Clark Hoyt, the new Public Editor of The New York Times, has an article today entitled "Seeing Al Qaeda Around Every Corner." Finally, someone at the NY Times realizes that Times reporters and editors have been too gullible accepting Bush's unfounded assertions that all insurgents in Iraq belong to Al Qaeda. I have frequently railed about the laziness of reporters in accepting the administration's wild claims about Qaeda involvement. See, for example, here on June 28, 2007, here on June 24, 2007, and here on June 23, 2007.
Writes Public Editor Clark Hoyt:
"As domestic support for the war in Iraq continues to melt away, President Bush and the United States military in Baghdad are increasingly pointing to a single villain on the battlefield: Al Qaeda.
"Bush mentioned the terrorist group 27 times in a recent speech on Iraq at the Naval War College in Newport, R.I. In West Virginia on the Fourth of July, he declared, “We must defeat Al Qaeda in Iraq.” The Associated Press reported last month that although some 30 groups have claimed credit for attacks on United States and Iraqi government targets, press releases from the American military focus overwhelmingly on Al Qaeda.
"Why Bush and the military are emphasizing Al Qaeda to the virtual exclusion of other sources of violence in Iraq is an important story. So is the question of how well their version of events squares with the facts of a murky and rapidly changing situation on the ground.
"But these are stories you haven’t been reading in The Times in recent weeks as the newspaper has slipped into a routine of quoting the president and the military uncritically about Al Qaeda’s role in Iraq — and sometimes citing the group itself without attribution."
Yes, it is an important why Bush and his military generals are talking almost exclusively about Qaeda insurgents. They want to conflate the complex and messy situation in Iraq where there are surely dozens of different insurgency groups, all of whom share the same passion of expelling the non-Muslim invader and occupier. In place of the complex and the multiple, Bush and his cronies want to substitute Al Qaeda, so that Bush can claim the war in Iraq is but a continuation of the fight against those who perpetrated the 9/11 disaster. The goal is to keep the United States armed forces fighting this immoral and unjustified war in Iraq until Bush and Cheney leave office, claiming that they were "resolute" and "brave" in going after the 9/11 terrorists.
Clark Hoyt writes:
"For the president, an emphasis on Al Qaeda has political advantages at a time when powerful former allies, like Senator Richard Lugar of Indiana, the ranking Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, are starting to back away from his war policy. Al Qaeda is an enemy Americans understand, in contrast to the messy reality of an Iraq where U.S. troops must also deal with Sunni nationalists, Shiite militias and even criminal gangs.
"“Remember, when I mention Al Qaeda, they’re the ones who attacked the United States of America and killed nearly 3,000 people on September the 11th, 2001,” Bush said in the Naval War College speech."
Bush's strategy is so transparent, it's hard to understand how anyone could not see his deception and duplicity. But then again, most people seem not to care enough to read the daily newspapers. Forget about the NY Times. Most people skip even their local newspapers, preferring instead to collect their 60 seconds of "international news" from the superficial local TV "eyewitness news" stations that emphasize convenience store hold-ups and the like.
So it is refreshing, although overdue, that the Public Editor complains and castigates his own newspaper room at the NY Times for failing to distinguish the spin from the reality in Iraq. Here again is Clark Hoyt:
"Middle East experts with whom I talked in recent days said that the heavy focus on Al Qaeda obscures a much more complicated situation on the ground — and perhaps a much more dangerous one around the world.
"“Nobody knows how many different Islamist extremist groups make up the insurgency” in Iraq, said Anthony H. Cordesman of the bipartisan Center for Strategic and International Studies. “Even when you talk about Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, the idea of somehow it is the center of the insurgency is almost absurd.”
"Shibley Telhami, the Anwar Sadat Professor of Peace and Development at the University of Maryland, said, “I have been noticing — not just your paper — all papers have fallen into this reporting.” The administration, he added, “made a strategic decision” to play up Al Qaeda’s role in Iraq, “and the press went along with it.” (Actually, that’s not entirely accurate, but we’ll get to that in a moment.)
"Recent Times stories from Iraq have referred, with little or no attribution — and no supporting evidence — to “militants linked with Al Qaeda,” “Sunni extremists with links to Al Qaeda” and “insurgents from Al Qaeda.” The Times has stated flatly, again without attribution or supporting evidence, that Al Qaeda was responsible for the bombing of the Golden Dome mosque in Samarra last year, an event that the president has said started the sectarian civil war between Sunnis and Shiites."
Hoyt adds that he wishes that the NY Times had been more sceptical about swallowing Bush's spins and accepting the U.S. military's reports on its fights against "Al Qaeda" without doing more investigation on who really constitute the insurgency in Iraq:
"But those references to Al Qaeda began creeping in with greater frequency. Susan Chira, the foreign editor, said she takes “great pride in the whole of our coverage” but acknowledged that the paper had used “excessive shorthand” when referring to Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia. “We’ve been sloppy,” she said. She and other editors started worrying about it, Chira said, when the American military began an operation in mid-June against what it said were strongholds of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia.
"On Thursday, she and her deputy, Ethan Bronner, circulated a memo with guidelines on how to distinguish Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia from bin Laden’s Al Qaeda.
"It’s a good move. I’d have been happier still if The Times had helped its readers by doing a deeper job of reporting on the administration’s drive to make Al Qaeda the singular enemy in Iraq."
Congratulations to the Public Editor of the NY Times, Clark Hoyt, for coming out and criticizing the Times' news room and editors for their gullibility and lack of required investigation.
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