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Times Watch for
January 28, 2004
No One to Blame but Bush?
The headline to a front-page story from Wednesday puts the onus on Bush to back up claims of Iraqi WMD: "Bush Backs Away From His Claims About Iraq Arms." Reporter David Sanger does just that, putting all the blame on Bush while failing to note that intelligence in other countries (as well as Bush critic/presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry) shared Bush's opinion on Iraq's arms capabilities.
Sanger writes: "…at the White House and on Capitol Hill, many officials said it was obvious that the intelligence reports about Iraq had been deeply flawed. They said they doubted that Mr. Bush would have the luxury of waiting to confront the issue….Two Democratic members of the Senate Intelligence Committee said Tuesday that senior members of the administration continue to exaggerate evidence about unconventional weapons." Sanger then quotes liberal senators Carl Levin of Michigan and Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia.
He continues: "Scott McClellan, the White House spokesman, argued Tuesday that Mr. Bush had never said that Iraq posed an 'imminent' threat, but only a 'grave and growing' one. That may be literally correct, but both Mr. Bush and his aides made it clear many times that they believed Mr. Hussein already had unconventional weapons." Yet the "imminent threat" myth keeps resurfacing in the Times (most recently in Sunday's column by editor Frank Rich).
Despite the story's loaded headline, if Bush is backing away from his claims, he risks tripping over the feet of Britain, France, Germany, Israel, Australia, and the UN. As ex-weapons inspector David Kay told the Washington Post: "Everyone was wrong. Outside experts like myself and other intelligence agencies…including the Germans and French believed he [Hussein] had weapons."
A Wall Street Journal editorial notes what Sanger fails to point out: "That Saddam had WMD was the consensus of the U.S. intelligence community for years, going back well into the Clinton Administration….No less than French President Jacques Chirac warned as late as last February about 'the probable possession of weapons of mass destruction by an uncontrollable country, Iraq.'"
Sanger quotes the Democratic frontrunner: In a recent interview, Senator John Kerry, a Massachusetts Democrat who won his party's New Hampshire primary on Tuesday, said he had been 'repeatedly misled' about the evidence by a number of administration officials. He cited [Vice President] Cheney, but also noted that Secretary of State Colin L. Powell--who had been the most cautious in the administration about the evidence--told him that the reason to vote to authorize military action was Mr. Hussein's weapons ability--and that other reasons, including bringing democracy to Iraq, were secondary."
Sanger lets Kerry's criticism pass unchallenged, although a Kerry speech shows that by Kerry's own standard he was also "misleading." Kerry said in a Senate speech on October 9, 2002: "It is clear that in the 4 years since the UNSCOM inspectors were forced out, Saddam Hussein has continued his quest for weapons of mass destruction. According to intelligence, Iraq has chemical and biological weapons as well as missiles with ranges in excess of the 150 kilometer restriction imposed by the United Nations in the ceasefire resolution. Although Iraq's chemical weapons capability was reduced during the UNSCOM inspections, Iraq has maintained its chemical weapons effort over the last 4 years….Iraq has some lethal and incapacitating agents and is capable of quickly producing and weaponizing a variety of such agents, including anthrax, for delivery on a range of vehicles such as bombs, missiles, aerial sprayers, and covert operatives which could bring them to the United States homeland."
Sanger concludes his story with loaded language: "Moreover, international law has been far more forgiving of 'pre-emptive war' against a country about to begin a strike of its own than it is of 'preventive war' against a country that may, some day, pose a challenge to another state. That is seen more as an act of raw power than of self-defense." What's Sanger suggesting?
For the rest of Sanger on Bush's "backing away," click here.
• George W. Bush | Iraq War | Sen. John Kerry | WMD
Questioning Kerry's Patriotism
David Halbfinger's dispatch from Manchester, N.H., after Sen. John Kerry's comeback win in the New Hampshire primary includes this take on the senator's raucous victory speech: "This was a martial-sounding speech from a Democrat whose rationale for his own electability--that he is best prepared to withstand an expected assault on his patriotism by Republicans in a general election--has always begun with and come back to his service in Vietnam."
What assaults? The Times doesn't say, simply passing along unchallenged the liberal idea that Republicans hammer Democrats as unpatriotic.
For the rest of Halbfinger on the Kerry victory rally, click here.
• Campaign 2004 | David Halbfinger | Sen. John Kerry | New Hampshire | Patriotism
Loving Those Who Love Paul Robeson
Anti-war
reporter Chris Hedges files a profile for the Times liberally slanted "Public
Lives" feature. This time, Hedges finds a preacher's son fighting for gay rights: "If you look hard at Peter C. Harvey, the first African-American to serve as attorney general of New Jersey, you can see his preacher father. Not the one who presided over long Baptist church meetings and services, not the one who made weekly visits to sick parishioners, not the one who thundered from the pulpit, but the one who believed that life was about struggle, about making the world a place where those who were different were not just tolerated, but respected….It is the importance of respect that he says pushed him to support Gov. James E. McGreevey's gay domestic partnership law, one of the most liberal in the nation. The law gives gay couples a host of new rights, including financial benefits and hospital visiting privileges."
And, in what's becoming a habit in Hedges' stories, there's a tribute to the singer, actor, and Stalin-supporter Paul Robeson: "[Harvey] began to speak of Moses--not the way a graduate of Morgan State University and Columbia Law School and the chief law enforcement official in the state might be expected to, but as a Baptist pastor would. It is Moses, he said, along with Paul Robeson, whom he most admires."
For Hedges' latest profile of a liberal figure, click here.
• Gay Rights | Chris Hedges | Public Lives | Paul Robeson
Bush "Taking Away Civil Liberties"
The Times cries wolf over the Patriot Act in a Tuesday editorial: "Mr. Bush suggested that the Patriot Act simply gave law enforcement the same kind of powers to go after terrorists that it already has for ordinary criminals. But it actually expands the government's ability to monitor people in important ways. Section 215, which has provoked considerable opposition, allows the F.B.I. to order third parties, like libraries or Internet service providers, to hand over personal records about individuals. Librarians and other record holders can be arrested if they make a request public, or notify the target."
But as Byron York noted in National Review Online, as of last September such an action had not occurred: "As the attorney general revealed…the Department has never used Section 215, the controversial portion of the act that allows terrorism investigators to view library, business, medical, or other records after receiving a court's permission to do so."
The Times then takes an unlikely shot against Bush's tax cuts: "There are better ways to make the country safe: inspect more of the shipping containers coming into United States ports, increase security around nuclear and chemical plants, and buy up enriched uranium before it falls into the wrong hands. But the money to do such things is in short supply after the president's tax cuts. Taking away civil liberties may not expand Mr. Bush's gaping budget deficit, but its price in lost freedom is more than we can afford."
Funny how the Times didn't make that same "money is in short supply" argument when Bush pushed $400 billion of spending on the Medicare drug bill.
For the rest of the Times editorial, click here.
• Civil Liberties | Editorial | Patriot Act | Tax Cuts
E-mail TimesWatch Director, Clay Waters, with TimesWatch feedback at cwaters@mediaresearch.org