No bias in the media

Just minding my own business, reading today’s news and I stopped dead at this quote in a Jennifer Loven-written article for the AP in the Washington Examiner;

Bush’s appearance came exactly four years after his speech on an aircraft carrier decorated with a huge “Mission Accomplished” banner. In that address, a frequent target of Democrats seeking to ridicule the president, he declared that the Iraq front in the global fight against terrorism had been successfully completed.

“Major combat operations in Iraq have ended,” the president said from the USS Abraham Lincoln on May 1, 2003, just weeks after the war began. “In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed.”

At the time, Bush’s approval rating was 63 percent, with the public’s disapproval at 34 percent.

Four years later, with over 3,300 U.S. troops killed in Iraq and the country gripped by unrelenting violence and political uncertainty, only 35 percent of the public approves of the job the president is doing, while 62 percent disapprove, according to an April 2-4 poll from AP-Ipsos.

Yup a one-line quote from the President’s speech followed by approval/disapproval ratings. Just reading that quote, you’d think the President had declared the war over. Now, my memory is failing me a bit sometimes, but I’d have sworn that he said more than that.

Sure enough, from the White House website I found the transcript of the President’s speech that day;

We have difficult work to do in Iraq. We’re bringing order to parts of that country that remain dangerous. We’re pursuing and finding leaders of the old regime, who will be held to account for their crimes. We’ve begun the search for hidden chemical and biological weapons and already know of hundreds of sites that will be investigated. We’re helping to rebuild Iraq, where the dictator built palaces for himself, instead of hospitals and schools. And we will stand with the new leaders of Iraq as they establish a government of, by, and for the Iraqi people.

The transition from dictatorship to democracy will take time, but it is worth every effort. Our coalition will stay until our work is done. Then we will leave, and we will leave behind a free Iraq.

Funny, sounds to me like the President was warning us that the war isn’t over – that it’d take years for our work in Iraq to end. It almost sounds as if he wasn’t saying “Mission Accomplished” at all.

From Dan Froomkin of the Washington Post the same line with the same type of commentary;

Four years ago today, Bush flew aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier in “Top Gun” style, stood under a banner proclaiming “Mission Accomplished,” and proudly declared: “Major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed.”

The event was initially hailed as a brilliant act of White House stagecraft, showcasing Bush as a powerful and resolute leader.

But as time passed, the “mission” was exposed as a delusion. There were no Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. And there is little sense of accomplishment.

Funny, but I don’t see the words “Mission Accomplished” in the speech. I know the crew of the USS Abraham Lincoln hung a banner on their ship that proclaimed that their mission had been accomplished in Iraq and the President welcomed them home, but I don’t see anyplace where the president was anything except proud of the job this crew and the forces in general had done.

Froomkin also misses the mark on weapons of mass destruction, too. You’d think he’d not want to show us his ass on such an easily researched point. But the “No WMDs” meme is just spit out reflexively these days. yeah, there is a lot less there than we thought, but it was there nonetheless, Dan. And if you count what we got off the Arab Street from Libya as a reaction to our invasion of Hussein’s Iraq, it starts to add up.

“We have difficult work to do” and “…will take time” tells me that the President was being nothing short of candid and honest with the American people. But it seems to me that Jennifer Loven and Dan Froomkin are falling short of being candid and honest with their readers. 

Category: Media, Politics, Terror War