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Home Front: WoT
MSM hypervetilates while hyping up Hamadan hype!!
2006-07-03
by James Taranto, Wall Street Journal's "Best of the Web"

Have you noticed a theme in the press's coverage of last week's Hamdan v. Rumsfeld decision? If not, consider these examples:
  • "The Supreme Court on Thursday repudiated the Bush administration's plan to put Guantanamo detainees on trial before military commissions, ruling broadly that the commissions were unauthorized by federal statute and violated international law. . . . The decision was . . . a sweeping and categorical defeat for the administration."--New York Times

  • "The Supreme Court yesterday struck down the military commissions President Bush established to try suspected members of al-Qaeda, emphatically rejecting a signature Bush anti-terrorism measure and the broad assertion of executive power upon which the president had based it."--Washington Post

  • "In a sharp rebuke of President George W. Bush's tactics in the war on terrorism, the U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday struck down as unlawful the military tribunal system set up to try Guantanamo prisoners."--Reuters

  • "The Supreme Court rebuked President Bush and his anti-terror policies Thursday, ruling that his plan to try Guantanamo Bay detainees in military tribunals violates U.S. and international law."--Associated Press

  • "The Supreme Court on Thursday sharply rejected the Bush administration's use of military commissions to try suspected terrorists, eliminating a central pillar of the president's anti-terrorism strategy. In a blunt dismissal of President Bush's claim that he had unfettered authority to try enemy combatants captured in the war on terror, the court ruled 5-3 that military trials of detainees at the Guantanamo Bay naval base in Cuba violated domestic and international laws."--Chicago Tribune

All of these stories go well beyond the facts to engage in editorializing, portraying the ruling as not just a legal defeat for the administration but a "repudiation," "rebuke," "sharp rejection," etc.

But several serious analyses of the Hamdan decision--including our own on Thursday and David Rivkin and Lee Casey's, which appeared Friday in The Wall Street Journal, suggest that there is less to it. Justice Anthony Kennedy declined to join his four liberal colleagues in the most sweeping aspects of their opinion, and even that opinion left many issues unaddressed, so that the court's actual decision was narrower than much of the press coverage suggests.

Why were reporters so eager to portray this as a great defeat for the Bush administration? Partly because of anti-Bush bias: In at least some of the news stories--especialy Linda Greenhouse's Times piece, which we quoted extensively on Friday--it is clear that the reporter is happy with the result. And partly because of a bias in favor of a dramatic narrative.

It's true that some conservatives agree that the opinion was a "rebuke." They believe that it is an unwarranted infringement on executive power, just as liberal commentators see it as a victory over the evil George W. Bush.

That's fine. Commentators are entitled to their opinions. But reporters are not, and they would better serve their readers if they simply explained what the ruling said and refrained from tendentious characterizations of its significance.
Posted by:Mike

#1  Then there's the real editorials. The site is paid-only, so here is a typed transcript from the Albuquerque Journal's editorial page, B2, 2 July 2006, Col. 1.
Court Exercises Check on President's Power
A White House overruled by the U.S. Supreme Court may be too close to the case to see the 5-3 decision as anything but a setback. But it is one of the more clearcut victories of the war on terror since the Taliban were routed from power and Osama bin Laden was driven into hiding.

The court decision may be a victory, but there is no way it can be interpreted by anyone as being a victory for the US. A victory for the Islamists, sure.
Posted by: Hupatch Flomolet2475   2006-07-03 17:14  

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