THE NEW YORK TIMES ON IRAQ

Rarely have we seen a more pathetic display of incoherence, shifting arguments, issue-avoidance and flim-flam than in the New York Times’ editorials on Iraq. I can see only one connective thread: naked partisanship. If everything were the same and this were a Democratic president, the Times would be gung-ho. At least that’s the unavoidable conclusion of their previous arguments. Instead, we have a series of editorials placing obstacle afater obstacle in the path of a serious attempt to disarm Saddam. Each time the administration’s policy accords with the Times (on the U.N. route, for example), the Times subsequently moves the goal-posts. Here’s my fisking of a recent, spectacularly incoherent editorial. I’m not the only one who has seen this. The New Republic’s latest editorial contains an icy blast at the shallowness of the Times’ reasoning. I’ve come reluctantly to believe that in the mindset of the Times editorialists, wounding this presidency has become a far greater objective than dealing honestly or consistently with issues of national security. In this, they incarnate the problem at the heart of many (but mercifully not all) of today’s Democrats.