The Coffeespy

A nauseating story Early Birded from the Washington Post just leaves one aghast.  It’s an editorial posing as a front page story.  Journalists are professional writers.  They know how to craft words to suit their purposes.  Here are a couple examples:

The debate over sending more U.S. troops to Iraq intensified yesterday as President Bush signaled that he will listen but not necessarily defer to balky military officers, while Gen. John P. Abizaid, his top Middle East commander and a leading skeptic of a so-called surge, announced his retirement.

“So-called” has a dual definition, something a good writer trying not to sway an audience will avoid.  The second, and well known, definition from Merriam-Webster is “falsely or improperly so named.”  Apparently, the writer has some issues with the surge in troops.

The tension between the White House and the Joint Chiefs of Staff over the proposed troop increase has come to dominate the administration’s post-election search for a new strategy in Iraq. The uniformed leadership has opposed sending additional forces without a clear mission, seeing the idea as ill-formed and driven by a desire in the White House to do something different even without a defined purpose.

This paragraph implies that the White House plan is to send troops with no mission.  It’s all in the wording.  A professional writer knows this.  Why, then, would they wait until later to let the reader know:

He (Bush) added: “I agree with them that there’s got to be a specific mission that can be accomplished with the addition of more troops before I agree on that strategy.”

This is buried several paragraphs deeper in the story.  Why?  Because it doesn’t seem like the Joint Cheifs and the White House are all that “at odds” when you read them close together.  But that wouldn’t benefit the purpose of the story, would it?  And what’s the purpose?

The internal struggle over troop levels in Iraq has exposed a schism between civilian and military leadership 45 months into a war that, at the moment, has no end in sight.

The WaPo needs to show a divide between the President and the military because the military is beloved by the nation.  Gone are the days of the venerable periodicals print prestige. 

The Wall Street Journal recently disparaged the usefulness of blogs.  I would agree if your average WaPo reader were willing to dissect the nuances imbedded in the facts.  The fact of the matter is, most people don’t have the time to perform an autopsy on the corpse that is journalism in the beltway.  They want to quickly read a story and absorb the facts.  Unfortunately, there’s poison in the well.

Michelle Malkin is covering a much more obvious ploy on-going with the Waldo of AP fame: Jamil Hussein.  While outlets like the WaPo haven’t gone this far, their tactics are much more subtle and, therefore, harder to defeat because brute force research is no good.