Parsing Patraeus

CJR.ORG — September 12, 2007
Among the big headlines General David Petraeus’s testimony before Congress has produced is the news that 30,000 troops will be coming home before next summer. Characterized by the general as a “very substantial withdrawal,” it’s one of the only indications that he and the president are ultimately trying to wind down [...]

Bremer’s Nonchalance

CJR.ORG — September 4, 2007
You really have to read it to believe it. Today, The New York Times Web site has the full text of an exchange of letters between President Bush and his Iraq envoy, J. Paul Bremer. They seem to back up Bremer’s claim that the president knew about the decision to [...]

What Gonzalez Didn’t Say

CJR.ORG — August 27, 2007
It came as no surprise this morning at Alberto Gonzales’s press conference announcing his resignation that the AG didn’t go into the details of why he was quitting. In fact, he seemed to honor our intelligence by not resorting to one of those patented excuses so familiar now, that he wanted [...]

Massacre on A6

CJR.ORG — August 16, 2007
Maybe it’s because I saw the incredible documentary, “No End In Sight,” last night that I’m particularly sensitive, but it struck me as strange that the catastrophic synchronized bombings in northern Iraq yesterday, which were the deadliest since the war began, received such little coverage. They have already taken the lives [...]

On Bad News and Good News From Iraq

CJR.ORG — October 31, 2005
In the flow of bad news engulfing the Bush administration last week was the coincidental fact that the 2,000th military death in Iraq happened to fall on exactly the same day as the Iraqi constitution was officially passed.
The constitution story, though appearing on many front pages, paled in placement and headline [...]

When a Number Isn’t Just a Number – and When It Is

CJR.ORG — October 26, 2005
Yesterday’s announcement of the 2,000th military casualty in Iraq brought with it the predictable news accounts of the number. And where the press saw itself highlighting an important marker in the Iraq war, many conservatives saw it as obvious politicization of an arbitrary figure (made all the more acute by the [...]

The Rebirth of Body Counts

CJR.ORG — October 24, 2005
During the war in Vietnam, one of the signs that the government wasn’t leveling with the public was the exaggerated body count produced daily by the military high command in Saigon. When, after years of inflated enemy death tolls, the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong caught U.S. forces off-guard in [...]

Michael Kirk on Torture, “Frontline” and Rumsfeld

CJR.ORG — October 21, 2005
Last Tuesday, the much-acclaimed PBS show “Frontline” debuted a new documentary, “The Question of Torture,” which took a comprehensive look at how the rules of interrogation and prisoner treatment have shifted since September 11th, a reality made obvious in the infamous photos of abuse at Abu Ghraib prison that emerged two [...]

Saddam Hussein? Or Body Double?

CJR.ORG — October 19, 2005
All eyes today were on a courtroom in Baghdad where behind a barrier of white metal bars sat Saddam Hussein, in what he called “his best clothes,” his hair as jet black as always (are they still letting him dye it?). Despite the dramatic setting, nothing really happened aside from the [...]

It’s Not Just What You Know, It’s How You Know

CJR.ORG — October 18, 2005
If sometimes it seems like pundits and politicians can see what they want to when looking at Iraq, either fledgling democracy or catastrophic failure, it has to be at least partly due to the murkiness of even the most basic news reports from the region.
This morning offered a perfect example of [...]