WASHINGTON - The United States and Saudi Arabia are working more closely than ever to try to bring peace to the Middle East, but whether they are ready, willing or able to intervene forcefully enough to make a difference remains an open question. Continues.
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William Safire's 'Walk Back The Cat', or: I'm not a cat's-paw
When it comes to the New York Times, color me cynical. Maybe even *cynical* isn't quite strong enough. Seldom -- very seldom -- is anything printed on the pages of that pathetic excuse for a "newspaper" these days even vaguely believable. I even double check the date (well, not really, but you get the picture).
So, imagine my delight at William Safire's bolt-from-the-blue,'Walk back the cat'. For denizens of Palm Beach County, Mr. Safire is Times' resident 'conservative' and senior columnist. (Some, yours truly included, might well question Safire's 'conservative' credentials, having once endorsed Clinton for president; then again, at the Gray Lady anything right of uncle Joe is 'right-wing extremism'.)
'Bolt-from-the-blue'? Well, reading between-the-lines, sounds to me like there's trouble in paradise, folks.
The subject of his column was a piece by Times "reporter" Patrick E. Tyler, headlined, Arab Politics; Saudi to Warn Bush of Rupture Over Israeli Policy, which touched off a firestorm of controversy last week. Mr. Tyler, ostensibly quoting anonymous 'sources' supposedly 'close' to the Crown Prince on the eve of his trip, wrote of how the royal family, piqued at U.S. support for Sharon, would threaten the President by brandishing the oil weapon -- even booting U.S. soldiers from Saudi bases was on the table -- that is, unless President Bush did a brisk 180 on Israel.
Put another way, the House of Saud was threatening war on the United States unless the President reversed U.S. policy towards Israel -- pronto. Where I live, we call that blackmail, plain and simple.
The Bush-bashers had a field day. America, forget that post-9/11 persona of strength and resolve -- it's a crock; to hear Mr. Tyler tell it, Bush is a wimp, a weakling, a pantywaist, a push-over. Prince Abdullah would breezily make quick work of this milksop. Even conservative talk-radio mavens, adjourning their normally skeptical impulses, unwittingly swallowed the Gray Lady bait -- hook, line and sinker.
From the dribble of news reports since the meeting in Crawford, we learned a completely different scenario unfolded. Gray Lady had egg on her face. But few of her pawns -- William Kristol, et al -- have shown the slightest remorse for grossly misjudging the President.
But I digress.
"Patrick Tyler", writes Safire, "is among the most experienced foreign correspondents in the business. Pat has resisted manipulation and seen through deceit during years in Moscow and Beijing, and we can trust his description of the Saudi source and the accuracy of the quotations."
Uh, hello? Why should this even be at issue? In my neck of the woods, Safire is damning his colleague with faint praise. His choice of "resisted" and "seen" are provocative -- both are past-tense. Not quite a vote-of-confidence, I'd say.
Mr. Safire, thou praisesth your colleague too much.
After leading the reader through a quick tour of varying scenarios, likely and unlikely, to account for the gulf between Tyler's article and what had actually transpired, Safire tosses in another titillating non-sequitur: "The Saudi source (and I'll never ask my colleague who it was, because the rule of background is more absolute than the rule of Saudi rulers)...."
This is gonzo language.
Translation: My associate is a storyteller, a fibber. I don't buy his cock-and-bull tale, not for a minute; that's why I'm tempted -- oh-so-tempted -- to grill him, cross-examine him......get him to cough up that phony "source" of his, just to prove my point.
Reading too much into this? Maybe. Maybe not.
Excuse me, but this 'Tyler-is-credible, Tyler-wouldn't-lie, Tyler-wouldn't-fudge, Tyler-wouldn't-fake', blah-blah-blah echo-chamber media mantra (MSNBC's Chris Matthews has spent a week defending Tyler) is pegging my B.S. detector, big time.
Fishy -- very, very fishy.
Anyway, that's...
My two cents..
"JohnHuang2"
My issue with your post is that it ignores Safire's central thesis: a crisis within the Saudi heirarchy. I don't see that Safire is criticizing Tyler at all, least of all by implication. Rather, I see him emphasizing the latter possibility (I read the column as well) of division in the throne room, or tent, as it were.