Some argue that the Journal should have still declined to run the antiterror story. However, at no point did Treasury officials tell us not to publish the information. And while Journal editors knew the Times was about to publish the story, Treasury officials did not tell our editors they had urged the Times not to publish. What Journal editors did know is that they had senior government officials providing news they didn't mind seeing in print. If this was a "leak," it was entirely authorized...
In other words, the WSJ is saying that this story was Bush-approved propaganda and they went right along with printing it. In light of the reactions, does that make any sense?
Furthermore, if Bushco is serious about going after the leakers, their search has now been narrowed to Treasury Department officials.
This, of course, begs a few questions:
1) If this was an 'authorized' leak, why are Bush and the Republicans treating the NYT like traitors? They certainly haven't gone after the WSJ in the same manner.
2) Did the administration (Rove) set up the NYT as an act of revenge for its exposure of the illegal wiretapping program last year?
3) Why would the NYT's editor lie about what he said was government pressure not to print the story?
4) Is the WSJ to be trusted, considering it is the conservative/Republican paper of record? Or is the WSJ also being used by Bushco to attack the NYT?
Just look at this quote from the WSJ's editorial:
The problem with the Times is that millions of Americans no longer believe that its editors would make those calculations in anything close to good faith. We certainly don't. On issue after issue, it has become clear that the Times believes the U.S. is not really at war, and in any case the Bush Administration lacks the legitimacy to wage it.
Now, I could see that kind of tripe emanating from some small town Bush-supporting paper or any Republican party shill, but this is the Wall Street Journal talking. That's an extremely vicious condemnation of the old gray lady and it certainly is not deserved. Perhaps the WSJ's editors have forgotten that the NYT's pieces by Judith Miller about Iraq's faux WMDs were part of a very public campaign to take the US into war with Iraq.
And then the WSJ makes it personal. (I'm seriously starting to believe that Rove actually did write this editorial):
Perhaps Mr. Keller has been listening to his boss, Times Publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr., who in a recent commencement address apologized to the graduates because his generation "had seen the horrors and futility of war and smelled the stench of corruption in government.
"Our children, we vowed, would never know that. So, well, sorry. It wasn't supposed to be this way," the publisher continued. "You weren't supposed to be graduating into an America fighting a misbegotten war in a foreign land. You weren't supposed to be graduating into a world where we are still fighting for fundamental human rights," and so on.
Forgive us if we conclude that a newspaper led by someone who speaks this way to college seniors has as a major goal not winning the war on terror but obstructing it.
That is pure wingnut logic. There's no doubt about it. Sulzberger speaks of the awful realities of war and the WSJ completely misinterprets empathy and sorrow for scorn. Then again, everybody knows that 'compassionate conservatism' is one of the biggest oxymorons out there.
Let the newspaper wars continue. Round 1 definitely goes to the New York Times.
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