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Times Watch for
April 14, 2004
"Political Peril" for Bush?
David Sanger's front-page analysis of Bush's Tuesday-night press conference ups the stakes for Bush: "Facing a moment of political peril unlike any in the more than one thousand days of his presidency, George W. Bush made the case on Tuesday night for staying the course in Iraq with the language and zeal of a missionary and combined it with a stark warning that failure would embolden America's enemies around the world. 'We're changing the world,' Mr. Bush said halfway through a speech and news conference that was largely an hourlong justification for holding fast in Iraq, no matter how the casualties mount, no matter how chaotic the process of forming a new government….Mr. Bush drove home the singlemindedness that has become the hallmark of his presidency, his greatest strength in the eyes of his admirers and a dangerous, never-change-course stubbornness in the eyes of his detractors."
Again, Sanger frets over Bush's refusal to spout mea culpas, a la Richard Clarke: "But characteristically, he acknowledged no error, no change of course, and he gave no ground to critics who said he had more passion than plans….It is Mr. Bush's sense of mission that sustains him these days, his friends say. But that trait may also explain why he was so unwilling to directly engage the reporters who kept asking him whether he had regrets about failing to do more to prepare for terrorist attacks in that fateful summer of 2001 or whether he believed that he had made mistakes in the march to Baghdad."
For the rest of Sanger's analysis of Bush's press conference, click here.
• George W. Bush | Iraq War | David Sanger | Terrorism
An editorial in Wednesday's edition tackles FBI failures in the wake of the 9/11 hearings. The editorial is unusual in that it actually spreads the blame around: "The Clinton and Bush administrations failed in different ways, but they shared one central flaw: an inability to manage the Federal Bureau of Investigation."
More typically, the Times dismisses as grandstanding a memo introduced by Attorney General John Ashcroft showing how Clinton's Justice Department barred the CIA from sharing information with the FBI about terror suspects in the U.S.: "The attorney general argued that a 'wall' between law enforcement and intelligence gathering had kept officials at the F.B.I. from communicating with one another, and with the C.I.A., and had led to both agencies' missing the 9/11 plot. Mr. Ashcroft was eager to blame the previous administration for those failures, and he offered up a newly declassified 1995 Justice Department memo that he said made the wall even larger and more impenetrable. After months in which the administration has refused to make other documents and testimony available, Mr. Ashcroft's eagerness to put this one bit of classified material on the record seemed more than a little self-serving--especially since Mr. Ashcroft affirmed that policy in August 2001."
The instant dismissal of Ashcroft's information is worrying enough. Yet for some reason the Times fails to mention the most interesting and potentially dramatic part of the story: The author of the memo is 9/11 panelist Jamie Gorelick, deputy attorney general under President Clinton. That's a wrinkle that's raised questions in some quarters about what she's doing on the commission in the first place.
For the full editorial, click here.
• John Ashcroft | Editorial | Jamie Gorelick | Terrorism
Why Won't Bush Apologize for 9/11?
Richard Stevenson and Douglas Jehl cover Bush's Tuesday-night news conference in a filing which includes reporting by Elisabeth Bumiller, who demanded of Bush: "Do you feel any sense of personal responsibility for September 11th?"
Stevenson and Jehl write for Wednesday's Times: "Seeking to tamp down concern that Iraq is spinning out of control, Mr. Bush said he would provide the military with whatever forces it needed to quell the insurgency and come up with whatever money is necessary to rebuild Iraq."
Next, it's variations on a popular Times' theme: Wondering why Bush refuses to apologize. Stevenson and Jehl note: "But Mr. Bush stopped short of offering an apology for the fact that the United States government failed to prevent the attacks, something the former counterterrorism adviser Richard A. Clarke did in testimony before the 9/11 commission."
For the rest of Stevenson and Jehl, click here.
• George W. Bush | Iraq War | Douglas Jehl | Richard Stevenson | Terrorism
Anti-U.S. Anecdotes From an Anti-War Activist
Christine Hauser files "War Reports From Civilians Stir Up Iraqis Against U.S" from Baghdad, relaying several anecdotes of "Iraqis who have fled Falluja tell of random gunfire, dead and wounded lying in the streets, and ambulances being shot up. Their accounts of the American offensive on Falluja, mounted after the ambush and mutilation of four American security contractors there, are the ones many Arabs in the region are hearing."
Hauser devotes four paragraphs in the middle of her Wednesday story to the comments of Jo Wilding, who Hauser calls "a volunteer who accompanied other foreigners and Iraqis carrying medical supplies to a clinic in Falluja."
Wilding claims: "Two children had head wounds from bullets, both died. In another room was an old woman with a bullet wound--she was still holding a white flag."
Hauser continues: "[Wilding] said that while in an ambulance with sirens on and lights flashing, they were fired on from the direction of American marines who had taken over a rooftop. 'We started reversing,' she said. 'There was still firing. There were people with guns all over the place.'"
But Wilding's hardly a neutral observer. A pro-Palestinian and anti-war activist, her personal weblog features her unvarnished opinion of Bush and the war effort: "And the satellite news says the cease-fire is holding and George Bush says to the troops on Easter Sunday that, 'I know what we’re doing in Iraq is right.' Shooting unarmed men in the back outside their family home is right. Shooting grandmothers with white flags is right? Shooting at women and children who are fleeing their homes is right? Firing at ambulances is right? Well George, I know too now. I know what it looks like when you brutalize people so much that they’ve nothing left to lose."
This is Hauser's reliable source for what's happening on the ground in Iraq?
For the rest of Hauser's piece, click here.
• Christine Hauser | Iraq War | Jo Wilding
"Tune In" to Liberal Radio, Says the
Times
The Times "Public
Lives" section, which features a profile of a prominent New Yorker, has a predictably liberal slant. Robin Finn's Wednesday contribution, "A Radio Voice Challenging Right-Wing Talkers," sharpens the disparity with a profile of liberal "Air America" host Lizz
Winstead.
After letting Winstead talk of "right-wing loonies and psychos," Finn wraps up with this little publicity boost: "'Jeopardy!' is winding down on her television. Ms. Winstead, a University of Minnesota history major and fact-hoarder who dropped out to perform stand-up, is a fan of the show, and of Scrabble: she has every edition ever made. But you won't catch her slinging 'any $5 words' around on the air. Five-dollar words aren't funny. Liberals sometimes are. Tune in if you don't believe her."
For the rest of Finn's profile of liberal radio host Lizz Winstead, click here.
• Air America | Robin Finn | Public Lives | Lizz Winstead
You Mean Kerry's Against Gay Marriage Too?
A Sunday Magazine story from contributing writer Michael Sokolove, "Can This Marriage Be Saved?" concerns Log Cabin Republicans who feel alienated because of Bush's moves to codify marriage as between a man and a woman. Sokolove notes: "It feels like an expression of hate. And in political terms, it feels to Log Cabin members, as committed Republicans, as if they have been thrown overboard to satisfy the party's social conservatives….Log Cabin is basically an interest group dedicated to moving the Republican Party toward what they consider its essential principles: limited government and support for individual freedoms….While Log Cabin is not actively working against Bush, it is doing the next best thing: running commercials in seven swing states opposing the federal marriage amendment."
Not once in the longish article is this inconvenient fact mentioned: Democrat John Kerry opposes gay marriage as well, which makes the fuming over Bush seem rather moot. As Kerry spokesman David Wade told the Associated Press: "John Kerry favors civil unions, not gay marriage. It's that simple."
Sokolove oddly concludes that the gay marriage movement, which seeks to overturn a thousand years of common law, is actually squarely in the conservative tradition: "For now, they just want the status quo: keep the Constitution as it is. Let the states decide and, essentially, leave us alone. Those are good old conservative themes in the tradition of Goldwater and Reagan--and what could be more Republican than that?"
For the rest of Sokolove's story on the Log Cabin Republicans, click here.
• Campaign 2004 | Gay Marriage | Log Cabin Republicans | Michael Sokolove
E-mail TimesWatch Director, Clay Waters, with TimesWatch feedback at cwaters@mediaresearch.org