Why Oh Why Can't We Have a Better Press Corps? (Max Boot Edition) Busy, Busy, Busy

Busy, Busy, Busy is a national treasure:

Busy, Busy, Busy: As is often the case, Max Boot's depiction deviates a bit from reality. He writes:

No one working for the mainstream media today would refer, as Ernie Pyle did during World War II, to "our soldiers," "our offensive," "our predicament." Today it's "American soldiers," "the military offensive" and (most damning of all) "the president's predicament" - as if this were Bush's war, not ours.

But the facts beg to differ. Take, for example, the purported pundit's best evidence, his most damning phrase. Take it to Google and find:

Total internet references to "the president's predicament": About 260.
References to "the president's predicament" not mentioning "Clinton", "Monica" or "Lewinsky": About 124...
Meanwhile, hits on "our predicament" together with "Iraq" total: About 24,000....

Obsessive subjugation of factuality to narrative is, of course, something of a trademark for Mr. Boot. The abiding mystery is why the Los Angeles Times persists in inflicting him on innocent readers.

Comments

[bc]

but didn't Boot say "the mainstream media?" A google search produces a rather different universe, no?

[P O'Neill]

Speaking of googling Max Boot -- October 15, 2001:

----
Then there is Iraq. Saddam Hussein is a despised figure whose people rose up in rebellion in 1991 when given the opportunity to do so by American military victories. But the first Bush administration refused to go to Baghdad, and stood by as Saddam crushed the Shiite and Kurdish rebellions. As a shameful moment in U.S. history, the abandonment of these anti-Saddam rebels ranks right up there with our abandonment of the South Vietnamese in 1975. We now have an opportunity to rectify this historic mistake.

The debate about whether Saddam Hussein was implicated in the September 11 attacks misses the point. Who cares if Saddam was involved in this particular barbarity? He has been involved in so many barbarities over the years--from gassing the Kurds to raping the Kuwaitis--that he has already earned himself a death sentence a thousand times over. But it is not just a matter of justice to depose Saddam. It is a matter of self defense: He is currently working to acquire weapons of mass destruction that he or his confederates will unleash against America and our allies if given the chance.

Once Afghanistan has been dealt with, America should turn its attention to Iraq. It will probably not be possible to remove Saddam quickly without a U.S. invasion and occupation--though it will hardly require half a million men, since Saddam's army is much diminished since the Gulf War, and we will probably have plenty of help from Iraqis, once they trust that we intend to finish the job this time. Once we have deposed Saddam, we can impose an American-led, international regency in Baghdad, to go along with the one in Kabul. With American seriousness and credibility thus restored, we will enjoy fruitful cooperation from the region's many opportunists, who will show a newfound eagerness to be helpful in our larger task of rolling up the international terror network that threatens us.

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Utilities/printer_preview.asp?idArticle=318

[Jean-Philippe Stijns]

... and I presume we're supposed to long for the kind of media objectivity that prevailed before WWII.

[calhoun]

Google News is missleading, as it uses news source from all over the world to pull its news. It would include for instance arab countries, which do not mean the same thing by "our soldiers" and "american soldiers". If you break down the results by country of origin you get rather confusing results, and keep in mind that you are doing your search on a selective subset - many news sources do not allow Google to include their news in the index.
I believe using Google is a very clumsy way to arrive at any result.

[anne]

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/08/opinion/08herbert.html?ex=1281153600&en=2b72c1d42e07ddea&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss

August 8, 2005

The Pain Deep Inside
By BOB HERBERT

Washington

Specialist Craig Peter Olander Jr. has the look of a mischievous kid, except that his eyes sometimes telegraph that they've seen too much. And there's a weariness that tends to slip into his voice that seems unusual for someone just 21 years old. Killing can do that to a person.

Specialist Olander was a teenager from Waynesburg, Ohio, population 1,000, when he joined the Army in 2003. "It was very appealing," he said. "The benefits. College. And it was something I'd always wanted to do since I was a small boy - be in the Army."

He had mixed feelings about going to Iraq, but he wasn't particularly upset. He didn't dwell on the possibility of getting killed or wounded. And he gave no thought at all to the spiritual or psychological toll that combat can take. "I was very confident in my training and I was very religious," he said. "I'd always read Bible stories as a child and I believed the Lord would look over me and his will would be done."

He went to Iraq in early 2004 and quickly learned that nothing - not his military training, not the Bible, nothing - had adequately prepared him for the experience. By the time he returned several months later, he said, the trauma he had encountered in Iraq had reached deep inside him. There was both fear and the hint of a plea in his voice as he told me, with surprising candor, that he believed the things he'd had to do in Iraq might jeopardize the salvation of his soul.

"Our base was Camp Victory in Baghdad," he said. "We did raids, convoys, security, patrols - numerous, numerous things."

The first time he was wounded was in the spring. He suffered a severe concussion and a sprained back when insurgents attacked his convoy with an antitank weapon. The headaches that ensued were all but unbearable. He was wounded again the following August.

"I was driving the Humvee that day," he said. "The usual driver wasn't sure of the area, so we switched. He was a new fellow and he was up on the gun."

When insurgents attacked the unit with rocket-propelled grenades, Specialist Olander tried to maneuver the Humvee to safety. As he was turning, an explosion sent the vehicle into a roll.

"I stayed conscious," he said. "As soon as the vehicle stopped rolling, I hopped out and I heard my sergeant hollering on the radio that we were hit. So I knew he was O.K. ...

[anne]

http://select.nytimes.com/2005/11/28/opinion/28herbert.html

November 28, 2005

Cut Our Losses
By BOB HERBERT

Washington — Jack Murtha is as tough as they come, but he's seen enough of the misguided, mismanaged, mission impossible war in Iraq to know that it's not sustainable, not worth the continued killing and butchering and psychological maiming of thousands of American G.I.'s.

"I mean, this was a war done on the cheap and we're paying a heavy price for it," he said in an interview just before Thanksgiving.

Mr. Murtha is the Pennsylvania congressman, former marine and traditional war hawk whose call for a quick withdrawal of American troops from Iraq has intensified the national debate over the war. He makes weekly visits to wounded troops in military hospitals, and when he talks about their suffering it sometimes seems as if his own heart is breaking.

"These kids are magnificent," he said. "They've done their duty."

He talked about the former Notre Dame basketball player Danielle Green, a left-handed guard ("heck of a player") who lost her left hand in a rocket attack in Baghdad. And he recalled a young marine who was trying to defuse a bomb when it exploded. "It blinded him and took his hands off," said Mr. Murtha. "It killed the guy behind him."

In Congressman Murtha's view, the troops who have displayed so much valor and made so many sacrifices in Iraq deserved better from their leadership here at home. "We went in with insufficient forces," he said. "We had people in the wrong [specialties], people driving trucks who couldn't back trucks up. We had security forces without radios. I found 40,000 troops without body armor."

He has no faith in President Bush's repeated calls to stay the course. "The number of incidents have gone from 150 a week to 772 a couple of weeks ago," he said. As additional U.S. forces have been deployed, casualty rates have increased, not decreased. And his many conversations with G.I.'s have convinced him that American fighting men and women don't have much confidence in their Iraqi allies.

"They don't trust them - that's all there is to it," said Mr. Murtha. The disparagement of Iraqi security forces by American troops was so widespread that Mr. Murtha was surprised when one soldier "started talking about how good they are, how much they've improved, and so forth."

It was a miscommunication. The congressman soon realized that the soldier was talking about how much the insurgents had improved; how they had become more sophisticated, and thus "more deadly."

Mr. Murtha, 73, is a Democrat who has maintained good ties over the years with Republicans and has extraordinary contacts within the Defense Department and the military. He's a decorated Vietnam War veteran (Bronze Star, two Purple Hearts) who retired as a colonel in the Marine Corps Reserves after 37 years of service.

He said he's convinced that there is nothing more the military can accomplish in Iraq. It's the presence of the American troops themselves, inevitably seen by the Iraqis as occupiers, that continues to fuel the insurgency....

We need to cut our losses in Iraq....

[anne]

Let us take our soldiers from Iraq immediately. Let us save our soldiers the physical and psychological anguish of a needless occupation. Let us save ourselves the needless moral and material drain of needlessly occupying Iraq. Let us leave Iraq, now.

[anne]

http://select.nytimes.com/2006/04/24/opinion/24herbert.html

April 24, 2006

35 Years Later
By BOB HERBERT

Presidents and politicians may worry about losing face, or losing votes, or losing their legacy; it is time to think about young Americans and innocent civilians who are losing their lives.

— John Kerry on Iraq

Boston

Saturday was the 35th anniversary of John Kerry's appearance as a young Vietnam veteran before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. During his testimony, Mr. Kerry called for an end to the war in Vietnam and famously inquired: "How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?"

He marked the occasion Saturday with an important and moving speech before an audience crammed into historic Faneuil Hall. The speech took on even more poignancy as it became known over the weekend that at least eight more American G.I.'s had been killed in Iraq.

I've felt all along that Democratic politicians, including Senator Kerry, have hurt themselves with their muddled messages on Iraq. Most elected Democrats have been petrified almost to the point of paralysis by their fear of being seen as soft on national security. So they've acquiesced to one degree or another in a war that in their heads and in their hearts they knew was wrong.

In his speech on Saturday, Senator Kerry, who voted to authorize the use of force in Iraq, gave the impression of a man who had found a voice he'd been seeking through trial and error for a long time, perhaps since that springtime day in Richard Nixon's Washington in 1971.

"I believed then," he said, "just as I believe now, that the best way to support the troops is to oppose a course that squanders their lives, dishonors their sacrifice and disserves our people and our principles."

He repeated his call for a complete withdrawal of American combat troops from Iraq....

[anne]

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/26/international/middleeast/26deaths.html?ex=1287979200&en=579f85044d5ff040&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss

October 26, 2005

2,000 Dead: As Iraq Tours Stretch On, a Grim Mark
By JAMES DAO

Sandra Williams-Smith never supported the invasion of Iraq, even though she is married to a former Air Force sergeant and has worked on military bases as a nurse. But Mrs. Williams-Smith kept her views mostly to herself, particularly after her oldest son, Jeffrey A. Williams, joined the Army out of high school in 2003. He saw the military as a steppingstone to becoming a doctor, and she encouraged his ambition.

But on Sept. 5, Specialist Williams, a 20-year-old medic, was killed by a roadside bomb in Tal Afar, Iraq. Mrs. Williams-Smith, 42, is silent no more. Though her oldest living son is in the Navy, and her youngest son wants to join the Marines, she openly rages against the war and President Bush.

"It's time to bring these boys home," said Mrs. Williams-Smith, of Mansfield, Tex. "My feelings for Bush are harsh. He should have taken care of the needs of his own people before going across the ocean to take care of someone else's."

The anger Mrs. Williams-Smith, who is black, feels toward the war is shared by many other African-Americans, according to polls, military officials and experts. And that opposition is beginning to have a profound effect on who is joining the military - and potentially who is dying in Iraq, many experts say.

For most of the last three decades, blacks joined the military in disproportionately high numbers, either because they saw it as an equal-opportunity employer or were attracted by its training programs and college benefits. The Army in particular came to rely heavily on blacks to fill its ranks: in the 1980's, about 30 percent of active-duty soldiers were black, Pentagon statistics show.

But black enlistment has fallen off, particularly in the Army, and the war in Iraq is hastening that decline, military officials and experts say. Lower black enlistment means that the military looks more like the United States in terms of racial balance than it did a decade ago, when it was disproportionately black.

This year, about 14 percent of new Army recruits were black, down from nearly 23 percent in 2001. Army officials say improved job opportunities in other fields is one reason. But a study commissioned by the Army last year also concluded that more young blacks were rejecting military service because they opposed the war, or feared dying in it.

"More African-Americans identify having to fight for a cause they don't support as a barrier to military service," the study concluded....

[anne]

Oh, we should refuse to be in the least influenced by war-mongers who use patriotism for intimidation. Patriotism is caring to save every American soldier in Iraq by leaving this needless absurd occupation.

[howard]

btw, the wonderful 2-volume library of america collection of world war ii reporting puts the lie to boot as well.

and who cares how broad the universe of google news is: the point is that there are next to no references to what he claims is the standard usage....

[Polybius]

There are about 24,000 hits on Google for "our predicament" AND "Iraq", but as bc points out that's a very different beast than what Max Boot was talking about. A search of Google News with the same phase yields 2 hits (one of which uses "our predicament" in reference to peak oil).

[Polybius]

Also, there are not 260 hits for "the president's predicament", there are 44,300. Not mentioning "Clinton", "Monica" or "Lewinsky" ("the president's predicament" -clinton -monica -lewinsky) is 17,600, not 124.

[Bruce Webb]

It's not "my predicament". There is no "I" in team. I was as vocal as I could possibly be in the runup to this war that this was just going to be a total clusterfuck that was going to bring hundreds (even I didn't have nightmares about thousands) of American boys and girls home in boxes, cost billions and add exactly zero net security to this country. I understand that millions of good-intentioned Americans bought into the lies and hence have some sense of responsibility. But I never joined that team and for Boot and anyone else that suggests I have a duty to do so now is an outrage.

In March 2003 Bush made two public claims. One, the decision to go to war had not been made. Two, when the time came to make that decision "I get to decide". The first claim was a lie, the second claim was an advanced admission of guilt.

This is Bush's war because from its outset he insisted it was Bush's war. He echoed this again last week with the "I'm the decider" language on Rumsfield.

You can bet that if this war was an unqualified success the Democrats who foolishly backed it would not be sharing in the glory, it would be all "Bush's War" then, Card and Rove bragged as much in advance.

This may be Boot's war but it is not mine. My idea of "support the troops" was to keep them alive, fully equipped with limbs and eyes, and available to defend this country in the face of true external threats. This clusterfuck was predictable, indeed it was predicted by me and others, and people like Boot that simply got it all wrong shoud be apologizing to me and not demanding I just get on the rhetorical train.

[Carleton Wu]

Wait, I take that back- Boot is demonstrably incorrect. Because he didn't claim that these phrases were infrequent, he claimed that "no one working for the mainstream media today" would use them.
Leaving aside whether other MSM journalists *ever* use such phrases (and I would be very surprised to find that this was never done, particularly during times of great emotion such as the fall of Baghdad or the Jessica Lynch or Pat Tillman agitprop incidents)- Boot himself writes this in the LA Times. I do not know of a defintion of MSM that would disqualify the LA Times, and Boot presumably draws a check for his efforts there.

It is as if he wrote a column on the op-ed page of the LA Times complaining that the LA Times gives no opportunity for neocons on their op-ed pages; it is self-disproving.

[anne]

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/18/opinion/18webb.html?ex=1295240400&en=f3e1d4cd5b25ed71&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss

January 18, 2006

Purple Heartbreakers
By JAMES WEBB

Arlington, Va.

IT should come as no surprise that an arch-conservative Web site is questioning whether Representative John Murtha, the Pennsylvania Democrat who has been critical of the war in Iraq, deserved the combat awards he received in Vietnam.

After all, in recent years extremist Republican operatives have inverted a longstanding principle: that our combat veterans be accorded a place of honor in political circles. This trend began with the ugly insinuations leveled at Senator John McCain during the 2000 Republican primaries and continued with the slurs against Senators Max Cleland and John Kerry, and now Mr. Murtha.

Military people past and present have good reason to wonder if the current administration truly values their service beyond its immediate effect on its battlefield of choice. The casting of suspicion and doubt about the actions of veterans who have run against President Bush or opposed his policies has been a constant theme of his career. This pattern of denigrating the service of those with whom they disagree risks cheapening the public's appreciation of what it means to serve, and in the long term may hurt the Republicans themselves....

[anne]

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/22/opinion/l22purple.html

Republican Smears Against Veterans

To the Editor:

I agree with James Webb's observations about the Bush administration's treatment of veterans who oppose administration policies.

This administration has no respect for the men and women who served this country. Its strategy is always to discredit the veteran by attacking the veteran's service. It has done this to John McCain, Max Cleland, John Kerry and now John P. Murtha.

Anyone who opposes the administration will be attacked by the Bush loyalists, who will suggest that the veteran either didn't deserve his medals or is unfit because he was affected by the experience.

The ultimate insult is that this administration is composed of people who dodged combat, and yet they portray themselves as the selfless heroes who are fighting for America.

This is not a partisan issue; it is not about the differences between conservatives and liberals. This is about honoring those who put their lives on the line for our democracy.

God help us if we become a society of those who serve and those who rule.

Don R. Catherall
La Grange, Ill., Jan. 18, 2006
The writer is a psychologist who specializes in treating trauma victims, including veterans.

[anne]

Again, the point of the column, as the repeated point in war-mongering is arguing by intimidation. Imagine, referring to American soldiers rather than our soldiers, as though the terrfying fierceness of war might be lessened with this fine term or another. Language has been used to trap us these years repeatedly however, as in immediately calling a suggestion to leave Iraq "cutting and running." Would you have us "cut and run?" Colonel John Murtha was asked in Congress. Would you?

[anne]

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/27/nyregion/27cnd-grand.html?ex=1303790400&en=92999525e517b17f&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss

April 27, 2006

'Grannies' Charged in Peace Protest Are Acquitted
By ANEMONA HARTOCOLLIS

They came, they hobbled, they conquered.

Eighteen "grannies" who were swept up by New York City police, handcuffed, loaded into paddywagons and jailed for four and a half hours were acquitted today of charges that they blocked the entrance to the military recruitment center in Times Square when they tried to enlist.

After six days of a non-jury trial, the grannies — who said they wanted to offer their lives for those of younger soldiers in Iraq — and dozens of supporters filled a cramped courtroom today in Manhattan Criminal Court to hear whether they would be found guilty of two counts of disorderly conduct for refusing to move, which could have put them in jail for 15 days.

The 18 women — gray haired, some carrying canes, one legally blind, one with a walker — listened gravely and in obvious suspense as Judge Neil Ross delivered a carefully worded 15-minute speech in which he said that his verdict was not a referendum on the Police Department, the anti-war message of the grannies, or, indeed, their very grandmotherhood.

But, he said, there was credible evidence that the grandmothers had left room for people to enter the recruitment center, had they wanted to, and that therefore, they had been wrongly arrested. He then pronounced them not guilty, concluding: "The defendants are discharged."

The women, sitting in the jury box at the invitation of the judge, to make it easier for them to see and hear, let out a collective "Oh!" and burst into applause, rushing forward, as quickly as elderly women could rush, to hug and kiss their lawyers, Norman Siegel, the former head of the New York Civil Liberties Union, and Earl Ward.

"Listen to your granny, she knows best!" crowed Joan Wile, a retired cabaret singer and jingle writer who was one of the defendants.

Outside the courthouse minutes later, the women burst into their unofficial anthem, "God Help America," composed by Kay Sather, a member of a sister group, the Raging Grannies of Tucson, Ariz., which goes, "God help America, We need you bad. Cause our leaders, are cheaters, and they're making the world really mad."

The trial was extraordinary, if only because it gave 18 impassioned women — some of whom dated their political activism to the execution of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg — a chance to testify at some length about their anti-war sentiments and their commitment to free speech and dissent in a courtroom that attracted reporters from as far away as France and Germany.

Despite the judge's protestations to the contrary, the verdict was a rare victory for protesters at a time when they have faced uphill battles in other forums. Hundreds of people who were arrested and detained for demonstrating at the 2004 Republican Convention are still embroiled in federal litigation charging the police with false arrest and violating their civil liberties. And the police continue to arrest bicycle riders on charges of disorderly conduct when they participate in monthly group rides called Critical Mass.

"I was sure we were sunk," said Lillian Rydell, an 86-year-old defendant. "I love everybody!"

Essentially, Judge Ross had found himself with grandmotherhood on trial for seven days in his courtroom.

The defendants were on trial for, as Judge Ross put it in a casual aside, "protesting," and more specifically, protesting the war in Iraq, by sitting outside the Times Square military recruiting center last October.

But the defense tried to portray the trial as a referendum on grandmotherhood itself, and milked that all-American concept to the hilt, almost as deftly as the defense in "Miracle on 34th Street," the 1947 feel-good chestnut, milked the American belief in Santa Claus.

The prosecution's case consisted of testimony from police officers about how the women blocked the door of the recruiting center, impeding entry for anyone who wanted to sign up, although the evidence suggested that the only people who wanted to enlist on the afternoon of Oct. 17, 2005, were the women themselves, who said they wanted to give their lives for those of younger soldiers. But they were not allowed in.

The defense consisted of putting the 18 women on the witness stand, one after the other, to explain just what they thought they were doing that day in Times Square. Their lawyers, Earl Ward and Norman Siegel, former director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, carefully asked a series of questions intended to elicit what Mr. Ward called the credentials of each defendant.

Mainly, these credentials consisted of the women's ages and the number of children and grandchildren they have. Only one, Vinie Burrows Harrison, an actress, took the Fifth on the question of her age.

Carol Husten's reply was, "Seventy-four. Two kids."

Judy Lear's was 62, with "three adult children and two granddaughters."

Diane Dreyfus answered "Fifty-nine and three-quarters," with "one stepchild, no grandchildren."

And so forth, up to Marie Runyon, who is 91, with one daughter, two grandchildren....

[Jim 7]

"It is as if he wrote a column on the op-ed page of the LA Times complaining that the LA Times gives no opportunity for neocons on their op-ed pages; it is self-disproving.

Posted by: Carleton Wu | April 29, 2006 at 10:43 AM"

That wouldn't be right; that's Jonah Goldberg's gig.

[Adam]

Prof. DeLong,

We now have a better press corps; his name is Stephen Colbert.

[anne]

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/30/opinion/l30gitmo.html

Scientists Speak Out About Guantánamo

To the Editor:

We are deeply concerned that without serious debate, the United States has crossed the limits of acceptable practices in the treatment of prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and other sites. The secrecy and the disdain for international law and opinion are contrary to the very ideals that our country has long stood and fought for.

We are told that our country is being protected by locking up dangerous terrorists in isolated facilities in order to make us accept a breakdown of our own laws. But we do not know - indeed, we have not been allowed any way of finding out - if the individual prisoners are enemy combatants, Al Qaeda suspects or innocents unlucky enough to have been caught in a blind sweep.

It is one of the most fundamental principles of a democracy that all accused should be tried without unreasonable delays and freed if innocent. In no case do our moral principles permit humiliating and degrading treatment.

The administration has cynically used fear to justify behavior that the civilized world has long considered criminal.

Although this is not a scientific issue in the usual sense, we feel that to ignore it would be to abdicate our responsibility to the truth. Therefore, we have felt compelled to speak out against human rights violations, including those committed by Americans. We are asking all people of good will to join us in demanding a quick return to our country's great traditions.

All writers are members of the National Academy of Sciences.

Leonard Susskind
Professor of Physics, Stanford University
Palo Alto, Calif., April 19, 2006

Michael Aizenman
Professor of Mathematical Physics, Princeton University

James Bjorken
Emeritus Professor of Theoretical Physics, Stanford University

Stanley Deser
Professor of Physics, Brandeis University

Freeman Dyson
Professor of Physics, Institute for Advanced Study

Mary K. Galliard
Professor of Physics, University of California at Berkeley

David Gross
Professor of Physics, University of California
Winner of the 2004 Nobel Prize in Physics

Leo Kadanoff
Professor of Physics and Mathematics, University of Chicago

Walter Kohn
Professor of Chemistry, University of California at Santa Barbara
Winner of the 1998 Nobel Prize in Chemistry

Elliot Lieb
Professor of Mathematics and Physics, Princeton University

Joel Lebowitz
Professor of Mathematics and Physics, Rutgers University

Douglas Osheroff
Professor of Physics and Applied Physics, Stanford University
Winner of the 1996 Nobel Prize in Physics

Joseph Polchinski
Professor of Physics, University of California at Santa Barbara

Edwin Salpeter
Emeritus Professor of the Physical Sciences, Cornell University

John H. Schwarz
Professor of Theoretical Physics, California Institute of Technology

Frank Wilczek
Professor of Physics, M.I.T.
Winner of the 2004 Nobel Prize in Physics

Edward Witten
Professor of Mathematical Physics, Institute for Advanced Study

Richard Zare
Professor in Natural Sciences, Stanford University

Bruno Zumino
Emeritus Professor of Particle Theory, University of California at Berkeley

[Charles]

Reality has a well-known liberal bias, which is why Max Boot is so abstemious of it.