Bush To Declare Progress In Iraq

Washington, D.C. - According to The New York Times July 12 edition “The Bush administration will assert in the next few days that progress in carrying out the new American strategy in Iraq has been satisfactory on nearly half of the 18 benchmarks set by Congress, according to several administration officials.”

As a continuing service to our readers to get the whole story, Assimilated Press interviewed The New York Times about this article.

AP: You mentioned the phrase ‘the new American strategy’ in the article’s lede. What new American strategy might that be?

NYT: Uh…I think, um, I think we meant the surge. You know, sending more troops.

AP: I see. Strategy is usually defined as a plan or method of achieving a goal. Do you feel that sending people to do the same thing the same way it has been done for the past several years is an actual change in strategy? Or, do you feel that adding more people doing the exact same non-effective thing is a valid ‘strategy’ simply because more people are doing it?

NYT: Well…um, I’m not sure….

AP: Okay, let me put it another way. If 3,000 people, one at a time, each runs headfirst into a lead-reinforced concrete wall over and over and over again with no positive effect, do you think that having 30,000 people, one at a time, each running headfirst into a lead-reinforced concrete wall over and over and over again is a new and exciting idea that might get better results?

NYT: Uh….

AP: Do you think that perhaps that first sentence could have read “The Bush administration will assert in the next few days that progress in Iraq has been satisfactory on nearly half of the 18 benchmarks set by Congress”? Wouldn’t that sentence have accomplished alerting the public that Bush is trying to claim success?

NYT: Yeah, well…um….

AP: Or even better couldn’t you have written “The Bush administration will assert in the next few days that progress in Iraq has been satisfactory on nearly half of the 18 benchmarks set by Congress. The New York Times has not been able to verify if these benchmarks have been met.”? I mean, is Bush claiming success in Iraq really news? Isn’t that kind of ‘dog bites man’ as far as news goes? Didn’t he already claim ‘Mission Accomplished’ several years and thousands of deaths ago?

NYT: He’s the President. We have to print what he is going to do, and make it sound like news.

AP: Do you realize that by adding ‘the new American strategy’ you are not only parroting exactly what the Bush administration wants you to say you are also putting The New York Times in a situation where it is giving credence to the lie that there really is some new kind of strategy, some new and different innovative action?

NYT: Hey, they said it, not us!

AP: Right….. Is there ever a time, in the dark midnight of your soul, when you stop to consider what you have become and then crawl off into a corner and slowly start to die of shame?

NYT: It’s been great talking to ya! But my corporate masters just whistled, so I gotta go now. Bye!

Written for Assimilated Press by roving reporter pinko