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Times Watch for
February 2, 2004
The "Imminent" Patrick Tyler
In "Leaders Sought a Threat. Spies Get the Blame," reporter Patrick Tyler goes to town on claims by President George Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair of the "imminent threat" Saddam Hussein allegedly posed. Only trouble is, Bush never actually used the term.
That doesn't stop Tyler, who confidently uses the term five times in Sunday's story for the Week in Review: "…it seems more likely than ever that [British and U.S. intelligence agencies] will fail to confirm that Saddam Hussein was the imminent threat that he was made out to be by President Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair."
Tyler also suggests intelligence was "redrafted" to make Iraq seem more--you guessed it, imminent: "Political hands in both capitals redrafted the intelligence on Iraq's weapons programs--intelligence that had not appreciably changed in years--to make it appear that the threat was no longer merely evolving, but was imminent."
More "imminent" words from Tyler's piece: "Demand for convincing intelligence on Iraq's weapons rose in 2002 as Iraq began to be portrayed as a much more imminent threat to the West….For a decade, the threat from Iraq had been evolving, not imminent. That would change with Mr. Cheney's warning in two speeches of a nuclear-armed Iraq and in Mr. Blair's dossier, with its signal of a moment of peril….Still, it seems inevitable on both sides of the Atlantic that the Iraq inquiries will ultimately return to the political arena, where raw and sometimes contradictory intelligence was used by leaders to turn what had been an evolving threat into an imminent one."
For the record, here is what Bush has had to say about the "imminent threat" posed by Saddam Hussein, in his 2003 State of the Union address: "Some have said we must not act until the threat is imminent. Since when have terrorists and tyrants announced their intentions, politely putting us on notice before they strike?" In other words, Bush took pains to describe Hussein as not yet an imminent threat.
For the rest of Tyler on Iraq's "imminent threat," click here.
• Iraq War | Patrick Tyler | WMD
The Republican's "Shameful Coalition"
Fresh off a six-part series on the Middle East, columnist Thomas Friedman on Sunday files his take on the 2004 campaign, and it's chock full of "libertarian nuts" and other limited-government flakes.
Friedman reviews a book by former Nixon commerce secretary Peter Peterson and suggests Democrats apply its principles as campaign mantras: "That is the only way to expose what the shameful coalition of Karl Rove-led cynics, who care only about winning the next election; voodoo economists preaching supply-side economics; and libertarian nuts who think that by cutting tax revenues you'll shrink the government--when all you do is balloon the deficit--is doing to our future. And please don't tell me the tax cuts are working. Of course they're working! If you put this much stimulus into our economy--three tax cuts, loose monetary policy and out-of-control spending--it will produce a boom. Eat 10 chocolate bars at once and you'll also get a rush. But at what long-term cost?"
For the rest of Friedman, click here.
• Campaign 2004 | Columnists | Thomas Friedman | Tax Cuts
Howard Dean, Centrist in Disguise
Sunday's Week in Review story on campaign spouses by Ginia Bellafante sees Howard Dean as a secret centrist: "Perhaps Mrs. Dean, known as Dr. Steinberg professionally, was a flinty contrarian like her husband, a centrist whose greatest liability, many Democrats have complained, has been his refusal to play one on television."
For the rest of the piece, click here.
Another bit of labeling bias from the reliable
Robert Pear, in Sunday's front-page story by Pear and fellow reporter Edmund Andrews, "Bush To Back Off Some Initiatives For Budget Plan."
Once again, there are no liberals to be found in Congress, as Pear and Andrews note Bush's latest budget faces challenges from "conservatives" and Democrats: "In getting his budget through Congress, the president will face formidable challenges from Senate Democrats who oppose making his tax cuts permanent, from conservative Republicans who want to cut spending more and from lawmakers in both parties who shudder at the prospect of reducing spending on favored domestic programs in an election year." There are three mentions of conservatives in the piece, but zero liberals.
For the rest of Pear and Andrews on Bush's budget, click here.
• Edmund Andrews | Budget | Deficit | Labeling Bias | Robert Pear
Left-Wing Novel As "Ferocious" As Paul Krugman
Editor Dwight Garner in the Times Sunday Book Review finds something to like about Robert Newman's "left-leaning" novel, "The Fountain at the Center of the World." Garner writes: "The problem with most left-leaning novels is that they're as earnest and mopey as a Sarah McLachlan ballad on a rainy day. 'The Fountain at the Center of the World,' on the other hand, is as ferocious as a jar of freeze-dried Paul Krugman columns." High praise indeed.
For the Garner review in full, click here.
• Books | Dwight Garner | Paul Krugman
E-mail TimesWatch Director, Clay Waters, with TimesWatch feedback at cwaters@mediaresearch.org