Sadly, it has come to this. Two years after the invasion of Iraq, the online powerhouse MoveOn.org – which built most of its member base with a strong antiwar message – is not pushing for withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq. With a network of more than 3...
Curiosity may occasionally kill a cat. But lack of curiosity is apt to terminate journalism with extreme prejudice. "We will not set an artificial timetable for leaving Iraq, because that would embolden the terrorists and make them believe they can wait us out,"...
The latest polls show that most Americans are critical of the war in Iraq. But the option of swiftly withdrawing all U.S. troops from that country gets little media attention. So far this year, many news outlets have lapsed into conjecture on what George W. Bush has...
Top officials in Washington are now promoting jitters about Iran's nuclear activities, while media outlets amplify the message. A confrontation with Tehran is on the second-term Bush agenda. So, we're encouraged to obliquely think about the unthinkable. But no one can...
When misleading buzzwords become part of the media landscape, they slant news coverage and skew public perceptions. That's the story with the phrase "Iraqi forces" – now in routine use by U.S. media outlets, including the country's most influential...
The conflict in Iraq has become a holy war. In both directions. On the surface, the most prominent headline on the New York Times front page Nov. 10 was simply matter-of-fact: "In Taking Fallujah Mosque, Victory by the Inch." Yet it's not mere happenstance...
Soon after the American death toll in Iraq passed the 1,000 mark, I thought of Saadoun Hammadi and some oratory he provided two years ago. At the time, Hammadi was the speaker of Iraq's National Assembly. "The U.S. administration is now speaking war,"...
The nation's top dog of war is frisky again. Donald Rumsfeld has returned to high visibility – after a couple of months in the media doghouse following revelations about torture at the Abu Ghraib prison – now openly romancing the journalistic pack with his...
We saw butterflies turning into bombers. And we weren't dreaming. At the time when the Woodstock festival became an instant media legend in mid-August 1969, melodic yearning for peace was up against the cold steel of American war machinery. The music and other...
Tom Ridge, the federal official in charge of defending the United States against terrorism, was on message when he told a July 14 news conference: "We don't do politics at Homeland Security." Such high-level claims of patriotic purity have been routine since 9/11. But...
