| About | |
| Contact Us | |
| Articles | |
| Topic Index | |
| Reports | |
| Quotes | |
| On the Web | |
| Links | |
| TW Tracker | |
| Support | |
Times Watch for
August 12, 2004
"Mocking" Bush Drowns Out Kerry's
Foreign Policy "Nuance"
Kerry's recent admission he would still have voted to give Bush authority to go to war even if he knew WMD would not be found is the subject of David Sanger's Thursday piece, which features the puzzling headline, "For Now, Bush's Mocking Drowns Out Kerry's Nuanced Explanation of His War Vote."
One hopes the Times is using "nuanced" ironically, and that the paper hasn't truly internalized as truth the Kerry camp's liberal mindset, which contrasts Kerry's allegedly sophisticated and nuanced foreign policy to that of Bush's unilateralist cowboy act.
Sanger begins: "For five days now, as the long-distance arguments between President Bush and Senator John Kerry have focused on the wisdom of invading Iraq, Mr. Kerry has struggled to convince his audiences that his vote to authorize the president to use military force was a far, far cry from voting for a declaration of war. So far, his aides and advisers concede, he has failed to get his message across, as Mr. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney have mocked his efforts as 'a new nuance' that amount to more examples of the senator's waffling."
Sanger then gives Kerry a half-hearted boost: "In fact, in interviews since the start of the year, Mr. Kerry has been relatively consistent in explaining his position. Mr. Bush may be seeking his moment now because polls show that Mr. Kerry's approach to Iraq is resonating with voters as strongly as Mr. Bush's--in some cases more strongly. That may explain why Mr. Kerry is willing to suggest some dates for the start of troop withdrawals, something he would not do a month ago."
Soon afterward Sanger admits: "Mr. Bush still has an edge, polls show, in the handling of terrorism."
Incidentally, amidst all the war talk, the Times, along with the rest of the major media, has yet to delve into or even mention the controversy over whether Kerry really was in Cambodia during the Vietnam War, as he has previously claimed on the Senate floor and in a letter to the Boston Herald.
Even though a Kerry campaign advisor has backtracked on Kerry's claim of spending Christmas Eve 1968 in Cambodia, the story has yet to break into the mainstream press, which has strangely been more concerned about the propriety of bringing up Vietnam-related accusations against Kerry than about engaging in journalism to determine the accuracy of the charges themselves.
For the rest of Sanger's piece, click here.
• George W. Bush | Cambodia | Campaign 2004 | Headlines | Iraq War | Sen. John Kerry | David Sanger | Vietnam
"Dowdworld," Starring Dick Cheney as Darth Vader
Maureen Dowd talked to Hannah Storm on the
CBS
Early Show Wednesday morning, where she promoted her column collection "Bushworld," denied her liberal bent, and relayed a wacky Bush administration-Star Wars analogy starring Dick Cheney as Darth Vader.
Dowd explains that Bush is Luke Skywalker, and "he has the good father, who is his own dad, who believed in internationalism and the Atlantic alliance and doing things with the allies and coalitions. And then you have the bad, dark father, Darth Vader, which is Dick Cheney, and he sort of led the president down this gloomy, dark, paranoid path of unilateralism and sort of bullying the world."
Still, when Storm asks Dowd if she's liberal, Dowd denies it: "No, I think I'm an equal opportunity skeptic. I used to tweak Clinton just as much."
Storm doesn't challenge Dowd, following up: "Well, you won a Pulitzer Prize for your columns on his impeachment. So whoever's in the White House is fair game?"
Dowd assents: "Yeah, exactly."
• Books | "Bushworld" | Columnists | Maureen Dowd
Still Haunted by Max Cleland's Loss
Thursday's front-page story by Katharine Seelye, "Democrats Don't Plan to Block Confirmation of C.I.A. Nominee," shows how Democrats (and the Times) remain obsessed over the alleged shoddy treatment of former Democratic Sen. Max Cleland of Georgia, who lost a tough Senate race in 2002 to Republican Saxby Chambliss amid false accusations that a Chambliss ad morphed Cleland into Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden.
Although Seelye's report is on Bush's choice of Rep. Porter Goss to head the CIA, she finds Cleland's fate still haunting Democrats: "Privately, some Democrats said the nomination put them in a difficult political position. The C.I.A. has already gone two months without a replacement for George J. Tenet as director. The Democrats said that if they opposed the Goss nomination they expected that the White House would cast them as obstructionists who were delaying prosecution of the war on terror. They said they had learned that lesson the hard way. In 2002, the Democrats opposed a proposal to eliminate some protections for employees of the Department of Homeland Security. Republicans took that as an opening to portray certain Democrats as opposed to protecting the nation. One of those Democrats was Senator Max Cleland of Georgia. Republicans ran a television commercial showing pictures of Mr. Cleland, Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein, and said Mr. Cleland 'voted against the president's vital homeland security efforts 11 times.' Mr. Cleland lost his seat."
Here the Times finally describes the anti-Cleland ad somewhat accurately, though Seelye's wording still implies that Cleland, bin Laden and Hussein share the same frame in the ad, which isn't true (click here to watch the actual ad).
For the full story from Seelye on the Goss nomination (and Cleland), click here.
• Campaign 2004 | CIA | Sen. Max Cleland | Rep. Porter Goss | Katharine Seelye
An Israeli's "Unlikely Friendship" with a Terrorist
Greg Myre reports from Jerusalem Thursday's on Israeli terrorist sympathizer Tali Fahima in "An Israeli Uproar, and Arrest, Over an Unlikely Friendship."
That headline definitely soft-pedals the story of an Israeli woman who speaks up for an anti-Israeli terrorist: "The improbable friendship between Tali Fahima, a 28-year-old Israeli woman, and Zacaria Zubeidah, one of the most wanted Palestinian militants, began last year with a telephone call made out of curiosity. Now she is under arrest on suspicion of helping to plan an attack against Israel, and her case is a front-page story in Israel. Ms. Fahima, the daughter of Moroccan immigrants who was then a legal secretary with no history of political activism, sought out Mr. Zubeidah because she wanted to understand what motivated Palestinians to commit acts of violence against Israelis. 'I had to ask why a man goes ahead and does this,' she said in a March interview with Israeli television. "There is a reason for this. A man doesn't wake up one morning and decide, 'O.K., I'm going to carry out an attack.' ' Ms. Fahima was arrested Monday as she was making her latest journey into the West Bank, to see Mr. Zubeidah in Jenin. As she was being led in handcuffs to a court hearing on Tuesday, she angrily defended him. 'He does not plan attacks,' she said. 'Even if he does, so what? They live under occupation. Do you even know what that means?' 'Don't worry, they are just trying to keep me away from friends I have there, from Zacaria,' she continued. 'I will never turn Zacaria in. He is a freedom fighter.'"
Myre concludes by giving the terrorist sympathizer's side of the story: "Since Mr. Zubeidah is often in hiding and away from home, Ms. Fahima spent much of her time in Jenin at his family home, with his wife and children, according to Fathi Natoor, a Palestinian journalist in Jenin. 'I used to think that this is not legitimate, that this war is wrong, that he shouldn't be fighting,' Ms. Fahima said of Mr. Zubeidah in the television interview in March. 'Today, I understand what he does.'"
For the rest of Myre on the Israeli terrorist sympathizer, click here.
• Headlines | Israel | Greg Myre | Palestinians
E-mail TimesWatch Director, Clay Waters, with TimesWatch feedback at cwaters@mediaresearch.org