This is why folks like me just roll our eyes, shake our heads, and chuckle when people on the right claim with wild eyes that the Washington Post is a liberal newspaper. The Washington Post is outhawked among major newspapers only by the wackjobs at the Wall Street Journal and NY Post, and they’ve probably carried water for Bush more than those other publications under the direction of Fred Hiatt.
Mr. Bush’s plan offers, at least, the prospect of extending recent gains against al-Qaeda in Iraq, preventing full-scale sectarian war and allowing Iraqis more time to begin moving toward a new political order. For that reason, it is preferable to a more rapid withdrawal.
That kind of delusion at a major media organization perfectly explains why Post media writer Howard Kurtz felt that Fox News was entitled to masquerade as a news organization and operate as a cheerleader for Bush. I guess Fox is just being more up front about it.
Thankfully, the editorial of the New York Times is more rooted in the real world that the GOP and the Washington Post willfully ignore.
After all, it seems the burden of ending the war will fall to the next president. Mr. Bush was clear last night – as he was when he addressed the nation in January, September of last year, the December before that and in April 2004 – that his only real plan is to confuse enough Americans and cow enough members of Congress to let him muddle along and saddle his successor with this war that should never have been started.
