April 11, 2006

Not So Odd Couple

In today's Grapevine, Brit Hume plays the "even the liberal Washington Post" game. As in, even the Liberal Washington Post dismisses the President's critics. Here's what Hume has to say:

The Odd Couple

The president's so-called leak of classified intelligence information in 2003 has had a rare and unusual result — it has brought together the editorial pages of The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post.

Last week, The Wall Street Journal wrote that the president "has a right — even a duty — to set the record straight," adding, "Mr. Bush was divulging the truth."

And Sunday's Washington Post called the declassification, "A Good Leak," saying, "President Bush was right to approve the declassification of parts of a National Intelligence Estimate about Iraq ... to make clear why he had believed that Saddam Hussein was seeking nuclear weapons."

What Hume failes to mention, of course, is that the Washington Post's editorial page has taken a pro-war position very similar to the Wall Street Journal's pro-war position from the very beginning of the Bush administration's confrontation with Saddam Hussein, and has refused to back down from that posture at any point since. Given this context, there is very little that is "unsual" about this coming together of the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post, and it is disingenuous of Hume to suggest otherwise.

Furthermore, Hume failed to mention altogether is the much noted fact that, on the very same day, the Post's main pages carried a pair of investigative articles whose content thoroughly discredited the claims of the Post editorial pages, as noted in this Editor and Publisher piece.