Pejoratives such as "absurdly inflated" and "as if that has not been her job all along" are insulting but tolerable in an editorial (though I'll bet the Times wasn't nearly as nasty during the previous Administration). But the Times also mixed up the numbers, as the Captain noted: the actual number is far closer to Rice's figure than Biden's. Naturally, the Times refused to run a correction.Senator Joseph Biden, Democrat of Delaware, asked Ms. Rice how big an Iraqi security force had actually been trained. When Ms. Rice, the national security adviser, offered an 120,000, Mr. Biden said the people doing the training put the total at 4,000. He then suggested that Ms. Rice "pick up the phone or go see these folks," as if that has not been her job all along, especially in the year since the administration said that all information on operations in Iraq would flow through her.
But wait, there's more: Deputy editorial page editor Andrew Rosenthal responded with a lame and lengthy defense that makes the smear worse. Says the Captain:
Mr. Rosenthal attacks me for not acknowledging a context for Senator Biden's question that the Times never bothered to provide -- and then strips all context out of Condoleezza Rice's answer. How honest and ethical is that?It's too complicated to explain here, but worth a click to Ed's page. "Actual malice" anyone?
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