Is The Media Being Willfully Stupid On The “Stay The Course” Controversy?
Over the weekend the New York Times reported that the Bush administration is considering a “timetable” for the mission in Iraq. The insinuation from the Times and others in the media was that said “timetable” represented a reversal of previous Bush administration policy which strongly resisted any sort of specific timetable for Iraq.
The Bush administration suggesting that a change in tactics means that the President is reversing on his “stay the course” message.
So the Bush administration responds to that insinuation by pointing out that a change in tactics doesn’t mean that we’re deviating from the overall goal in Iraq, which is to stay there until the mission is complete. Something which, in turn, generates headlines like this:
Frustrating, isn’t it?
Here the Bush administration is trying to take an honest look at the tactics we’re using to complete our mission in Iraq, and the media can’t do anything but distort. They’re obviously being willfully stupid in all this. These journalists cannot possibly be so dumb as to not be able to recognize the difference in a shift in tactics/strategy in Iraq and a shift in the mission.
