Tuesday, November 01, 2005
Something Nice About the Times
And then there's the kind of story just about no one else in the MSM would do:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/31/international/middleeast/31reconstruct.html?emc=eta1 [free registration required]
The lack of progress in rebuilding Iraq.
No one knows what they're doing.
Not much is being actually accomplished.
No one knows what's actually being spent. One named source says because it's, you know, a war zone, people apparently are not and cannot be aware of what they're doing.
Oh.
And the preliminary planning all sucked.
Oh.
Okay, that's not news, but the alleged Paper of Record is at least noting it outside the op-ed page.
Still, flaws and all, an important piece.
Same issue, another probably-nowhere-else-but-in-the-Times, also page 1: How the NSA cooked the intelligence on the August 1964 Gulf of Tonkin. Makes it pretty clear that LBJ relied on seriously cooked intel, cooked by mid-level agency staffers all on their own initiative, not at White House's request. One wonders, though. One wonders that even if LBJ was duped, would he have nonetheless ensured that we would have cranked up the war anyway. Did Lyndon have a mad-on to go to war in Vietnam the way the Bushies had a hard-on to go into Iraq? Note that the article is based on an NSA history, so.... (http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/31/politics/31war.html. Reg. reqd.)
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/31/international/middleeast/31reconstruct.html?emc=eta1 [free registration required]
The lack of progress in rebuilding Iraq.
No one knows what they're doing.
Not much is being actually accomplished.
No one knows what's actually being spent. One named source says because it's, you know, a war zone, people apparently are not and cannot be aware of what they're doing.
Oh.
And the preliminary planning all sucked.
Oh.
Okay, that's not news, but the alleged Paper of Record is at least noting it outside the op-ed page.
Still, flaws and all, an important piece.
Same issue, another probably-nowhere-else-but-in-the-Times, also page 1: How the NSA cooked the intelligence on the August 1964 Gulf of Tonkin. Makes it pretty clear that LBJ relied on seriously cooked intel, cooked by mid-level agency staffers all on their own initiative, not at White House's request. One wonders, though. One wonders that even if LBJ was duped, would he have nonetheless ensured that we would have cranked up the war anyway. Did Lyndon have a mad-on to go to war in Vietnam the way the Bushies had a hard-on to go into Iraq? Note that the article is based on an NSA history, so.... (http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/31/politics/31war.html. Reg. reqd.)
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