BUSH WINS AGAIN

"...press, including Orin, should take some responsibility for excluding the good, and spinning the negative"

Yes. Agreed.

However, I don't think the White House and fellow republicans have been out there at every opportunity, letting the public know all the achievements being made in Iraq. They could be hammering away and repeating their message over and over, just as the left does, to convince people that what we're doing in Iraq is absolutely necessary; to convince them that leaving now is not an option and the pricetag is cheap at twice the cost. If they had effectively done this, the poll numbers wouldn't be where they are today for Bush and the Iraq policy. Every republican senator and congressman should be loudly supporting our efforts in Iraq, the war against terrorism, and the need for the billions of dollars to get the job done. I think it's been pretty quiet lately, with the exception of the State Dept. (and I'm not a big State dept fan, usually)

I don't think the White House and fellow republicans have been out there at every opportunity, letting the public know all the achievements being made in Iraq.

While the Bush administration should redouble their efforts to get their message out on Iraq (a little more help from Republicans in Congress wouldn't hurt -- though Senators Bob Bennett and Pete Domenici have been outstanding), I think an excellent example of the original point I made about media responsibility is an article written by Orin for the Post only two weeks ago. She purports to describe Bush's May 1 speech aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, but misquotes Bush as proclaiming the end of the war, a frequent charge by Democrats. Though she is well aware of the fact that Bush had said "major combat had ended", Orin chose purposely to perpetuate the myth that Bush said otherwise -- without referring to the controversy.

So, was it Bush's ineptitude in not getting out the word, or Orin's ineptitude in failing to quote accurately? Was it Orin's bias, or, to be more charitable, was she reacting to peer pressure from other jounalists who may have been threatening to ban her from their post-event analyses where they agree on how to spin an event?

We do know the NY Post, despite its conservative (read, neo-con) reputation, has published many articles critical of Bush, Powell, Rumsfeld, Pataki, Bloomberg and Schwarzenegger. For instance, The Post ran a front page story headlined "BUSH KNEW", suggesting Bush was warned and could have prevented 9/11 -- this before any investigations had begun. (In case you wonder how European best sellers get started on 9/11 conspitacies, the slime often happens here first.) The story was a gift to Hillary who took the newspaper to the floor of the Senate to lambaste Bush. The Post has been very complimentary at times to Sen. Schumer and other Democrats. It turns out that the most conservative part of the paper is often the Letters to the Editor section.

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