Civil War “Closer Than Ever” in Iraq
 

     According to Thursday’s lead story by Robert Worth, “Blast at Shiite Shrine Sets Off Sectarian Fury in Iraq,” Iraq is “closer than ever” to civil war. Reporting on the violent aftermath of the bombing of a Shiite shrine in Samarra, Worth writes of “a nationwide outpouring of rage and panic that seemed to bring Iraq closer than ever to outright civil war.”

     That might be more convincing if the Times hadn’t been making that same argument for the last two years.

     On March 11, 2005, Wong and today’s reporter Worth coauthored a story on a bombing of a shrine in Mosul and employed the same tone: “The Shiites and Kurds are also trying to bring Sunni Arab leaders, many of whom boycotted the elections, into the political process to dampen the insurgency and isolate those who carry out attacks. If the former governing Sunnis continue to feel disenfranchised, the chances of a full civil war will grow, many Iraqi leaders say.”

     The paper’s most pessimistic Iraq-based reporter, Edward Wong, last March argued that “efforts to restore Kurds to their jobs and property without disenfranchising Arabs are fraught with the possibility of igniting a civil war.”

     In January 2005 the Times wrote, on the eve of the successful election: “The prospect of a widespread boycott by Sunnis and others raises the possibility that the results of the election will be viewed as illegitimate. Some Iraqis have said that in that case, the election could push the country toward a full-scale civil war.”

     And the headline over a December 2004 piece by Wong read "Mayhem in Iraq Is Starting to Look Like a Civil War."

     But despite the paper’s long-running knee-jerk pessimism about Iraq’s inevitable civil war, the country hasn’t gotten there quite yet.

For more on the shrine blast in Samarra, click here.

Swift Boating at the Olympics?
 

     Sports columnist Harvey Araton relays the feud between Olympic speedskaters Chad Hedrick and Shani Davis with an esoteric comparison: “And at the root of the conflict is Davis's belief that Hedrick has been attempting to swift boat him here at the Olympics, use him as a prop as he wraps himself, Texas-style, in the flag, for the purpose of increasing his commercial appeal, while claiming that the feud has elevated their skating and is good for the sport.”

     To translate: Hedrick is President Bush (they both hail from Texas, you see), and Davis is a stand-in for John Kerry, unfairly attacked by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. We think.

To read the rest of Araton, click here.