Media Ignore Evidence That Partisan Political Calculations Drive Bush Administration Iraq Policy

Bush Administration Official Says It Would Be "Political Suicide" to Change Policy Before Election

Washington, DC -- With less than two weeks to go before the midterm elections, the media are again looking the other way as the White House admits to playing politics with our policy in Iraq. Media Matters for America Managing Director Jamison Foser today chastised the press for failing to cover astonishing comments made by a Bush administration official who claimed that a change to Iraq policy prior to the election would be "political suicide."

"The Bush administration is again playing politics with the most important issue to the American people," Foser said. "The idea that much-needed changes in Iraq policy would be put on hold for political reasons until after this fall's election is reprehensible. It's the media's responsibility to hold the administration accountable for playing politics with the lives of American men and women in Iraq. Their continued failure to do so will deprive their readers and viewers of the information they need to make informed decisions."

On the October 24 edition of CBS Evening News with Katie Couric, Jim Axelrod and Couric did not bat an eye at the suggestion that the administration might be holding off on changes in Iraq policy until the election. Axelrod reported that a White House official told him, "[D]o not expect to see anything significant prior to Election Day" "as far as a significant change" in the Bush administration's Iraq policy. Axelrod then quoted the official, who said: "You're not going to see anything before November 8th. It would be political suicide, and Karl Rove would never allow it."

The administration official's comments come on the heels of an October 6 report by ABC News' Jake Tapper that Senate Armed Services Committee chairman John Warner (R-VA) had delivered a "bleak assessment" of the situation in Iraq and that the ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee, Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-DE), said that two -- and now says three -- Republican senators had told him that they will break with the Bush administration's Iraq strategy after next month's elections, when "the need to protect the president will be nonexistent."

Despite these reports, the media as a whole have failed to adequately cover this story.

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