Stolberg and her Three Amigos -- Bush Critics All

     Sheryl Gay Stolberg makes Monday's front page with "In the Senate, A Chorus of 3 Defies the Line," a paean to three of her favorite Republicans -- Bush critics all.

     It must be exciting for Congressional reporter Stolberg to have three of her favorite "maverick" Bush critical Republicans together in a single story -- one on the front page.

     Within two days in May 2004, Stolberg lauded moderate Republican Sen. John Warner of Virginia and Bush critic Sen. John McCain. Less than a week later, her Congressional colleague Carl Hulse praised Sen. Lindsey Graham for his "independence" from the Bush administration.

     Stolberg writes today: "On a July evening in the Capitol, Vice President Dick Cheney summoned three Republican senators to his ornate office just off the Senate chamber. The Republicans -- John W. Warner of Virginia, John McCain of Arizona and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina -- were making trouble for the Bush administration, and Mr. Cheney let them know it. The three were pushing for regulations on the treatment of American military prisoners, including a contentious ban on 'cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.' The vice president wanted the provision pulled from a huge military spending bill. The senators would not budge."

     One clue as to why Stolberg may like them: "…each has a strong maverick streak." Another: "For Democrats, who have spent months trying to put the public spotlight on the issues of detainee treatment and the war in Iraq, the three Republicans are like some kind of gift from the political gods. After the Senate overwhelmingly adopted Mr. Warner's measure on the war, Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr., Democrat of Delaware, stood slack-jawed." And for Stolberg to get on the front page.

For the rest of Stolberg, click here.

What Happened to Murtha's "Immediate Withdrawal"?

     Democratic Rep. John Murtha made headlines with his Thursday press conference calling for U.S. troops to "immediately redeploy" out of Iraq, but as reporter Eric Schmitt filed more updates, he seemed to forget Murtha's call for immediate withdrawal.

     As one blogger notes, Schmitt's initial online filing accurately stated Murtha was calling for an "immediate withdrawal" from Iraq: "The partisan furor over the Iraq war ratcheted up sharply on Capitol Hill on Thursday, as an influential House Democrat on military matters called for the immediate withdrawal of American troops and Republicans escalated their attacks against the Bush administration's critics."

     At his Thursday press conference, Murtha indeed said U.S. troops should "immediately redeploy -- immediately redeploy," perhaps to Kuwait.

     Schmitt pointed out how Murtha's proposal was more radical than even most Democratic plans for withdrawal: "Mr. Murtha's proposal, which goes well beyond the phased withdrawal of United States forces from Iraq that other moderate Democrats have proposed, stunned many Republicans who quickly held their own news conference to criticize the plan."

     But Schmitt's updated reports came more and more to be in sync with Democratic spin, making Murtha's call sound more reasonable and moderate.

     An online follow-up from Schmitt Friday night tries to paint Republicans as bad guys in the headline: "G.O.P. Tries to Split Democrats With Vote on Iraq War."

     The "immediate withdrawal" Murtha called for in his press conference had vanished. Meanwhile, Murtha's own website uses "immediate" to describe his proposal: "To immediately redeploy U.S. troops consistent with the safety of U.S. forces."

     Schmitt's lead story in the Saturday morning hard copy contradicts the "immediate withdrawal" clarion call he initially heard so clearly: "On Thursday, Mr. Murtha called for pulling out the 153,000 American troops within six months, saying they had become a catalyst for the continuing violence in Iraq. His plan also called for a quick-reaction force in the region, perhaps based in Kuwait, and for pursuing stability in Iraq through diplomacy. But House Republicans planned to put to a vote -- and reject -- their own nonbinding alternative resolution that simply said: 'It is the sense of the House of Representatives that the deployment of United States forces in Iraq be terminated immediately.'"

     That's what Murtha wants, yet the Times portrays the Republican action as something more extreme.

"Mean Jean" vs. John Murtha

     It's "Mean Jean" vs. Democratic veteran John Murtha in Sunday's story by Jason DeParle, "'Mean Jean' Goes to Washington, and Invites a Firestorm."

     DeParle gets quite exercised about a comment on the House floor from Rep. Jean Schmidt, recounting her conversation with a Marine colonel ("He asked me to send Congress a message -- stay the course. He also asked me to send Congressman Murtha a message -- that cowards cut and run, Marines never do.")

     DeParle writes of Schmidt, who earlier this year beat Democrat Paul Hackett to claim an open House seat: "She grew up in the rough-and-tumble of a family auto racing business, went through concealed-weapons training, and bears a local nickname seldom applied to shrinking violets: 'Mean Jean.' So when Representative Jean Schmidt, an Ohio Republican, created a furor on her 75th day in Congress by lobbing the word 'coward' toward a Democratic war hero, those who know her best were anything but surprised."

     (Strange how the Times have room for Schmidt's relaying of a Marine's comment but barely recognized the more intense "furor" generated when Sen. Dick Durbin read an email from an FBI agent describing treatment of Al Qaeda detainees at Guantanamo Bay and brought in the Nazis and Pol Pot. Until Durbin apologized, the Times ran only two unbylined briefs on the controversy.)

     DeParle claims: "The uproar arose Friday as the House debated a resolution calling for an immediate withdrawal of forces from Iraq. In scheduling the vote, Republicans were trying to embarrass Democratic critics of the war, forcing them to dissociate themselves from a call earlier in the week for a slower but still definite withdrawal."

     Actually, Rep. John Murtha in his press conference called for an "immediate redeployment" of troops, perhaps to Kuwait, the same thing as an immediate withdrawal from Iraq. Republicans were simply putting Murtha's wish up for a vote, which lost by 403-3.

DeParle concludes with the Times' favorite kind of Republican: "'I was listening to talk radio today, and people were calling in and praising her,' said Chris Finney, a Cincinnati Republican allied with Ms. Schmidt's local rivals. 'They like that jingoistic thinking.'"

To read the rest of DeParle on "Mean Jean," click here.

Jonathan Alter vs. Free Republic “Hit Men”

     In the Sunday book review, Newsweek Senior Editor Jonathan Alter reviews "Truth and Duty," the apologia from Mary Mapes, the  disgraced former CBS News producer of "Memogate" infamy, in which she blames right-wing bloggers and everyone but herself for how her "expose" of Bush's National Guard duty blew up in the face of CBS News.

     The liberal Alter is highly critical of Mapes and CBS, but makes a rather paranoid and over-the-top claim about "Buckhead," the Atlanta attorney who originally questioned the fake documents used by CBS's "60 Minutes II" to attack President Bush's Texas Air National Guard service record. "Buckhead"'s posting on the right-wing FreeRepublic website began the blogosphere's speedy evisceration of the forged memos, but Alter has this novel spin: "The blogger's anonymous assertion, within hours of the broadcast, that the proportional spacing and type font of the Killian memos did not exist in those days was only one of many falsehoods spread by political hit men."

     In the "Up Front" editor's note, Alter ludicrously argues that it was blogs that should have taken a credibility hit: "Blogs are a wonderful addition to the media culture but the public should stop assuming that what they read on the Internet is more accurate than what they read in the mainstream media, because the reverse is usually the case...In this case, I was surprised to learn how wrong the original blog reports turned out to be, but they are still accepted as true by people who did not pay close attention to the story.'"

     The Powerline blog says Alter's ignorance "must be willful" and links to a response by "Buckhead."

Ukrainians Protest Walter Duranty's Bloody New York Times Pulitzer

     Battling chilly temps and uncooperative winds, a Ukrainian group assembled outside New York Times headquarters in Manhattan Friday to protest the 1932 Pulitzer Prize awarded to Times reporter Walter Duranty for his pro-Stalin coverage of Russia.

     The Ukrainian famine of 1932-33 (Ukrainians call it the Holodomor) was engineered by Russian dictator Josef Stalin -- and whitewashed from Duranty's reporting for the Times. Duranty, who covered the country for the Times from 1922 to 1941, ignored Stalin's atrocities, including the famine that killed seven to ten million Ukrainians.

     Duranty, who is "credited" for coining the phrase (referring to Stalin’s purges) "You can't make an omelet without breaking eggs," said of the famine accusations, which were reported at the time by left-wing journalists like Malcolm Muggeridge: "Any report of a famine in Russia today is an exaggeration or malignant propaganda."

     Another choice quote from Duranty: "Stalin is giving the Russian people-the Russian masses, not Westernized landlords, industrialists, bankers, and intellectuals, but Russia's 150,000,000 peasants and workers-what they really want, namely joint effort, communal effort.'"

     For an hour, a group of about thirty mostly older ethnic Ukrainians stood behind police barriers across the street from Times headquarters. Some wore orange scarves to commemorate Ukraine's 2004 Orange revolution, holding up wind-whipped banners denouncing Duranty and the paper's refusal to "atone" for his reporting. Two babushkas waved Ukrainian flags.

     When the hour was up, the protesters quietly rolled up their posters and banners and left (when did a left-wing protest group ever do that?). In all, it resembled less of a protest than a vigil for the victims of Stalin's genocide.

     On the 11th floor of Times headquarters is a hall of portraits commemorating all the Pulitzer Prizes awarded to the newspaper in its long history. According to the Columbia Journalism Review, next to Duranty's portrait appears the note: "Other writers in the Times and elsewhere have discredited this coverage." But the Times has never disowned the award, and two years ago the Pulitzer Prize committee decided not to revoke Duranty's prize.

     Relieved Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr., while regretting Duranty's reporting, argued that giving back the prize would itself evoke the "Stalinist practice to airbrush purged figures out of official records and histories."

     Mark Von Hagen, the paper's own hired historian, suggested the "airbrushing" comparison was irresponsible: "Those targeted for 'airbrushing' were already murdered, languishing in the gulag or forced into exile after having been falsely accused of espionage, treason, sabotage and other 'crimes.'….Revoking Mr. Duranty's prize is another matter altogether. He was never prosecuted for any crimes. His articles remain available in the archives of The New York Times, and his books on the shelves of major libraries. Airbrushing was intended to suppress the truth about what was happening under Stalin. The aim of revoking Walter Duranty's prize is the opposite: to bring greater awareness of the potential long-term damage that his reporting did for our understanding of the Soviet Union."

     Friday's protest was led by Volodymyr Kurylo, president of the United Ukrainian American Organizations of Greater New York, a jovial, broad-shouldered figure with white hair and a mustache.

     Specifically, Kurylo and the protestors demand the Times surrender Duranty's Pulitzer (for what the prize committee called his "scholarship, profundity, impartiality, sound judgment, and clarity") so it can be displayed at a future Ukrainian Institute of National Memory in Ukraine.

     The Pulitzer Prize committee isn't big on actually giving out pieces of hardware with its awards, and TimesWatch is unaware whether the company has any certificate or plaque marking Duranty's achievement. But the point remains -- the Times has not rescinded the award Duranty won for his reporting based on his airbrushing of Stalin's genocidal starvation of the Ukraine.

     Said Kurylo, "If the Jayson Blair scandal was worth a six-page mea culpa in the Sunday Times, the denial of Walter Duranty of the death of seven to ten million people deserves six-page commemorations in November of every year."

     On the 72nd anniversary of Stalin's Ukraine genocide, the Times seems set on retaining Duranty's prize.