While we’re at the WaPo, lets compare and contrast two of their articles, one from yesterday and one from today. Note the byline on both. One journalist, two articles, two contradicting stories.
one:
Joint Chiefs Advise Change In War Strategy
Leaders Seek No Major Troop Increase, Urge Shift in Focus to Support of Iraqi Army
By Robin Wright and Ann Scott Tyson,
Washington Post Staff Writers Thursday, D
ecember 14, 2006; Page A01The nation’s top uniformed leaders are recommending that the United States change its main military mission in Iraq from combating insurgents to supporting Iraqi troops and hunting terrorists, said sources familiar with the White House’s ongoing Iraq policy review.
President Bush and Vice President Cheney met with the members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff yesterday at the Pentagon for more than an hour, and the president engaged his top military advisers on different options. The chiefs made no dramatic proposals but, at a time of intensifying national debate about how to solve the Iraq crisis, offered a pragmatic assessment of what can and cannot be done by the military, the sources said.
The chiefs do not favor adding significant numbers of troops to Iraq, said sources familiar with their thinking, but see strengthening the Iraqi army as pivotal to achieving some degree of stability. They also are pressing for a much greater U.S. effort on economic reconstruction and political reconciliation.
Then take a look at article two:
General Says Army Will Need To Grow
Iraq and Afghanistan Are Straining the Force, Chief of Staff Warns
By Ann Scott Tyson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, December 15, 2006; Page A01Warning that the active-duty Army “will break” under the strain of today’s war-zone rotations, the nation’s top Army general yesterday called for expanding the force by 7,000 or more soldiers a year and lifting Pentagon restrictions on involuntary call-ups of Army National Guard and Army Reserve troops.
Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker, the Army’s chief of staff, issued his most dire assessment yet of the toll of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan on the nation’s main ground force. At one point, he banged his hand on a House committee-room table, saying the continuation of today’s Pentagon policies is “not right.”
So Ms. Anne Tyson, ace reporter, which is it? Does the Pentagon want more troops or doesn’t it?
And did you not notice that you’d written two contradictory reports for the same paper less than than 24 hours apart? Or is the festive beltway cocktail whirl getting a little too dizzily disorientating?
Read more: US Media,Iraq War, Bush, Washington Post
