The Attack on the Press in Iraq

"It was one of the last questions yesterday at another of the town hall meetings that President Bush has been filling his schedule with lately -- this one in West Virginia. A woman stood up and first let Bush know that, like almost every other questioner before her, she too had the leader of the free world in her prayers: "I want to let you know that every service at our church you are, by name, lifted up in prayer, and you and your staff and all of our leaders."

"Then she asked, 'from the bottom of [her] heart,' for the president to help her understand why 'it seems that our major media networks don't want to portray the good. They just want to focus on another car bomb, or they just want to focus on some more bloodshed, or they just want to focus on how they don't agree with you and what you're doing, when they don't even probably know how you're doing what you're doing anyway.'

"And the crowd went wild. Her accusation-posed-as-question, at least among the hundreds in the audience who regularly pray for Bush, was met with a standing ovation.

"If Karl Rove were lurking in the wings, he probably made this mental note to himself: 'Keep attacking.'

"Given the stream of disparaging comments about the press over the past few days -- from the president, from the vice president, from Donald Rumsfeld -- this seems to have become strategy.

"The attack, as far as we can tell, has two discernable forms. Let's hold them up to the light for a moment ..."
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[There really are people who support Dubya? How extraordinary!]