The Pundit War, Three Years Later

"I was so micromanaged that they were telling me how to pronounce syllables of words." -- Bob Edwards on his former employer, National Public Radio, telling Newsweek he feels liberated at XM Satellite Radio.

By the way, I reported on Saturday that the New York Times has admitted misidentifying the Iraqi prisoner in that famous photo of the hooded man on the box--here's the editor's note -- but Ed Morrissey isn't satisfied:

"The correction, quite frankly, stinks...When reading the actual text of the correction, the Times only takes partial responsibility. It starts out by accepting responsibility for shoddy research, but then blames everyone else for getting suckered. PBS reported it first. Vanity Fair did the same thing . The Times even blames activist attorneys who would have been delighted to get any bad press against the US military on the front page of the Times -- instead of scolding itself for using them as a corroborating source from the beginning."

Mediacrity also piles on:

"The New York Times ate a massive feast of crow, in an embarrassing front-page article and editor's note admitting that it had been suckered by a liar who claimed he was the famous 'man in the hood' at Abu Gharib.

"But while dining on a smorgasboard of black bird, the Times still doesn't get it. This piece, like an earlier unsigned article on the subject, still doesn't acknowledge the distinct possibility -- if not probability -- that nothing this man said was true and, again, obscuring his motive, which was clearly monetary. He is, after all, suing the government."

Time's Joe Klein is downbeat about the war in year three:

"The U.S. effort in Iraq has been a deadly combination of utopian fantasy and near criminal incompetence. The absence of thoughtful military preparation--the Bush Administration's unwillingness to acknowledge the threat of a guerrilla insurgency--is laid out in greater detail than ever before in a new book, Cobra II, by General Bernard Trainor and Michael Gordon. It remains a mystery why Donald Rumsfeld, the architect of this disaster, has been allowed to continue as Secretary of Defense."

But Newsweek's Fareed Zakaria is more optimistic:

"For all my misgivings about the way the administration has handled this policy, I've never been able to join the antiwar crowd. Nor am I convinced that Iraq is a hopeless cause that should be abandoned. . . .

"There is no doubt today that the costs of the invasion have far outweighed the benefits. But in the long view of history, will that always be true? If, after all this chaos, a new and different kind of Iraqi politics emerges, it will make a difference in the region."

( Rumsfeld, by the way, takes on the media coverage in a WashPost op-ed: "Fortunately, history is not made up of daily headlines, blogs on Web sites or the latest sensational attack. History is a bigger picture, and it takes some time and perspective to measure accurately." But retired Maj. Gen. Paul Eaton says on the NYT op-ed page: "Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is not competent to lead our armed forces . . . He has shown himself incompetent strategically, operationally and tactically, and is far more than anyone else responsible for what has happened to our important mission in Iraq. Mr. Rumsfeld must step down.")