fire," is accompanied by the following misleading photo caption: "Palestinian protesters yesterday tried to stop an unidentified delegate from going to Geneva to meet Israeli delegates and sign an official truce."
Official truce? Bennet's actual story emphasizes that the treaty is in fact unofficial: "But on Monday in Geneva, prominent Palestinians and Israelis, without the approval of their governments, plan with great fanfare to sign their own, unofficial peace treaty."
For a feel of how out of the mainstream this meeting is, get a load of the attendees--a leftwing American actor and a familiar freelance diplomat: "Organizers are expecting up to 150 representatives from each side, to be presided over by Richard Dreyfuss, the American actor. They say former President Jimmy Carter will also attend." Oh joy.
For the rest of Bennet's story on the Geneva Accord, click here.
• James Bennet | Gaffes | Geneva Accord | Israel | Middle East | Peace Talks
E-mail TimesWatch Director, Clay Waters, with TimesWatch feedback at cwaters@mediaresearch.org