Bush Quotes Fallen Marine's Letter -- the Part the NYT Left Out
 

     On Wednesday afternoon, the Washington Post filed to its website a quick take on Bush's speech to the Naval Academy, including the president's emotional quotation from a letter found on the laptop of Marine Cpl. Jeffrey Starr, six months to the day after his death in a firefight in Ramadi.

     "Reading from a letter written by a U.S. soldier on his lap-top computer before his death, an emotional Bush said America owes those who have died in Iraq to 'take up their mantle, carry on the fight and complete their mission.'"

     By contrast, the New York Times' similar online story from Christine Hauser made no mention of Starr's letter.

     Perhaps one reason why: As Michelle Malkin first learned last month, the New York Times quoted Starr's letter but managed to miss the point, leaving off the very part Starr's family and President Bush found significant.

     An October 26 story by reporter James Dao quoted only part of Starr's letter, truncating it to make it fit Dao's deadly storyline (the "grim mark" of the 2000th fatality of the Iraq War). The portion of the letter run by the Times captured Starr's fear of death, but not his belief that his sacrifice was worth the goal of securing freedom for Iraq.

     This is the part the Times ran on October 26: "Obviously if you are reading this then I have died in Iraq. I kind of predicted this, that is why I'm writing this in November. A third time just seemed like I'm pushing my chances."

     But as Times Watch and others noted, Dao left off the rest of Starr's letter, which explains why he felt his sacrifice was worthwhile:

     "I don't regret going, everybody dies but few get to do it for something as important as freedom. It may seem confusing why we are in Iraq, it's not to me. I'm here helping these people, so that they can live the way we live. Not have to worry about tyrants or vicious dictators. To do what they want with their lives. To me that is why I died. Others have died for my freedom, now this is my mark.'"

     The New York Post has the positive reaction by Starr's family, who originally released their son's letter to the New York Times: "But the Times published only part of the five-paragraph letter, which the family felt distorted Jeffrey's message and made him appear to be a fatalist questioning the war -- when in fact he strongly supported it."

     Neither the New York Times or the Washington Post mention Starr's letter in their Thursday morning hard-copy editions.

You can comment on the paper's treatment of Cpl. Jeffrey Starr's last letter at the MRC's blog NewsBusters.

Bush Still Won't Confess to Iraq "Mistakes"
 

     The New York Times is the only major newspaper not to lead its Thursday edition with Bush's speech to the Naval Academy on Iraq. David Sanger's off-lead story begins: "Two and a half years after the American invasion of Iraq, President Bush laid out Wednesday what he called a strategy for victory, vowing not to pull out on 'artificial timetables set by politicians' but at the same time offering the first glimpse of his plan for extricating American forces."

     Sanger gives a respectful airing of the speech, but for some reason includes Sen. Ted Kennedy as some kind of war expert while dredging up Vietnam: "Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, one of a handful of current members of the Senate to have watched close up as previous administrations grappled with a strategy for extrication from Vietnam, said, 'The only thing artificial in this debate is the president's belief that we can achieve victory by staying the same failed course.'"

     There's the usual Sangerian obsession with getting Bush to admit mistakes: "Mr. Bush came the closest to acknowledging mistakes in the war -- without calling them that -- since an interview in August 2004 in which he acknowledged a 'miscalculation' in assessing how quickly an insurgency might develop."

To read the rest of Sanger, click here.

Cindy Sheehan "Commanded the Stage" This Summer
 

     A self-fulfilling story. In the middle of a relatively fair-minded (for her, anyway) "news analysis" by Elisabeth Bumiller on Bush's Naval Academy speech on Iraq is this eye-roller:

     "Mr. Bush's advisers said that his speech and the document were long overdue, and that the need for such a statement dated to last summer, when antiwar sentiment coalesced around Cindy Sheehan, the mother of an American soldier killed in Iraq who staged a monthlong protest outside the president's Texas ranch. In the view of some of Mr. Bush's advisers, the president lost a connection with the American people in August, when Ms. Sheehan commanded the stage and Mr. Bush spent much of the month out of sight."

     Just who put Sheehan on stage in the first place? It was only through the auspices of the Times and other media outlets that Sheehan managed to command a national audience. Bumiller herself gave Sheehan great coverage that ignored the Sheehan's inflammatory anti-Bush and anti-Israel comments.

To read the rest of Bumiller's take on Bush's speech, click here.

The Times Discovers (Gasp!) War Propaganda
 

     News flash! The Times discovers war propaganda. Jeff Gerth and Scott Shane grab Page One while playing catch-up to a story in Wednesday's Los Angeles Times about the Washington-based Lincoln Group. The Pentagon has paid the PR firm to translate articles written by the military into Arabic and submitting them to Iraqi newspapers as part of the war effort.

     The headline: "U.S. Is Said to Pay to Plant Articles in Iraq Papers. Subhead: "Covert Propaganda -- Journalists Also Said to Get Stipends."

     Well, the media can relax -- it's not "covert" anymore.

     As NRO's Media Blog noted, the Washington Post had this story back in June.