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Times Watch for
April 15, 2004
The Return of Incurious George
The headline to Thursday's masthead editorial on U.S. intelligence failures, "The Price of Incuriosity," works a theme developed before both in Times editorials ("one of the most incurious men ever to occupy the White House") and news stories: Incurious George.
The editorial opens on this discordant note: "Americans knew George W. Bush was an incurious man when they elected him, but the hearings of the 9/11 investigating commission, which turned yesterday from the F.B.I.'s fecklessness to the C.I.A.'s blurred vision, have brought that fact home in a startling way." The Times then criticizes Bush for not meeting enough with CIA director George Tenet before 9-11.
Later the editorial notes: "As the president rightly said on Tuesday night, the only people responsible for the slaughter in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania on Sept. 11, 2001, were Osama bin Laden and the other terrorists. But to watch these hearings is to endure a terrifying review of the chances missed and balls dropped in the last two administrations."
Note that "last two administrations" part--the paper's bow to reality, admitting that many of the intelligence problems are holdovers from the 90s, when Bill Clinton was in office.
Of course, the Times doesn't go out of its way to mention Clinton's oversight of those past failures, offering instead this bland, unpoliticized chronology: "According to a commission staff report, until the Sept. 11 attacks, the intelligence community had not done a National Intelligence Estimate on terrorism--a sweeping summary of the intelligence community's views--since 1997. And there was not a lot of comfort in the C.I.A.'s defensive response that there had been a steady stream of documents, briefings and meetings since 1995 on Al Qaeda's domestic threat, including to passenger airliners."
The editorial actually has some sensible points--but the Times just couldn't resist deploying its cartoon of "Incurious George."
For the rest of the editorial, click here.
• George W. Bush | Editorial | Terrorism
Bringing the Dead Home, and to the Front Page
In a first, Thursday's front page features photos of soldiers' coffins from Iraq, accompanying Monica Davey's "Deadly Week Ends in Tears For the Fallen," her long profile of how grieving families feel about the war.
The Times has often complained about the ban on photographing soldiers' coffins at Dover Air Force Base (without mentioning that the ban has been in place since 1991). Instead, on Thursday the Times runs photos of caskets arriving in the home towns of soldiers, leading to Davey's article and a full page of photos of soldiers killed in Iraq.
Davey writes: "In a small town near Dallas, people lined the streets and waved flags for a funeral procession for Sgt. Gerardo Moreno of the Army. In Bradenton, Fla., Bach and Brahms were played in honor of Pfc. Christopher R. Cobb of the Marines, who had played the violin in high school. In Memphis, friends and family met for a viewing of Capt. Brent Morel of the Marines, whose relatives say he died fulfilling a mission he believed was worthwhile. And here in the Milwaukee suburbs, family, friends and even strangers grieved over the death of Specialist Michelle M. Witmer, and some expressed anger at the prolonged sacrifice that had been demanded of her National Guard unit."
The stories Davey tells are affecting, though her wording is sometimes dramatic: "The dead came from cities and small towns across the continental United States, as well as from Puerto Rico and the Mariana Islands. They came from all the major service branches--the Air Force, Navy, Army, Marines, as well as the Army National Guard and the Army Reserve. They were as young as 18, as old as 45. At least two were women. And this week their remains were returned home."
Davey sees the death toll gaining momentum and gives space to a small group of anti-war protestors: "As chilling scenes of deadly skirmishes and hostage-taking played out in Iraq, funerals, one after the next, began filling long days in places like this. In different corners of the country, as the total American death toll climbed above 670, the eulogies, the salutes, the coffins came faster than ever….Elsewhere, there were other scattered signs of protest. In Washington on Wednesday, two dozen military families, most members of Military Families Speak Out and Veterans For Peace, carried hundreds of carnations--one for each dead service member--to the White House gates, saying they wanted President Bush to halt what they consider an unjustified war. 'It is our loved ones who are being used as cannon fodder,' said one organizer, Nancy Lessin, the mother of a marine who served in Iraq."
For the rest of Davey's profile of the war dead, click here.
• Monica Davey | Funerals | Iraq War
E-mail TimesWatch Director, Clay Waters, with TimesWatch feedback at cwaters@mediaresearch.org