But…I Thought..They Were Always…Um…

The WaPo has been drifting toward…balance?

Former Washington Post reporter Ron Kessler believes his old paper “has steadily become more fair” since Katharine Weymouth became publisher. “It has become more probing and interesting as well,” he contends.

On the one hand, I’d agree.

On the other – I need to go out and start scanning leftyblogs for complaints that the WaPo has become “conservative”. 

Y’know.  Like many of them claim the Strib is, and has always been.

25 thoughts on “But…I Thought..They Were Always…Um…

  1. Lots of libs think that the WaPo is conservative. Fred Hiatt has been willing to cut Bush & Co more slack re the GWOT than the NY Times.
    Unforgivable in some quarters.

  2. Right, because something from GOP(NEWSMAX) echo chambers means the paper itself acknowledges it needed to move to the right, and the commentary of one reporter proves all attempts at even-handed reporting were merely lies.

    Many liberals and moderates I know think WaPo is and has always been a fine paper. If it decides to embrace the tactics of only reporting the neo-con side, then it will become an extinct fine paper.

    BTW – Terry – considering you all pretty much f-ed up the ‘GWOT’ for 7 years – I’m not sure why someone should give you all any slack. If WaPo did it, maybe it was the threats of being labelled as America Haters (you know, that mature approach) that kept their pens off the paper – but I’m guessing it’s just that they had to hang out in the vicinity of the BushCo turdballs, and didn’t want to have to defend their objectivity to a bunch a raving loonies from DOJ/FCC etc..because the one thing that IS unforgivable in some quarters is admitting that you considered David Patreaus a molly-coddler – and then having to admit his tactic for dealing with AQ worked, and yours failed utterly.

  3. Who has been labeled an “America Hater” that did not or does not deserve that label? Reference, please.
    How has the GWOT been f*cked up? Compared to what? What metric are you using, other than your own peevishness?
    Who considered Petraeus a ‘molly coddler’? Again a reference please.

    What you’ve written is so bizarre it needs cites, peev. It’s like you are saying that the ‘space people’ were behind 9/11.

  4. Terry, I have been called an America Hater by people here. Thank you. Do you doubt that it’s been said about people like say, the current President Elect of the United States by people who are your peers?

    As for ‘peevishness’, anyone who calls dissent ‘America Hating’ has no grounds for charges of peevishness.

    MY Opinion is that the GWOT was screwed up (references follow)
    1.OBL is not dead or in custody nor is Abrim Al Zarwahiri
    2. Pakistan is now the home of MUCH more difficult to monitor jihadists
    3. Afghanistan is trending toward instability, not the other way around
    4. Iraq was NOT a jihad/religious fundamentalist nation, but according to our own NIE has become a cause d’ celeb for AQ
    5. Patraeus while in Anbar advocated treating the Iraqi population with more tact – with more diplomacy. People like Limbaugh called that advocating for ‘therapy’ – and in fact specifically said approaches like Patraeus’ were the wrong approach.
    6. Consequently, Iraq devolved from merely anarchy, where we didn’t even keep control of military bases where explosives were stored (whcih were then used against us) to open insurrection. Our communication of what we were doing and why fell on deaf ears because it looked to be dishonest – including at one point the fact that we said a non-democratic government in Iraq was – while not the best solution – acceptable
    7. We subsequently spent 3.5 years and 500 Billion dollars messing up the occupation of Iraq – do you now contend that w/o the change in strategy that Patraeus instituted things would have simply gone along fine?
    8. We laughed off things like GitMo and Abu Ghraib – which offended TO THEIR CORE the average foreigner, let alone the average muslim or arab. Think not – do some reading. Our approval percentages in Iraq alone went from 75% to 25% following Abu Ghraib.

    Are those sufficient? If it’s bizarre to conclude based on comments made here over the course of years that you guys don’t get the issues around GWOT – oh well, the evidence of your failings spoke for themselves.

    The final point Terry is simply this- It’s called ethics, Any ends which is achieved by an unethical means, cannot be ethical. If you feel that’s bizarre, it comes from Immanuel Kant.

    Frankly Terry, I’d suggest it is instead YOUR view of the world which is bizarre. Exactly HOW do you feel, given the 4 fold increase (if memory serves) in lives lost per year on average to terrorism since 2001, how exactly do you justify your party’s/Presidents conduct as successful? Because we haven’t been directly attacked? ROFLMAO if you try that one. Our own intelligence assets don’t agree that such a point is a sufficient bellweather – or more correctly, they’ve said TSA changes haven’t actually made us safer – meaning, our GWOT activities have been a sham and we could have been attacked really at any time – since the changes were meaningless.

  5. Oh, and Terry, please site sources when saying things like “many liberals see WaPo as conservative” – either polls, or at least dozens of sites saying this. I mean, since we’re now looking for factual justification of commentary.

    BTW, I hope you’re ready to hold Mitch (et.al.) to the same standards. For that matter, I hope you’re ready to be held to it.

  6. Do you have some links, quotes, and sources Peev?

    (I know… it’s hard to be a challenger when you’re not a champion.)

  7. Peev, your first point — that you’ve been called an ‘America Hater’ by someone on SITD is ridiculous. I’ve been called ‘un-American’ here by RickDFL when I dared to defend Michelle Malkin’s right to publish a revisionist account of the internment of Japanese Americans during WW2.
    Your skin is far too thin to even think about writing about politics. God knows what you’d do if someone with actual authority called you an ‘America Hater’.

  8. “Finally Terry, one further point, not one credible source has said jihadist membership is down. Not one. ”

    And teh Peevee personally knows ’em all..*snicker*

  9. Say, AC, care to join me in the cellar for a glass or two? I’ve just taken delivery of a hogshead of malmsey. I think it will suit you perfectly.

  10. Peev, you asked for cites that show that many liberals believe to WaPo is a conservative paper. I tacked a half dozen links from reliably liberal websites — Salon, Media Matters, etc — and the comment is now in the SITD moderation queue.

  11. Peev, the failure of TSA does not equal ‘f*cking up the GWOT.
    You have to learn how to argue.
    1)make a point which you can either prove or disprove
    2)Supply arguments that support your position.
    You don’t seem to know how to do this. Supporting the position that ‘my side’ has ‘f*cked up the GWOT is not supported by a link to a story that says the TSA has not significantly reduced the chance of another 9/11. It’s like pointing to existing skinhead groups & saying that proves that we lost WW2.

  12. A wonderful suggestion, Terry. What say we share a bottle after a bit of sport on Bosworth Field?

  13. What a bunch of BS, penigma:

    “MUCH more difficult to monitor”
    “trending toward instability”
    “Iraq was NOT a jihad/religious fundamentalist nation”
    “People like Limbaugh called that”
    “it looked to be dishonest”
    “We laughed off things like GitMo and Abu Ghraib”
    “It’s called ethics”

    Most of what you have to say is off a whine list, or simple dishonest. You cannot expect to be taken seriously when, while disparaging the “screw up” of the GWOT, you can’t help but “screw up” your argument.

  14. Okay, peev, I’m going to take your points one-by-one. Who knows, maybe I’ll find something that I will agree with.
    I’ve been working on putting up a wall on the open side of my garage all day, I’ve got a package of Drum rolling tobacco and a twelver of Beck’s so let’s get started.

    1)1.OBL is not dead or in custody nor is Abrim Al Zarwahiri
    Success in the GWOT does not depend on the capture or death of Osama Bin Laden. If OBL had been killed by us, by his ‘friends’ or by accident the day after 9/11 we would still have a GWOT. We are at war with an ideology, not super villains out of a James Bond film.
    2. Pakistan is now the home of MUCH more difficult to monitor jihadists
    Much more than what? More jihadists? More difficult to monitor jihadists? Why is this bad? Isn’t Pakistan a putative ally of the US?
    You are only articulating half a thought, I can’t figure out what your point is.

    3. Afghanistan is trending toward instability, not the other way around
    As in “Instability is headed towards Afghanistan? Other way than what?
    I assume you mean that Afghanistan is trending towards instability rather than stability. Possibly. We’ll have to change strategy to match the current conditions.
    Afghanistan has never been a particularly stable nation. In the 19th century the Brits played ethnic group against ethnic group to keep a lid on the place. As long as they kept the Russians out of there the Brits were happy. Success in Afghanistan amounts to keeping our guys in nominal control. Our enemies in Afghanistan control no territory. They are not about to eject or slaughter our soldiers. Not too bad a position to be in, though it could be better.
    In short the ability of Karzai to make his will the law of the land is not a good metric for determining our success or failure in Afghanistan.
    4. Iraq was NOT a jihad/religious fundamentalist nation, but according to our own NIE has become a cause d’ celeb for AQ
    Weather or not Iraq was a fundamentalist or jihadist nation has no bearing on whether or not we ‘f*cked up” the GWOT. Next.
    5. Patraeus while in Anbar advocated treating the Iraqi population with more tact – with more diplomacy. People like Limbaugh called that advocating for ‘therapy’ – and in fact specifically said approaches like Patraeus’ were the wrong approach.
    Citation, please? And are you saying that Petraeus’ strategy is a success?
    When the surge was proposed the Left — ever ignorant of anything having to do with fighting and winning a war — compared the surge to the escalalation of US forces in the late 1960’s. The surge was opposed by Reid and Pelosi. Bush adopted the policy against their wishes. You can’t rewrite history to suit your ideological requirements, peev.
    6. Consequently, Iraq devolved from merely anarchy, where we didn’t even keep control of military bases where explosives were stored (whcih were then used against us) to open insurrection. Our communication of what we were doing and why fell on deaf ears because it looked to be dishonest – including at one point the fact that we said a non-democratic government in Iraq was – while not the best solution – acceptable
    Peev, if you like I can cite many, many incidents of disastrous foul ups from WW2, from the raid on Dieppe to giving Eastern Europe to the Soviets at Yalta. Yet we won. Glad we weren’t depending on folks like you back then.
    7. We subsequently spent 3.5 years and 500 Billion dollars messing up the occupation of Iraq – do you now contend that w/o the change in strategy that Patraeus instituted things would have simply gone along fine?
    I never contended anything re the surge, pro or con, other than generic statements that I hoped it would work. Your side, remember, wanted immediate and unconditional withdrawal of US forces.

    8. We laughed off things like GitMo and Abu Ghraib – which offended TO THEIR CORE the average foreigner, let alone the average muslim or arab. Think not – do some reading. Our approval percentages in Iraq alone went from 75% to 25% following Abu Ghraib.

    Who laughed off what? The offenses at Ubu Ghraib were committed by some crazy, sadistic soldiers against Iraqi nationals. They are now in Prison serving long terms. Gitmo is home to hardened terrorists of various nationalities taken from battlefields outside Iraq. Some of the people running Gitmo have received medals. How can you possibly think that they are somehow the same?
    Personally I feel that if the jihadist fascists hate us, we must be doing something right — like hurting them.

    And no, peev, they are not sufficient. You’ve made a bunch of crazy, confused assertions — not arguments.

    Peev, sometimes you remind me of this person in my freshman writing class. In the class I took (and I suppose most other Eng. 100 classes) the objective is to hand in, at the end of the semester, a twenty-five-hundred word paper on pretty much any topic you wanted. The topic wasn’t important, but you had to do it properly. You had to make a thesis statement, present supporting arguments for your thesis, mention arguments against your thesis and point out their weaknesses, and conclude with a restatement of your thesis and a review of your supporting arguments.
    As I’ve said, this paper could be on any topic. Fly-fishing, maybe, or why the 4/4 beat is so dominant in pop music. Didn’t matter.
    Anyhow, this person in my Eng. 100 class (let’s call him ‘Boorish’) wanted to write a paper showing that FDR had tricked the Japanese into attacking Pearl Harbor so he would have an excuse for starting WW2.
    The teacher tried to tell Boorish that this was not a good topic. The thesis was so difficult to support that he could not do it properly in 2,500 words. It would be as like betting on picking up a spare in bowling when all that was required to win the was that your ball didn’t go in the gutter.
    Boorish insisted that he wanted to write a paper proving that FDR was a traitor. The teacher relented but held him to a strict 5,000 word limit.
    At the end of the semester we all had to read our paper aloud to the class. Boorish read his and it was a confused mass of words and unsupported assertions. He had obviously taken weird shortcuts to smash all of his ‘evidence’ into one very long paragraph. Most of the class got that dull-eyed look before he had finished the first page. It was terrible; confusing, dull, impossible to follow.
    I believe the teacher had mercy on Boorish and gave him a ‘D’ rather than an ‘F’.
    Peev, you are Boorish.

  15. Terry, I’ll read your response and respond – in what hopefully will be concise, but will be civil either way.

    Have a very merry Christmas –

    Warm regards,
    Peevishly Boorish :).

  16. Terry – rather than sending a 500 word reply through this blog, I’ll send you an e-mail if you prefer. Let me know to where.

    If you prefer not, I’ll keep it short, my single biggest example of how you’ve ‘not won the GWOT’ is Isreal. 60 years after deciding to ‘get tough’, they still have the same problems.

    Clearly, I (and we all understand) there is a visceral desire for showing folks that messing with the US (or Isreal) will only lead to misery, there’s even a logic in it – but it fails, has failed, so many times it goes beyond counting. It merely creates resentment, bitter, white-hot anger that leads to reprisal.

    There are many other things to say, such as our ineptitude in Afghanistan and Iraq (in both pre-planning and execution) – our apparent blindness toward Saudi Arabia and Egypt (just to name a few), or our trafficking in guns to repressive regimes like Indonesia, Pakistan, Turkmenistan, Chile, Columbia, El Salvador … just to name a few – which creates the large sense of hypocrisy with which our complaints are received – but I’ll instead just point you back to Isreal – attempts to ‘win’ by brutal reprisal simply do not ‘win’.

    I am as well read as most people you will find on foreign affairs, on military history, etc.. as is required to make a reasonable comment on this subject – I don’t feel it would be right or required to prove it to you. If you think not, well, you’re entitled to your opinion, but my interaction with you has not shown you to me to be someone greatly literate on the subject such that I should defer to your wisdom. Further, you’ve made comments above that were not proven to any degree – so I find your demand for ‘proof’ to be a bit more than hollow, I find them to be duplicitous. You asked for some examples, I provided some – if you want more, for what? – so that you can attempt to challenge them as insufficiently as the ones above were challenged? I’ll provide you some further reply in an e-mail however, or if you prefer, I’ll even post it on my blog, but I’m not going to take up the kind of space such a discussion (if done in any real way) would take, not here. Nor am I going to sift through the venal, beligerent, and incipid responses which would be posted by some of your ‘peers’ here. I hope you will understand that.

    BTW – I don’t have any interest in reading ad hominem attacks, and I’m sure you’re better than to make them. I graduated well enough in my class in college – so I think I’m plenty capable of writing – especially since the degree required vast numbers of papers to acquire, just as Mitch (for example) is CAPABLE of using logic – he, like me with writing, choses not to do so (to use logic) from time to time. At this point my commentary is meant to mock, as I do not find anyone (you included) actually interested in discussion here. I don’t have enough concern to worry about policing up pronouns – it’s very clear even were the prose perfect, you’d insult it, ignore it, dissemble about it. But one thing is also clear – on topic after topic, the right has been absolutely and disasterously wrong, and even a guy with a vast disinterest in worrying about rhetorical clarity is able to make neo-cons look very very far out of touch. I should think you’d be better off worrying about that, than whether my writing here meets your standards. It certainly is sufficient when I chose to make it so.

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