Jules Witcover, the veteran reporter of Presidential politics, isn't immune to falling into the truisms of the press corps' conventional wisdom. But he seems much less susceptible to the malady than most of his colleagues. For one thing, he actually makes it a point to pay attention to issues, an old-fashioned approach indeed.
In War issue re-emerges Baltimore Sun 02/09/04, Witcover talks about the irony that Howard Dean, who made the iraq War central to his campaign message, is seeing his bid for the Democratic nomination seemingly expiring, while the war issue is receiving more attention. He points to four events that have caused this in recent days:
1. David Kay's resignation as head of the WMD snipe hunt and his public statements that WMDs were unlikely to be found in Iraq.
2. Secretary of State Colin Powell expressing public doubt about the WMDs in Iraq.
3. Bush's appointment of a special bipartisan commission "to investigate pre-invasion intelligence." How many other mainstream reporters do we see routinely using "invasion" to describe the American intervention in Iraq (even though that's really a factual description)? He also points to the controversy around the commission's mission, i.e., should it look at the White House's use of the intelligence information, as adding to the attention.
4. CIA director George Tenet saying that the CIA had never called Iraq an "imminent" threat to the United States.
If Witcover is able to recognize that the Iraq War and the way we got into it are key issues in the Presidential campaign, why is that so hard for rest of the press corps to see? Witcover concludes:
In response, the president continues to talk of the invasion of Iraq in terms of taking action "to defend the American people." The fact that his own WMD expert says such weapons weren't there, and that his CIA director says he never warned of an "imminent threat," makes Mr. Bush's rationale for haste sound more hollow than ever.
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