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Times Watch for
January 26, 2004
John Kerry, "A Centrist on a Surge"?
In a Sunday Week in Review "Page Two" summary of the Democratic candidates, Randal Archibold ventures this observation regarding Sen. John Edwards' campaign: "Weaknesses: He is not as well financed as Senator Kerry, Dr. Dean or General Clark, a fellow Southerner gaining ground in the polls. He is not as well known in New Hampshire as the New Englanders Dr. Dean, Senators Lieberman and Kerry, who is a more experienced, fellow centrist also on a surge."
If it's wrong to call Sen. John Edwards a centrist (he sports a lifetime rating of 15 from the American Conservative Union), then calling Kerry (Michael Dukakis' lieutenant governor, lifetime ACU rating of 6) is just absurd.
For the rest of the Times' round-up on the Democrats (last item), click here.
• Randal Archibold | Sen. John Edwards | Sen. John Kerry | Labeling Bias
Has John Ashcroft used "harsh measures" to combat terrorism? Friday's piece by Alan Cowell from the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland takes it as a given. Covering foreign reaction to Ashcroft's presence at Davos, Cowell writes: "Mr. Ashcroft also faced wide criticism of the harsh measures he had taken to combat terrorism. 'I didn't come back to Davos because I haven't been able to find any hostility in Washington, D.C.,' Mr. Ashcroft joked at a lunch gathering, apparently referring to questioning in the United States about the extent to which civil liberties have been subjugated to security measures taken in the name of pre-empting new terror attacks."
For the rest of Cowell on Ashcroft, click here.
• John Ashcroft | Civil Liberties | Alan Cowell | Terrorism
Another Vietnam Rerun from Frank Rich
Is Iraq another Vietnam? Maybe, says editor Frank Rich in his latest column for Sunday's Arts & Leisure section after watching Errol Morris' documentary "The Fog of War," featuring Robert McNamara, secretary of defense for presidents Kennedy and Johnson and architect of the Vietnam War. Rich links Vietnam and Iraq as similar heights of benighted folly: "The greater debate has been over the degree to which the follies of Vietnam are now being re-enacted in Iraq. Though Mr. Morris started interviewing Mr. McNamara before 9/11 and his film never mentions current events, the implicit parallels between then and now are there for the taking."
Rich uses the discredited "imminent threat" canard (Bush never used the term): "In the Johnson administration's deceptive hyping of the Gulf of Tonkin incident as a provocation to war, we see the Bush administration's deceptive hyping of the supposedly imminent threat of Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction for the same purpose. In Mr. McNamara's stern warnings against waging war unilaterally and against trying to win the hearts and minds of a foreign land without understanding its culture first, we find historical lessons we didn't heed as we blundered into the escalating chaos of our 'postwar' occupation of Iraq."
For the rest of Rich on the Vietnam-Iraq connection, click here.
• Columnists | Iraq | Movies | Frank Rich | Vietnam
E-mail TimesWatch Director, Clay Waters, with TimesWatch feedback at cwaters@mediaresearch.org