The Question For the WaPo Editorial Staff

by DemFromCT

There's today's remarkably insipid editorial:

Yet the growing violence of recent weeks, combined with constitutional provisions that should be troubling for supporters of a secular Iraqi democracy as well as for Iraqi minorities, places the U.S. mission in the most precarious position it has experienced since the transition to Iraqi sovereignty 14 months ago.

There is no cause for despair, or for abandoning the basic U.S. strategy in Iraq, which is to support the election of a permanent national government and train security forces capable of defending it with continuing help from American troops. But it is dispiriting, and damaging to the chances for success, that President Bush still refuses to speak honestly to the country about the challenges the United States now faces, or how he intends to address them. In two major speeches on national security this week, Mr. Bush simply repeated the misleading description of Iraq he offered during his national television address in June, conflating the war with the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and describing the enemy as terrorists akin to al Qaeda.

And there's Colbert King's excellent summary of facts on the ground:

 

In an Aug. 12 Page One story that included interviews with U.S. officials involved in Iraq policy, The Post's Peter Baker wrote: "Administration officials have all but given up any hope of militarily defeating the insurgents with U.S. forces, instead aiming only to train and equip enough Iraqi security forces to take over the fight themselves." Bush, the piece said, is only trying to buy time until the Iraqi political process moves along and Iraqi troops get up to speed.

Two days later, The Post's Robin Wright and Ellen Knickmeyer reported an even gloomier assessment based on interviews with senior administration officials and analysts who spoke on condition of anonymity. "Washington now does not expect to fully defeat the insurgency before departing, but instead to diminish it," they reported. Said a U.S. official: "We've said we won't leave a day before it's necessary. But necessary is the key word -- necessary for them or for us? When we finally depart, it will probably be for us."

In other words, while Bush is out rallying the troops and reassuring their families that their sacrifices won't be in vain, administration officials in Washington are quietly playing down expectations of what can really be achieved in Iraq.

...

Okay, the Bush folks also promised us weapons of mass destruction, and greetings with rice and rose water, and Iraqi oil money to pay for reconstruction, and a model new democracy in the Middle East, none of which has happened.

 

But this is different.

 

President Bush is out selling a vision of victory in Iraq while U.S. officials in Washington and Baghdad are resigned to settling for less. George Bush can't make good on his original promise, and they know it. They also know that more Americans are going to die in Iraq for what may end up as a theocracy-tinged spoils system.

 

When those carrying the burden of this war realize what they have sacrificed and died for, the worst days of George W. Bush will have just begun.

The question for the editorial staff is simply this: Do you read your own paper?

 

Comments

[emptypockets]

I don't know. I think the Washington Post editorial is fine, with a little editing and punctuation:

"There is no... U.S. strategy in Iraq[.]

[A] permanent national government... [will be] capable of... damaging... the chances for success that President Bush still... faces[.]

...Mr. Bush simply [watches] television... in June [through] Sept."

And by the way, editors, how about a moratorium on the phrase "growing violence in Iraq"? Maybe I'm making the mistake of actually reading your news pages, but it seems to me Iraq hasn't been picket fences and rose bushes since, well, since we got there.

[ng]

Again and briefly, if we went over there on false pretenses and if what we are doing now fails to improve the situation over Saddam's reign, has a crime of political manslaughter been committed against both the American soldiers, their families, and many of the Iragi people? If punishment is a deterrent to future such crimes, how and who will punish this administration?

On another related topic, people anywhere that demonstrate in favor of a war that has clearly questionable value are scum and sick. Indeed, to flush out such scum, I would set up a sting operation to bring them out with their demonstrations, and I would then investigate each one personally to find out what was behind this sick, blood letting chanting. The situation in Crawford is or could be such a sting operation because with what we now know about Iraq, these pro-war demonstrators are evil sick people motivated by something very sinister, IMHO!!!!!

[DemFromCT]

Contrast and compare:

"I see developments on the constitutional side as potentially disastrous," said Larry Diamond, a scholar at Stanford University and former senior advisor in the defunct Coalition Provisional Authority. "I think the Bush administration has miscalculated profoundly by trying to get this constitution done by Aug. 15 at any price."

[DemFromCT]

ng,the pro-Bush "Cindy doesn't speak for me' caravan is owned and operated by Move America Forward.

[ng]

Demonstrating in favor of needless killing, even just possible needless killing, is a pitiful site to behold. There must be a more human way to show support for the troops and maybe even the cause of fighting terorism other than specifically holding up pro-war signs to the mother of a soldier killed in what may very well be a total waste of lives!

Vietnam did actually happened and was indeed a lesson in such total wasting of lives!. These pro-war demonstrators should know better. How can they sleep at night?

[DemFromCT]

See previous story on iraq, Vietnam and the polls.

40% of the public supported the war even at the end. Then, 40% was a PR disaster. Now, it's proof Bush is still enormously popular.

Think about it.

[Al Hill]

The correct answer would be "no the reporters do not read the Op-Ed it might cause a bias " this way they go on reporting the Bush line ..

[Redshift]

Vietnam did actually happened and was indeed a lesson in such total wasting of lives!. These pro-war demonstrators should know better. How can they sleep at night?

They should, but they don't. I've met otherwise rational people (i.e., conservative but not rabid right-wingers, who have an interest in military history) who know for certain that we only lost the Vietnam war because of the protesters and the press.