Yesterday, the Washington Post inflated one military expert's contention that firing General McChrystal would damage the Afghanistan war effort into unanimity among military experts on that point.
Today, the Post doubles-down on its efforts to prop up McChrystal:
That first headline links to a re-write of yesterday's article -- a re-write that still quotes only the one military expert expressing anything even remotely resembling opposition to firing McChrystal. The Post's blaring front-page suggestion that McChrystal may be essential to winning the war is barely an afterthought in the actual article.
The article carrying the “Obama risks alienating military” headline, meanwhile, is a predictable re-hashing of every stereotype about Democrats and the military you could hope for -- long on speculation and assertion, and short on actual facts and examples.
And the examples that are provided are laughably thin:
Eager to avoid the tensions with the military, or the accusations of weakness on national security that have often beset Democrats, Obama installed men with military credentials in critical civilian jobs. He hired a retired general as his national security adviser, and kept George W. Bush's defense secretary, Robert M. Gates. And after conducting a review of his Afghanistan policy -- one that took so long that former vice president Richard B. Cheney accused him of “dithering” -- Obama sided with military leaders late last year and opted for a surge in troops.
Oh my god! Obama's review took so long that Dick Cheney accused him of “dithering”! But … wait … Dick Cheney is a nasty, nasty man who spent much of last year lashing out at the Obama administration for undoing, or thinking about undoing, his policies. Dick Cheney accusing Barack Obama of “dithering” tells us basically nothing about Obama. A respected Democrat accusing Obama of dithering might tell us something, but Cheney doing so? Yawn. And yet the Washington Post, desperate to portray Obama as adrift, writes this up as though Dick Cheney is someone who really doesn't want to criticize the Obama administration, but eventually was compelled to speak out. Please.
More from the Post's analysis:
Inevitably, however, the decision will also fall into a larger storyline about Obama's leadership, one that will include his struggles to assert something that resembles control over a raging environmental disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.
Well, sure, it's inevitable now that the Post has raised it. But otherwise, the two things have very little to do with each other. The Post just seems to be throwing everything it can think of against the wall, hoping something sticks.