NYT finally covers Bush straw man rhetoric

The political reporters of the New York Times have consistenly failed to challenge the dissembling of the White House. Today, the Times finally ran a piece on President Bush's constant use of straw man arguments, which the Washington Post's Dana Milbank covered in 2004 and the Associated Press reported back in March. And if you compare the three stories, you'll see that the Times is the only outlet to portray the White House's pervasive use of straw man arguments as a "he said," "she said" debate rather than a fact.

Still, the article does usefully document a long series of straw man arguments from this administration:

Addressing Americans' views of the Iraq war, President Bush recently told an interviewer, "Most people want us to win."

Democrats heard a partisan implication in that statement that left them incredulous. "Like we want to lose?" asked Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware.

After Mr. Bush said at a Republican fund-raising event in Florida on Thursday that when it came to battling terrorists, "I need members of Congress who understand that you can't negotiate with these folks," Democrats were furious at what they heard as a suggestion that they backed a dialogue with Al Qaeda.

"No one in America thinks that," Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts said indignantly.

...In what may have been the leading edge of the effort, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, in a speech about the Iraq war to veterans late last month asked pointedly, "Can folks really continue to think that free countries can negotiate a separate peace with terrorists?"

But the Pentagon declined to provide an example of anyone who had proposed peace negotiations with terrorists.

...Similarly, Mr. Bush's press secretary, Tony Snow, said the president was not pointing fingers late last month when he said in an address to the American Legion, "We can decide to stop fighting the terrorists in Iraq and other parts of the world, but they will not decide to stop fighting us."

Democrats took that as an accusation that they were somehow calling for a break in the pursuit of terrorists.

And Mr. Snow said Mr. Bush did not have Democrats in mind on Thursday when he said at a reception for Gus Bilirakis, a Republican Congressional candidate in the Tampa Bay area, that he needed help from lawmakers who "understand you can't negotiate with" terrorists. Nor was the president impugning Democrats when he told The Wall Street Journal this month that "most people want to win" in Iraq, Mr. Snow said.

Comments

[Noumenon]

People like my father and Rush Limbaugh directly accuse Democrats of wanting and even helping al Qaeda to win, in those words, all the time. Shutting President Bush up isn't going to help that. But it's still something.

[Walter Guest]

No, they don't want al Qaeda to win. But many on the left don't want George Bush to win. They don't want a victory in Iraq to be credited to Bush. That would be devastating to them.

[Strawman Hunter]

Q: Mr. President, what do you say to those who don't support your plan to invade Iraq?
A: I don't agree with those whoe say Iraqis are incapable of democracy. They are a noble people.

(Uhh,? Who suggested they don't want democracy?)

[Seth]

I, personally, have lost count of the number of times Bush has said we have to choose between protecting the nation precisely the way he wants, or not protecting it at all.

[Mark D]

Hey Brendan,
Check out Dan Froomkin's blog today (WaPo,) under "Bush's Imaginary Foes."