Keeping me honest
Keeping with my policy of fair and balance blogging, loyal reader and commenter Balisardo emails:
I don’t usually comment on blogs to provoke responses, but my comment on your misleading post “Typical,” on August 21 is definitely an exception. I thought I’d drop a line to make sure you were aware of it and not just blowing it off.
It’s your party to blow it off if you want to, but I think I expected more from you. (I think that’s a compliment.)
He is referencing this peice of mine which alleges Kerry and Graham blame Bush for the UN bombing. And it is a compliment. First, I try to respond to most comments if I feel they warrant it. If I don’t respond, it’s because I agree or think your comment stands on it’s own merit. However, I missed this comment. I have therefore enabled the email feature in MoveableType so that I get an email notification of comments. The comment was:
SayUncle, I think you need to add a second update to this post. I was surprised that Kerry and Graham would blame Bush for the bombing when the U.N. apparently had taken responsibility for security of the building, so I went to the article and read more than the headline “Kerry, Graham fault Bush in Deadly Baghdad Bombing.” I’m guessing you didn’t .
In the whole article, there was not a single quote by either candidate that referenced the bombing. This is the only Kerry quote in the whole piece:
“It is becoming increasingly clear each day that the administration misread the situation on the ground in Iraq and lacks an adequate plan to win the peace and protect our troops.”
He was obviously asked for a reaction to the bombing and RESISTED (appropriately) pinning it on the administration, saying only what he has been saying for weeks and months now. And which is rather obvious and hardly even controversial.
Graham came closer, but same goes for the only quote of his that’s given:
“Had the president pursued the war on terrorism prior to initiating military action against Saddam Hussein — as I advocated last year — it is likely that al Qaeda and other terrorist networks would not have been able to take advantage of the chaos that now exists in Baghdad and other parts of Iraq,” Mr. Graham said.
Same thing — he was asked for a reaction to the bombing and said (in part) well, yeah, the chaos that we’re seeing over there now is what I was concerned about last year when I was advocating an alternate strategy to the administration’s decision to go to war. He didn’t specify or even mention the U.N. bombing.
The article itself strikes me as unbiased and unremarkable — yet the headline is an utter misrepresentation of its contents. This is the common modus operandi of the Washington Times (and FOX News) — take a story and twist it enough to politicize it in the desired way, and label it as such, knowing that 95% of their consumers won’t care to poke beneath the headline.
SayUncle, I disagree with you most of the time, but I generally respect the tone with which you conduct your blog. I don’t think you would have posted this knowing how misleading it was.
To the issue: The two quotes listed in the comments of the post (one references the administration lacking a plan and one implies if something else had been done things would be different.) do “fault” the administration. I will buy that “blame” is perhaps too harsh of a word and that Kerry and Graham were goaded into responding. And I will also admit that the article is misleading to an extent but these two do fault the administration to a degree.
And I appreciate comments and emails, it keeps me honest.
