This is the most shameless and outrageous op-ed piece I have seen in the NY Times in a long while (I no longer read Dowd, so I may be wrong).
Wagging the dog no longer cuts it. If the Bush administration wants to distract Americans from watching their 401(k)’s go down the toilet, it will have to unleash the whole kennel.
Maybe only unilateral annihilation of the entire axis of evil will do. Though the fate of John Walker Lindh was once a national obsession, its resolution couldn’t knock Wall Street from the top of the evening news this week. Neither could the president’s White House lawn rollout of his homeland security master plan. When John Ashcroft, in full quiver, told Congress that the country was dotted with Al Qaeda sleeper cells “waiting to strike again,” he commanded less media attention than Ted Williams’s corpse.
In two paragraphs, Rich has now stated the following through insinuation and exxageration:
A.) The war on terror is a sham designed to hide the woes of the DOW.
B.) Not only is it a sham, but Bush et. al. are too stupid to do it properly, and must engage in more of it. I am sure this is setting the stage for Rich to call any future action against terrorism/Iraq as further evidence of “Wag the Dog” behavior.
C.) By implication, the woes of Wall Street are causing a failing economy- which we know is not the case.
D.) Even more sinister, Rich is suggesting that the woes of Wall Street are somehow Bush’s fault.
E.) Bush is indifferent to the woes of investors, and merely cares about obfuscating and talking about Homeland Security.
Paging Common Dreams. I think Rich may be your next editor.