Still Holding My Breath for DeYoung and Ricks
[Update: Here’s DeYoung’s take.]
So I’ve been holding my breath to see what Karen DeYoung and Tom Ricks had to say about today’s GAO report. After all, they were leaked the draft report last week, and they anticipated that BushCo might "soften" the report. Since there are clear signs the Administration did just that, I have been eagerly waiting for them to give us a catalog of the changes the Administration forced the GAO to make.
But I’m still holding my breath.
After posting soley the AP report for hours after the other mainstream outlets had posted their own stories, the WaPo is up with it’s own account finally. Only it’s not by DeYoung or Ricks.
Instead, we get an amazingly vanilla account of Comptroller General David Walker’s testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, without even a treatment of Walker’s suggestion that Petraeus is cooking the books.
For the moment, I’ll just assume I’m being impatient, that DeYoung or Ricks will have a full reporting comparing the two reports–and pointing out the clear spin–tomorrow. But I do hope they write this story before the Bush counter-campaign begins.
Patience EW. It takes time to run it by the Donald (Graham), the Fred (Hiatt) and the David (Broder) to make sure it is happy happy and centrist enough.
bmaz
Uhuh
That’s what I’m afraid of.
I don’t hold out much hope for any serious media analysis on the selling of the â€surgeâ€. De Young and Ricks may or may not say something about benchmarks. But the Administration has already said that these are beside the point. Petraeus and Crocker will come in and say exactly what we have been predicting they would say for months. It will be happy talk based on lies, distortions, and other stuff that they have made up. It will go largely unchallenged by the media. The Congress will hem and haw. The Democrats will probably cave. There will be talk about some meaningless troop reductions at the end of the year, and further reductions in April, not because of any real change in policy, but because the military will run out of troops.
I would dearly love the Democrats to draw a line and fight this out but I just don’t see this happening.
â€I would dearly love the Democrats to draw a line and fight this out but I just don’t see this happening.â€
Nope, the word slipped out during Rep. McNerney’s alibi session at FDL. The Dems have settled on waiting until they have that VPM – Veto-Proof Majority.
Translation: We would if we could, but we can’t so we won’t.
If I had a quarter for every time the Dems really stood up to the Repugs, I’d have a nickel.
BushCo will not claim the surge is a success but rather the surge has demonstrated abundent and overwhelming signs that the surge has put us on the road to success. The signs are so convincing that the President thinks we can bring 5,000 troops home soon.
The choice is stay the course on road to victory (by modifying the Iraqi constitution to accomodate oil revenue sharing agreement and establishing a panel of industry executives to make policy regarding privitization and production of oil reserves) or cut and run. That was easy, not reality based, but easy.
Gimme an S, gimme an S, gimme an SUR
Gimme a G, gimme a G, gimme a GED
(the cheerleader rearranges is notecards)
Petraeus and Crocker are already telling us what they are going to say next week.
http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap…..81366.html
WASHINGTON – President Bush’s senior advisers on Iraq have recommended he stand by his current war strategy, and he is unlikely to order more than a symbolic cut in troops before the end of the year, administration officials told The Associated Press Tuesday.
The recommendations from the military commander in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus, and U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker come despite independent government findings Tuesday that Baghdad has not met most of the political, military and economic markers set by Congress.
am i recalling correctly that the wapoop changed it’s reporter in the midst of the john kerry swiftboat extravaganza.
i seem to recall that they brought in one of their â€education†writers to handle to story â€from here on outâ€.
these guys are taking orders.
but why?
maybe we’ll know in a year or so,
when wapoop gets some real good economic opportunities.
somebody in the white house (or the washington post company) has had the wapoop leaders over a barrel for several years now.
this is not
â€we will report for the benefit of the nationâ€
but
â€we won’t report,
for the benefit of the washington post companyâ€.
Yep. Dick has decided already to expand his war to Iran – even if he breaks the military and the country in doing so. (He probably figures he can get out of Dodge before the sheriff shows up and hauls him off for war crimes.)
The demowimips in Congress don’t seem to understand ’no’ except when they’re talking to their constituents.
Here’s a CNN interview with Ricks and Michael Ware. Pretty damning all the way around.
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRA…..se.01.html
Nevermind the facts. The story in MSM is that Bush says, with the improvement we’re seeing, some troops could come home soon.
Damn, we were all wrong. I’m thrilled, thrilled I tell you!
What? Casualties are up in the country as a whole? OH, listen to the crickets. lovely.
Now for the news – Less killing in Bagdad, and hey let’s not forget, not a single General has been killed in the green zone – fabulous news! This just in. No unicorns have been found executed in Tikrit in over six months.
Yes, we’re on the path to victory, we are.
Phone just rang. Hang on everyone. Wow! It was ABC News, they just offered me a job, but then FOX rang in on call waiting and topped their offer. You guys think anyone’s monitoring my broadband?
Oh well, sorry to leave TNH, I’m going pro.
Hey, I think Katie Couric is trying to horn in on my gig.
This just posted (there’s a link at Raw Story) –
â€One week before Gen. David Petraeus is expected to give his report on U.S. progress in Iraq, CBS Evening News anchor Katie Couric says she has already seen dramatic improvements in the country.
â€We hear so much about things going bad, but real progress has been made there in terms of security and stability,†Couric said Tuesday. â€I mean, obviously, infrastructure problems abound, but Sunnis and U.S. forces are working together. They banded together because they had a common enemy: al Qaeda.â€
And some people say MSM isn’t working for the neocons – jeez.
Mad Dogs
At least you have a nickel.
I’ve gone way in the hock just like our country waiting for the Dems to match their rhetoric at least occasionally. I am not even talking about standing up to the Repubs but standing for the Constitution and the most cherished and fundamental principles that gird our foundation.
But then reality smacks me each and every time – Roberts, Alito, Patriot Act, warantless spying, military commissions act, torture, renditions, repeated funding for the occupation, Congressional investigations that go no where and now we even have so many Dems saying we can’t take any options off the table when it comes to Iran – we know that is code for giving Cheney carte blanche.
There you have it. What’s a citizen supposed to do as the work of generations before get trashed in a NY minute?
CBS Evening News anchor Katie Couric says she has already seen dramatic improvements in the country.
In her… one visit to Iraq? How the fuck is she supposed to work that out?
Here’s the salient quote:
It’s another Petraeus Market. And, y’know, I’m not even as cynical as other bloggers about this: it’s not a bad strategy in the abstract to focus on creating safe public spaces. But this is done in a way that’s designed to impress foreign visitors, not the Iraqis.
And Lara Logan must be spitting blood having to sit alongside Couric under instruction not to contradict The Talent.
Way off topic.
Spirit of Che rises again
We are losing people in our own hemisphere!
I looked at the foot of emptywheel’s piece and for a second I thought I saw a link to ’perma-war’.
I either need new glasses, or a new country.
hey, is our blogger supposed to be all â€BLUE FACED†like that ???
and why did she fall out of her chair ???
maybe we should call a doctor or somethin …
(wink)
The Couric clip is so aburd – After she pimps how drastically things have improved in Falluga the anchor asks her about living conditions, which she then goes on to say haven’t improved much and that’s a real goal, among the spewing of challenges â€they only have about 5 hours of electricity, and it’s sweltering in their house in triple digit temperatures, and they can’t let their kids go outside, they’re afraid insurgents will kidnap themâ€
Sounds like that security situation is just great! Contridicting statements in under 90 seconds. Of course, no one ever accused network anchors of being particularly bright.
In order to see an improvement, or a worsening, or any other change in conditions, one must see the situation at least twice. And even then, you can only judge those specific areas one has seen repeatedly. Visiting Kirkuk in 2003, Basra in 2004, and some base miles from anywhere in 2007 does not allow one to say that they have seen improvements in Baghdad.
Example, given that Iraq is about the size of California, one could have reported from downtown LA that the power was out as far as she could see… an entire section of the grid was down in triple digit heat… and offices were sweltering. An improvement? Catastrophe? Or ordinary situation? How would a first-time visitor know? She can ask ordinary residents or stick her nose in a few buildings. Investigate. If that visitor was sequestered at Coronado’s Naval Base in an air-conditioned office with some captain waving a cheerful chart showing that civilian morale is positive and that nobody is dying, she may as well have been on the moon for all the reality-checking she can do.
If she can’t grab her notebook and walk out the door without body armor and a platoon of marines to act as a human shield… and a hundred men sweeping ahead to dismantle bombs and dislodge snipers… doesn’t that speak volumes about what is normal for Iraq today??? Four and a half years after â€Mission Accomplished!†and not one city is under governmental control (any government). Even the Green Zone isn’t really â€greenâ€, but more of a wary yellow.
If a reporter wanted to investigate, he or she would have to understand and explain the biases of each source: Petreaus wants to keep his job, Maliki wants to keep his office, Cheney wants â€his†oil, everybody wants to promote their book. Until that oil contract is signed, giving the US 80% of the wealth of Iraq, the occupation will continue.
Katie would not know a investigative report if it bit her in the neither regions, which is where her mind has been the past six years. Oberman said it all in his comments last evening , he was on point.Hate that it did not air on fox where it needs to be. Oily,Hiney are probably trying to pick up the pieces of their tiny shriveled brains when they exploded from watching Oberman.
Well, we didn’t expect the report to be accurate.
It’s just the galling way they build up the story.
Couric lied? OMG, the world will end. Who cares!
The Liberal Press isn’t actually Liberal? Surprise!
Bush is still a turd and we still need to leave Iraq.