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Times Watch for
February 18, 2004
Still Pushing the Guard Non-Story
In "Amid Iraq-Bound Guardsmen, Bush Acts to Blunt Foes' Barbs," Richard Stevenson trails Bush to Fort Polk, La., where the president wished off troops heading to Iraq. Though the media-generated controversy over Bush's National Guard service seems to be fading, Stevenson brings it up twice in this unrelated article: "President Bush on Tuesday defended the war in Iraq to cheering troops here and then had lunch with a National Guard unit on its way to Baghdad, a visit that combined Mr. Bush's role as commander in chief with his political need to rebut attacks on his own service record and foreign policy."
Stevenson insists U.S. fatalities in Iraq pose a problem for Bush, and again raises the Guard issue: "Republicans had expected Mr. Bush to enter the general election campaign benefiting from his leadership in the war on terrorism. But the continued deaths of American troops in Iraq, the apparent absence of stockpiles of banned weapons there and the questions about Mr. Bush's service in the Guard in the Vietnam era have all eaten into his support, left the White House scrambling and emboldened Democrats."
Stevenson offers no polling data to back up the claim Bush's support is being eroded by questions about his Guard service. In fact, an ABC News/Washington Post poll shows the public doesn’t find it a relevant topic going into the 2004 election. ABC polling chief Gary Langer notes: "On another front, questions about Bush's National Guard duty during the Vietnam War lack traction: Americans by more than 2-to-1 -- 66 percent to 30 percent -- say it's not a legitimate issue in the election campaign."
For the rest of Stevenson's take on Bush's Louisiana trip, click here.
• George W. Bush | Campaign 2004 | Iraq War | National Guard
On Monday the Times reprints Samuel Abt's International Herald Tribune story on the trials of Arab satellite news network Al Jazeera, and includes this interesting headline: "For Al Jazeera, Balanced Coverage Frequently Leaves No Side Happy."
This would be the same "balanced" network criticized by Allied officials for showing dead Western soldiers and POWS. The same one whose reporter Majed Abdel Hadi declared, after the accidental death of another Al Jazeera reporter in a Baghdad air raid: "I will not be objective about this because we have been dragged into this conflict. We were targeted because the Americans don't want the world to see the crimes they are committing against the Iraqi people."
For the rest of Abt's story, click here.
• Samuel Abt | Al Jazeera | Iraq War
New theatre critic Margo Jefferson gives a glowing review to a production of socialist Bertolt Brecht's anti-war play "Mother Courage and Her Children," suggesting it has contemporary resonance: "This play was first performed in 1941. The war that had begun with Hitler's rise to power had spread through Europe and beyond. In the opening scene an army officer complains, 'Peace is one big waste of equipment.' These words sound
contemporary."
Times Watch doesn't recall George Bush, Dick Cheney or Donald Rumsfeld making similar warmongering remarks. However, the line does call to mind something written by retired Times' liberal columnist Anthony Lewis back on July 21, 1995, calling for humanitarian intervention in Bosnia: "This country has an enormous defense establishment. What is it for, if not to be used in a conflict that threatens our great alliance and our standing in the world?"
For the rest of Jefferson's review, click here.
• Arts | Iraq War | Margo Jefferson | Theatre
E-mail TimesWatch Director, Clay Waters, with TimesWatch feedback at cwaters@mediaresearch.org