Tuesday, November 30, 2004

Reading the Times

The Media Research Center, Brent Bozell's organization to remove all liberalism from the news, has set up Times Watch, a website dedicated to proving that the Times is biased. This is a gold-mine for me, since I can go and read the articles they are talking about and see if their complaints are valid.

Take this story, entitled "Shadow of Vietnam Falls Over Iraq River Raids," by John F. Burns, which appeared at the New York Times yesterday. My guess is that the people writing articles at Times Watch just were gleeful as all get out when they saw that title. I mean the story practically writes itself, doesn't it? The Times thinks that Iraq is just like Vietnam and that shows that they are defeatist.

In the article, Mr. Burns offers several details that validate the Vietnam Comparison. For one thing he hears the soldiers themselves making the comparison. Although he notes that most Soldiers don't think a lot about Vietnam. He also notes that the river combat along the Tigris and Euphrates is similar in some respects to the river combat of Vietnam.

Most damning, however, is the suggestion that our allies may not be everything one would hope for in allies.
At one point, Lieutenant Duarte bridled when some of the Iraqis resisted his repeated urging that they spread out along the line, preferring to cluster together, ineffectively, at one end. A Marine sergeant told him that the Iraqis were officers and did not feel that they should be asked to work side by side with common soldiers.

One of the Iraqi officers, asked if he spoke English, replied snappily, "English no good. Arabic good. Iraq good." The message seemed clear.

Although recruits in the new Iraqi units undergo strict vetting, American officers say rebel sympathizers have infiltrated some of the new units - some of the soldiers have been caught tipping off rebel groups.
Hmmmmm. Allies we can't exactly trust. Where have we seen that before?

But the Times Watch analysis isn't interested in determining whether or not Mr. Burns had a good argument. They are only interested in pointing out that the point that Mr. Burns made contradicts Conservative orthodoxy, and is therefore wrong, regardless of any evidence offered.

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