The New York Times' Bizzare World

by Kevin

I know I am jumping on the bash the New York Times bandwagon rather late but this story is just too good to pass up. Take a look at this article and tell me it doesn’t capture the bizzaro world of the NYT.

First the headline:

In Ohio, Iraq Questions Shake Even Some of Bush’s Faithful

Ok, now with this headline you’re thinking that Republicans in Ohio are starting to doubt President Bush right? Well, let’s see what kind of damning quote the Times can dig up. Here is one shaken faithful:

“I’d like to know whether there was any deliberate attempt to deceive,” said Mr. Stock, 70, a retired public school administrator. “My feeling is there was not. But there was an eagerness in the administration to pursue the battle and to believe information that wasn’t quite good.”

Whoa! That sounds like trouble brewing to me. After all he would like to know what happened. Oh sure he doesn’t think there was any intentional deception but what about that reference to “information that wasn’t quite good” – pull on that string and it might lead anywhere! Let’s look at another faithful Bush backer and see how his faith has been shaken:

Mr. Kleeberger, 44, said he remains convinced that the invasion was a good thing, whether or not the president was wrong about Iraq’s nuclear weapons program. Eventually, he said, he believes prohibited weapons will be found in Iraq.
“It would take many more mistakes for me to question the credibility and decision-making of the government,” he said. “We’d like to think intelligence is 100 percent right 100 percent of the time. But it’s a human system and there’s human error.”

Doesn’t sound very shaken does he? In fact the article comes straight out and admits that the headline was just a trick to get you to read the article:

In conversations here with nearly three dozen voters, the vast majority said they generally like President Bush and believe he is doing a good job. Many people said they remained convinced that Iraq posed a threat, even though no chemical or biological weapons have been found. And there was a broad consensus that the result of the war ? the ousting of a brutal dictator ? was good for Iraq as well as the United States . . . Despite Democratic efforts to use the intelligence issue to undermine Mr. Bush’s credibility, most people interviewed here, including Democratic voters, said they did not think Mr. Bush had knowingly used bad intelligence. Most said they believed the president had been motivated by a sincere desire to counter what he considered a real threat.

I find it amazing that the Times can work so hard to create a sense of “trouble brewing” when practically everyone they interview supports Bush and the Iraq invasion. The headline simply doesn’t match the story – so why create the story in the first place? If you are attempting to drum up doubts about the President this is a pretty lame way to do it.