Times Takes Flak on Iraq

Conservative pundits such as Charles Krauthammer are accusing the New York Times of "liberal bias" for reporting that "Leading Republicans from Congress, the State Department and past administrations have begun to break ranks with President Bush over his administration's high-profile planning for war with Iraq." As Joshua Marshall notes, however, the Times coverage has been far more accurate than Krauthammer's own column on the subject, which is "filled with mistatements, tendentious misconstruals, intentional ignoring of awkward data, and so forth." Prominent Republicans are dissenting from Iraq war plans -- a fact which alarms the Bush administration so much that it sent GOP House Whip Tom DeLay to attack critics as "apologists for idleness" in a "campaign driven by a congenital mistrust of American principles and a consistent hostility to American action."