Wednesday, November 23, 2005
The facts, yet again, are biased
My 17 year-old daughter is conservative but not across-the-board, and she has a very open mind. In fact, she led the family rebellion that caused us to re-subcribe to the Washington Post after I had cancelled our subscription in the summer of 2004.
I'm glad she did. Now, every morning she reads the headlines from both the Post and the Washington Times. Often the bias of the Post headlines leaves her shaking her head.
Today, the Post's headline for its story on Vice President Cheney's speech was "Cheney Again Assails Critics of War." (The Times said "Cheney hits Democrats on war tack). By using the word "again," the Post signaled to its readers that there was nothing new to report, and that Cheney was merely up to his old tricks. Nowhere in the article, however, does the Post make any mention of a prior instance in which Cheney "assailed" war critics.
Really. How dare the biased Washington Post point out in a perfectly true headline that Cheney has twice assailed critics of pre-war intelligence? It's like they're trying to tell us what really happened or something.
I'm telling you, these people don't even know what they're angry about any more.
And Scott, reading is tough, but, yes the Post does reference his previous attacks in the general context of the ramped-up campaign coming from the White House.
During his speech, Cheney sought to draw a distinction between what he called legitimate debate over the war and "dishonest" and "reprehensible" charges that the administration twisted prewar intelligence to justify invading Iraq in March 2003. Cheney repeated assertions -- disputed by some senators -- that members of Congress had access to the same intelligence that was provided to Bush about the threat of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction under the rule of Saddam Hussein.
Actually, there's a nit to pick there, since Cheney quite clearly steers away from the "same intelligence" line that Bush asserted, falsely, to a mere mention of "the intlligence." So.
