In the Los Angeles Times this morning, Tony Parry . . . reports isn't the word. White washes the Pendleton Eight? From the fluff:
Two Marines who admitted taking part in the kidnapping and killing of an unarmed Iraqi man have been released from the brig at Camp Pendleton, the Marine Corps announced Tuesday, leaving only one of the five men who pleaded guilty still behind bars.
[. . .]
All eight were members of 3rd Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment. Prosecutors said the killing was a coldblooded act of vigilante justice, but defense witnesses during the courts-martial said Marines were hoping to deter insurgent attacks.
Search in vain for the name of the man murdered. Search in vain for facts such as the man was pulled from his home in the dead of night for no crime, or that a gun and a shovel were planted on him to make him look like an 'insurgent,' or that they called in a cover story. Instead, some unnamed man is dead and the facts of how aren't addressed nor is there a need to go to any military expert and ask: How common is this that a War Crime takes place, that confessions and convictions are made, and people get slaps on the wrist?
Basic journalism, you're writing about a death that's led to convictions, you name the victim and you describe the details of the death.
AP offers up a look at Bully Boy's 'base':
To see the type of person who still backs him, President Bush need only look in the mirror. The president fits the composite of today's Bush supporter: a conservative, white, Republican man, an evangelical Christian who goes to church regularly.
Hammered by bad news in Iraq, congressional investigations and recent failed domestic initiatives such as immigration reform, Bush's job approval rating has spiraled to record lows for his presidency. Two-thirds of Republicans and about one-third of independents still support him, but virtually no Democrats are left in Bush's camp.
Bush says he leads and is not led by popular opinion. Yet the lower his polls go, the harder it is for him to push his agenda -- and bump the polls up when he has good news to impart.
"Maybe he's got it right, but hardly anybody believes him," said University of Virginia political scientist Larry Sabato.
Overall, just one in three Americans approves of the job he is doing, according to a July AP-Ipsos poll. That's a long fall from his 90 percent approval rating after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
War pornographer Michael Gordon (New York Times) is back to selling war with Iran via charges he can't back up and doesn't want to. He's in repeat mode and the paper's happy to let him go there. Translation, the only thing that changed at the paper is Judith Miller left.
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