> I've no idea whatsoever how you can come to that
> conclusion from the
> statement.
I guess I�ll have to explain it. And they say I have a
reading comprehension problem :)
> In fact even the conclusion seemed flawed since
> "Monday Morning Quarterback"
> specifically refers to somebody that claims that
> they could have done
> something better than somebody else.
No wonder we can�t agree.
Monday Morning Quarterback =
One who criticizes or passes judgment from a position
of hindsight.
The article itself says:
"If there's something I would do differently -- and
it's always easy in hindsight -- the top of the story
would say, 'We're going to war, we're going to war
against evil.' But later down it would say, 'But some
people are questioning it.' The caution and the
questioning was buried underneath the drumbeat. . . .
The hugeness of the war preparation story tended to
drown out a lot of that stuff."
And�
Reviewing the story in his glass-walled office last
week, Downie said: "In retrospect, that probably
should have been on Page 1 instead of A17, even though
it wasn't a definitive story and had to rely on
unnamed sources. It was a very prescient story."
See how I came to that conclusion now?
> In this case
> they are saying that they
> allowed themselves to become lax, not placing
> themselves in another's
> position. Woodward is specifically saying that, in
> his opinion, this
> complacently was universal among the major media and
> that furthermore nobody
> was willing to make this claim out of fear of later
> embarrassment.
Downie said the paper ran several pieces analyzing
Powell's speech as a package on inside pages. "We were
not able to marshal enough evidence to say he was
wrong," Downie said of Powell. "To pull one of those
out on the front page would be making a statement on
our own: 'Aha, he's wrong about the aluminum tubes.' "
> They were very clear, again, that this apology
> related to actual, published
> articles, not imagined research or investigation
> that they could have
> possibly done. In other words it wasn't that they
> "could" have known
> anything: it was that they had writers that were
> questioning the
> administration but they failed to give them the
> exposure that the stories
> deserved.
>
Actually:
In mid-March, as the administration was on the verge
of invading Iraq, Woodward stepped in to give the
stalled Pincus piece about the administration's lack
of evidence a push. "We weren't holding it for any
political reason or because we were being pressured by
the administration," Spayd said, but because such
stories were difficult to edit at a time when the
national desk was deluged with copy. "People forget
how many facets of this story we were chasing . . .
the political ramifications . . . military readiness .
. . issues around postwar Iraq and how prepared the
administration was . . . diplomacy angles . . . and we
were pursuing WMD. . . . All those stories were
competing for prominence."
> There was no claim (direct or implied) of supporting
> Bush that I could see.
> Instead there was a regret for trusting the
> administration-backed
> intelligence as much as they did coupled with a herd
> mentality when it came
> to determining "top stories".
"The paper was not front-paging stuff," said Pentagon
correspondent Thomas Ricks. "Administration assertions
were on the front page. Things that challenged the
administration were on A18 on Sunday or A24 on Monday.
There was an attitude among editors: Look, we're going
to war, why do we even worry about all this contrary
stuff?"
I guess my reading comprehensions pretty good after
all :)
Maybe you need to read the original article instead of
an article of the article. It�s like playing
telephone. I can�t wait to here what your definition
of that is :)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A58127-2004Aug11.html
-sm
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