Bush Distorts Qaeda Links, Critics Assert (NYT)

[G_j]

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/13/world/middleeast/13qaeda.html?_r=1&bl&ex=1184644800&en=3e79a000cf8bc523&ei=5087%0A&oref=slogin

Bush Distorts Qaeda Links, Critics Assert

By MICHAEL R. GORDON and JIM RUTENBERG
Published: July 13, 2007

BAGHDAD, July 12 — In rebuffing calls to bring troops home from Iraq, President Bush on Thursday employed a stark and ominous defense. “The same folks that are bombing innocent people in Iraq,” he said, “were the ones who attacked us in America on September the 11th, and that’s why what happens in Iraq matters to the security here at home.”

It is an argument Mr. Bush has been making with frequency in the past few months, as the challenges to the continuation of the war have grown. On Thursday alone, he referred at least 30 times to Al Qaeda or its presence in Iraq.

But his references to Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, and his assertions that it is the same group that attacked the United States in 2001, have greatly oversimplified the nature of the insurgency in Iraq and its relationship with the Qaeda leadership.

There is no question that the group is one of the most dangerous in Iraq. But Mr. Bush’s critics argue that he has overstated the Qaeda connection in an attempt to exploit the same kinds of post-Sept. 11 emotions that helped him win support for the invasion in the first place.

..more,,

[EFerrari]

1. Michael Gordon is trying to resusitate his cred?

Good luck with that, Mike. You are a presstitute.

[G_j]

4. "Critics Assert" ?

yea right.. Assinine headline


and Critics Assert that 2+2=4, torture is wrong, .... bla bla bla...

[EFerrari]

5. I wish I were as stoopid as they want me to be.

lol

[CBHagman]

2. This is a must-read, especially since...

...William Kristol is still asserting, in a piece in today's Outlook section in The Washington Post, that there were links between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda! That lot (Bush and his neocon sycophants) just mash up the terms and dish them out to the public, logic, reasoning, morality, or facts be damned.

The NY Times article needs to be e-mailed and read far and wide.

[EFerrari]

3. I wouldn't send this guy's work out anywhere.

Go check out how he laid out the red carpet in the run up to the war.

Maybe I'm just too cynical to live but, I wouldn't trust Gordon as far as I could throw him EVEN when he appears to be doing his job as a journalist.

Edit: laid? layed? ARgh.

[PSPS]

6. I just hate that headline

By adding "critics assert," they're intentionally helping "catapult the propaganda." Without reading the article, the reader assumes it's just another "he said, she said" meaningless article the MSM churns out with apparent glee.

Even after reading the article, the WH spin is clearly evident. If the Times would just pick apart the facts on its own, it could easily knock down the lies (or "distortions," as it gets politely called here.)

But that would require actual journalism and might keep the editor and publisher from getting to their various cocktail parties.