Nagourney 's Delicate Dance

From tmorange
Sent Monday, January 23, 2006 12:48 pm
To letters@nytimes.com
Cc public@nytimes.com
Subject Nagourney 's Delicate Dance

Dear Editor,

Although he quotes presidential advisor and strategist Karl Rove in an outright lie, Adam Nagourney simply cannot bring himself to report it as such ("Delicate Dance for Bush in Depicting Spy Program as Asset," The New York Times, January 22).

In what he calls "a classic example" of how this adminstration "systematically present[s] arguments in accessible if sometimes exaggerated terms," Nagourney quotes Rove saying, "Let me be as clear as I can be: President Bush believes if Al Qaeda is calling somebody in America, it is in our national security interest to know who they're calling and why. Some important Democrats clearly disagree."

Unfortunately, these are not merely "accessible if sometimes exaggerated terms" as Nagourney so delicately tapdances it. Rove is simply lying. No one who has questioned this president's illegal domestic spying program opposes gathering intelligence on al Qaeda. Rove's appeal to clarity is the height of hypocrisy--the only recourse he has in defense of an indefensible program. And if Nagourney is subsequently, if only partially correct when he states that "it is difficult to think of a Democrat who has actually argued that it is not 'in our national security interest' to track Qaeda calls to the United States, as Mr. Rove contested," that's because there are none. Rove "did not offer any examples of whom he had in mind" because there are none.

The great lengths to which Nagourney goes to keep Rove's blatant lies within the bounds of reasoned discourse defy comprehension. Why, when it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, does Nagourney call it not quite but possibly any of the numerous wild or domesticated web-footed swimming birds of the family Anatidae characterized by a broad, flat bill, short legs and a depressed body? The time is long past due for the Times to start reporting this adminstration's lies for what they are.