Day: April 24, 2007

Did not find this in Chi Trib

This I lift as is from Instapundit, who got it from here:

“WHAT IS HAPPENING OVER HERE:” An email from a soldier in Iraq. “Gen Petraeus is treating the war like a counter-insurgency rather than a stability operation. . . . there is a HUGE difference between the two. . . . However, you don’t see Harry Reid talking about this. When I saw what he said, it really pissed me off. That guy does not know what is going on over here because he hasn’t bothered to come and find out. The truth on the ground in Al Anbar is not politically convenient for him, so he completely ignored it.”

Not only does Harry R. not get it, but neither do Chi Trib et al.*  Didn’t Pelosi tell Petraeus she couldn’t fit Petraeus into the House schedule?  Yes, at first, but now she thinks he might have something to say, to add to the good stuff she got from the Syrian guy, Bashar al-Assad.  No babuschka this time, however.

—————————

*I’m saying this without a site search, which last time I tried it had an AP story that if it ever appeared in hard copy was very hard to find.  I read the Trib’s hard copy every day, though not word for word, and I know what they play.  Heads and location and story size and big fat picture all go to tell us, this is important.  If the story is hard to find, it isn’t, to them at least.

Tags: , ,

Reid speaks, bad guys listen

[A] good name for the increasing body count in Iraq is the “Reid surge,”

says Mackubin Thomas Owens, a dean at the Naval War College in Newport, R.I., citing historical precedent from Confederate General Robert E. Lee’s reading Northern newspapers to check on public sentiment about the war to the Tet Offensive in the Viet Nam War, a U.S. victory portrayed as defeat by U.S. media with resultant encouragement of our enemies,

He refers to bomb attacks in Iraq that caused “such carnage in recent days,” identifying them as

the expected consequences of the Democrats’ efforts to undercut the president’s new team and the changed strategy represented by the so-called “surge.” 

What do you know? Chi Trib gives Reid a pass . . .

It’s irritating and borderline repulsive that Chi Trib has run nothing of its own on Sen. Harry Reid’s saying the Iraq war is lost, just an AP story 4/20 about Bush denying the claim, responding in gentlemanly fashion:

“I respect the Democratic leadership,” he said. “We have fundamental disagreements about whether or not helping this young democracy is . . . the consequences of failure or success . . . .”

I did clean that up a bit: AP unsurprisingly lingered on the warts and blemishes of Bush’s spoken word. 

The Trib, on the other hand, protected Reid on the day, of the AP story — Gonzales in the dock was Trib editors’ interest — running nothing in hard copy. 

This is how it’s done.  Reid commits a major gaffe from which he backtracked within hours, but nothing is said.  Today we have him featured, statesmanlike, on P-1 with his measured comments about Bush and the war. 

Chi Trib just knows what’s fit to print, doesn’t it?

Tags: ,