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Times Watch for
September 27, 2004
Democratic Patriotism Under Attack, As Usual
Monday's front-page story from Adam Nagourney and Robin Toner, "Strong Charges Set New Tone Before Debate," passes on as credible clichéd liberal complaints that Republicans are questioning Democrats' patriotism in the campaign home stretch.
"Mr. Kerry has escalated his attacks on Mr. Bush's Iraq policy, while Republicans have responded with a pattern of attacks seeking to portray Mr. Kerry as undermining troops, demoralizing allies and being weak in the face of terrorist attacks, a line of attack that has enraged Democrats. On Capitol Hill, where many Democrats feel vulnerable to similar attacks, lawmakers said it was essential for the party to fight back. 'There used to be a time when aiding and abetting the enemy was a treasonous offense,' Senator Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, said in an interview. 'Now it's become a routine political charge.' Mr. Durbin urged the Kerry campaign and his fellow Democrats in a closed party caucus meeting last week to confront the Republicans over that line of attack. Mr. Bush, at an appearance in the Rose Garden last week with Prime Minister Ayad Allawi of Iraq, suggested that terrorists could be emboldened by what he has repeatedly described as Mr. Kerry's changing positions on Iraq. Before that, Representative J. Dennis Hastert, Republican of Illinois and speaker of the House, said he believed that Al Qaeda would be more successful under a Kerry presidency."
After hearing from a liberal senator, Nagourney and Toner cut to a liberal professor to support the view that the patriotism of Democrats is coming under attack by Republicans (an unsubstantiated assertion, but one the Times is fond of promoting): "'It's a fairly common occurrence in wartime that people who dissent are accused of being unpatriotic,' said Alan Brinkley, a historian who is the provost of Columbia University. 'But to have it come from high levels of this kind is somewhat unusual.'"
For the rest of Nagourney and Toner, click here.
• Campaign 2004 | Adam Nagourney | Patriotism | Robin Toner
"Killings Were Rare" in Hussein's Iraq?
Alex Berenson misses a major point in his Sunday story from Baghdad on post-war violence, "Killings Surge, and Doctors See a Procession of Misery."
The story unfolds upon a grim scene: "Business is booming at the Baghdad morgue. Before the war, before the fall of Saddam Hussein's government, seven or eight bodies arrived each day at this nondescript building in northeastern Baghdad for autopsies. Most deaths resulted from car crashes or other accidents. Killings were rare, and gun violence rarer still, a testament to the monopoly that Mr. Hussein held on the use of force. Now the paper-and-cardboard ledgers where the autopsies are logged are torn from overuse. On an average day, the morgue receives 20 to 25 bodies, the human cost of the post-war wave of crime and insurgency engulfing the city….The murder rate rose this summer, defying more than a year of promises from the American authorities about the increasing effectiveness of the Iraqi police and security forces."
But Berenson doesn't mention a major aspect of Hussein's "monopoly…on the use of force": The killings and violence that went on daily in Saddam Hussein's prisons, the victims of which never made it to the morgue or hospital statistical tables, but were buried in mass graves.
For the rest of Berenson, click here.
• Alex Berenson | Saddam Hussein | Iraq War
Bush's "Un-American" Campaign
"President Bush and his surrogates are taking their re-election campaign into dangerous territory," is the baleful opening sentence of a Saturday editorial, "An Un-American Way to Campaign."
And it doesn’t let up from there, going after Bush and Cheney for allegedly claiming Kerry is giving aid and comfort to the enemy, and using an old botched quote from Cheney to support its dubious argument: "When Vice President Dick Cheney declared that electing Mr. Kerry would create a danger 'that we'll get hit again,' his supporters attributed that appalling language to a rhetorical slip. But Mr. Cheney is still delivering that message. Meanwhile, as Dana Milbank detailed so chillingly in The Washington Post yesterday, the House speaker, Dennis Hastert, said recently on television that Al Qaeda would do better under a Kerry presidency, and Senator Orrin Hatch, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, has announced that the terrorists are going to do everything they can between now and November 'to try and elect Kerry.' This is despicable politics….And at a time when the United States is supposed to be preparing the Iraqi people for a democratic election, it's appalling to hear the chief executive say that loyal opposition gives aid and comfort to the enemy abroad."
For the rest of the "un-American" editorial, click here.
• George W. Bush | Campaign 2004 | Dick Cheney | Editorial | Iraq War | Terrorism
Earth to Clymer
Adam Clymer returns to the Times Monday with the blandly titled op-ed, "Look for Substance, Not Sizzle."
After a conventional, David Broder-style assessment of how the press should focus on substance instead of mannerisms during the upcoming debates, Clymer (the Times former Washington correspondent and no friend of Republicans) rouses himself at the end for a sneaky partisan crack at the Swift Boat vets, comparing them to flat-Earthers: "Indeed after watching the coverage of the Swift Boat story, it is easy to imagine an evenhanded cable exchange revolving around a political ad saying one candidate thought the earth was round. Its sponsor would be challenged on cable by someone who said the earth was flat. In an effort to seem fair to both sides, journalists can forget to be fair to the public."
For the rest of Clymer, click here.
• Campaign 2004 | Adam Clymer | Swift Boat Veterans
E-mail TimesWatch Director, Clay Waters, with TimesWatch feedback at cwaters@mediaresearch.org