The New York Times camouflages the news for Obama

Investor's Business Daily
BrookesNews.Com
Monday 21 July 2008

Media: Leave it to the New York Times to take a major story discrediting Barack Obama's Iraq policy and pitch it as a human interest feature on "mixed feelings." After interviewing 18 Iraqis in Baghdad and elsewhere, no fewer than eight Times reporters found notable trepidation about Obama's plans to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq.

But those revelations were smothered in the headline, lead paragraph (which had an Iraqi general "melting into smiles" when asked about Obama) and the thrust of the front-page article. Smiles aside, the Anbar Sunni officer who was interviewed, Gen. Nassir al-Hiti, commander of a predominantly Shiite unit in western Baghdad, had misgivings about Obama's planned pullout.

"Very difficult," he was quoted as saying. "Any army would love to work without any help, but let me be honest: For now, we don't have that ability." This from a general described last year by the U.S. military as "a lot more competent than most Iraqi officers."Al-Hiti then listed ways the U.S. military helps Iraqi forces maintain Iraq's newfound freedoms. They include drone surveillance, evacuation of wounded Iraqi troops and defusing bombs.

Other Iraqis interviewed worried that Obama's withdrawal plans "could lead to chaos in a nation already devastated by war," as the Times described it. "Many Iraqis also acknowledge that security gains in recent months were achieved partly by the buildup of American troops" opposed by Obama and backed by rival John McCain.

One Baghdad businessman educated in the West said "it's a very big assumption that just because (Obama) wants to pull troops out, he'll be able to do it. . . . The American strategy in the region requires troops to remain in Iraq for a long time." An educator from south of Baghdad warned that "al-Qaida would rearrange itself and come back if the Americans withdraw," and called the Obama pullout plan "just propaganda for an election."

Other "well-educated Iraqis who have traveled abroad" even expressed support for a U.S. base in Iraq, which Obama opposes. "I have no problem to have a camp here," a government official said. "I find it in Germany, and that's a strong country. Why not in Iraq?"

These disclosures about Iraqis' views were couched in a manner that stressed their supposed affection for Obama. Al-Hiti is quoted at the top of the piece saying Obama is "young" and "active." We hear the businessman say that he "seems like a nice guy." The government official waxes about Obama's "Muslim roots," and a Mosul engineer thinks a black president might empathize with Arabs.

But that wasn't the story. Iraqis' skepticism of Obama's premature pullout was. Unfortunately, the Times doesn't seem to know a good story even when a bunch of its own reporters come up with it.