US Media: Don't Mention Withdrawal

Greg Mitchell examines how US Editorials continue to oppose Iraq withdrawals:

All of them, despite voicing strong crtiicism in the same editorials, came out against starting to bring the boys home.

This continues the depressing tradition of newspaper editorials saying most of the right things, and pressing charges against the administration’s handling of the war – while arguing for “more time” or “a few more months” for the latest “turning point” in Iraq to produce a positive outcome. This pattern could – and possibly will – go on nearly forever.

It ain’t funny how time slips away.

As Bob Herbert, the New York Times columnist, put it on Monday: "Pretty soon this war in Iraq will have lasted as long as our involvement in World War II, with absolutely no evidence of any sort of conclusion in sight."

Then, on Tuesday, the military announced it was actually increasing troop levels in Iraq, transfering forces from Kuwait to troubled Anbar province. This is progress?

Mitchell has close study of the major papers' Memorial Day editorials here. For example:

Surely the time-to-set-a-deadline call would follow. But no, the Times concluded with: “It's time for Mr. Bush either to chart a course that can actually be followed, or admit that there is none.”

This leaves standing the essential blunder that the Times editorial page, its star columnist Thomas Friedman, and so many other commentators have made: a) trusting that, surely, the president and his team will come up with a wise plan -- and even if they did b) could be trusted to carry it out successfully.

That’s why all of these fine editorials nailing the administration for stupidly and incompetence in regard to Iraq are so hollow—if they are as stupid and incompetent as the Times suggests, why spend even one more day entrusting 135,000 American soldiers to their care?