Herr Baier, I would hope you would restrain from posting such garbage in
the future.  The Al New York Times has proven itself to be highly
politically motivated when it comes to articles and editorials, to the
point of fabricating news.

On top of that, Paul Krugman is without a doubt the most partisan
editorialist in the country today.  He has shamelessly surrendered his
reputation in the name of partisanship.  There is absolutely nothing
that he would not lie about as has been demonstrated in the National
Review, where they actually have a KTS (Krugman Truth Squad,) that
detail his absurdities.

Denys


-----Original Message-----
From: HP-3000 Systems Discussion [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On
Behalf Of Michael Baier
Sent: Friday, October 29, 2004 1:54 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [HP3000-L] OT: Bomb-gate at the UN (was Bush just outed
Herr Baier as unfit)

This is from the Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/29/opinion/29krugman.html?oref=login

It's Not Just Al Qaqaa
By PAUL KRUGMAN    Published: October 29, 2004

Just in case, the right is already explaining away President Bush's
defeat:
it's all the fault of the "liberal media," particularly The New York
Times,
which, so the conspiracy theory goes, deliberately timed its report on
the
looted Al Qaqaa explosives - a report all the more dastardly because it
was
true - for the week before the election.

It's remarkable that the right-wingers who dominate cable news and talk
radio are still complaining about a liberal stranglehold over the media.
But, that absurdity aside, they're missing a crucial point: Al Qaqaa is
hardly the only tale of incompetence and mendacity to break to the
surface
in the last few days. Here's a quick look at some of the others:

Letting Osama get away Just before the story about Al Qaqaa broke, the
Bush-
Cheney campaign was frantically trying to debunk John Kerry's statement
that Mr. Bush let Osama bin Laden get away when he was cornered at Tora
Bora. That getaway, Mr. Kerry asserts, was possible because the
administration "outsourced" the job of closing off escape routes to
local
Afghan warlords.

In response, Gen. Tommy Franks claimed that we don't know that Osama was
at
Tora Bora, and, anyway, we didn't outsource the work of catching him.
Dick
Cheney called Mr. Kerry's claims "absolute garbage." But multiple
reports
from 2001 and early 2002 confirm Mr. Kerry's version. As Peter Bergen, a
terrorism expert, writes, Mr. Kerry's charge is "an accurate reflection
of
the historical record."

Letting Zarqawi get away On Monday The Wall Street Journal confirmed an
earlier report that in 2002 the military drew up plans for a strike on
the
base of the terrorist leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in an area of Iraq not
under Saddam's control. But civilian officials vetoed the attack -
probably
because they thought it might undermine political support for the war
against Saddam. So Mr. Zarqawi, like Osama, was given the chance to kill
another day.

The situation in Iraq Dick Cheney is telling supporters that Iraq is
a "remarkable success story." But the news from Iraq just keeps getting
worse. After 49 Iraqi National Guard recruits were killed, execution
style,
even Ayad Allawi, the Iraqi prime minister - who usually acts as a de
facto
spokesman for the Bush-Cheney campaign - accused coalition forces of
"gross
negligence." It's now clear that the insurgency is much larger than U.S.
officials initially acknowledged, and that Iraqi security forces have
been
heavily infiltrated.

$70 billion more Earlier this week The Washington Post reported that
administration officials were planning to seek an additional $70 billion
for Iraq and Afghanistan after the election. Whatever the precise
number,
it has long been obvious to knowledgeable observers that this was
coming,
but the news will come as a shock to many people who still don't realize
how deep a quagmire Mr. Bush has gotten us into.

All of these stories would be getting more play right now if it weren't
for
the Al Qaqaa mess. Still, one can understand why the right is so upset.

After all, Al Qaqaa illustrates in a particularly graphic way the
failures
of Mr. Bush's national security leadership. U.S. soldiers passed through
Al
Qaqaa, a crucial munitions dump, but were never told that it was
important
to secure the site. If administration officials object that they
couldn't
have spared enough troops to guard the site, they're admitting that they
went in without enough troops. And the fact that these explosives fell
into
unknown hands is a perfect example of how the Iraq war has worsened the
terrorist threat.

The story of Al Qaqaa has brought out the worst in a campaign dedicated
to
the proposition that the president is infallible - and that it's always
someone else's fault when things go wrong. Here's what Rudy Giuliani
said
yesterday: "No matter how you try to blame it on the president, the
actual
responsibility for it really would be for the troops that were there.
Did
they search carefully enough?" Support the troops!

But worst of all from the right's point of view, Al Qaqaa has disrupted
the
campaign's media strategy. Karl Rove clearly planned to turn the final
days
of the campaign into a series of "global test" moments - taking
something
Mr. Kerry said and distorting its meaning, then generating pseudo-
controversies that dominate the airwaves. Instead, the news media have
spent the last few days discussing substance. And that's very bad news
for
Mr. Bush.

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