The New York Times continues its operation against the nation's war effort over the Memorial Day weekend, attempting to offer a bit of cover for Democrats in Congress after their capitulation to the President on the war last week. Yesterday, in a NYT opinion piece that ran as the top news story on the front page of the Providence Journal (ProJo title: No end to strife if U.S. quits Iraq), the mainstream media takes on the notion that Iraq will collapse quickly if we leave. The NYT writers claim that there is a division among the experts - between those who think that Iraq will descend into even more chaos if we retreat and those who think that a withdrawal would be the trigger to get the Iraqis to take more responsibility. But if you read the whole piece, you find that those actually working for success over there (Iraqis and US commanders) are the ones who believe that an early withdrawal would be disastrous, while those over here who believe that it's just what we and the Iraqis need is made up of anti-war experts from the Left and the Democrats.

Even one of the most reliable of the Democrats' Iraq War critics, former General Anthony Zinni, believes withdrawal would be a disaster - though the Times manages to hide that revelation until the last few paragraphs of the piece. Overall, an interesting piece, but one undeserving of being the top 'news' story in the Sunday paper. Read it, and see the Times "surprised" reaction to the response that they got from the Iraqis. Hint - it's not the one they either wanted or expected when they set out to write the piece.

The funniest story from the NYT this weekend, however, is White House Is Said to Debate '08 Cut in Iraq Combat Forces by 50%. That article was written solely to give Democrats the chance to say "See, after Bush criticized us for trying to bring the troops home, we find that he's planning to do the same in time for the next elections!". The Times has even had to issue a correction on this piece - it seems that the math used by the authors in the article to get to the 50% reduction doesn't quite add up. The authors would have you believe that this "planned" reduction in troop strength is going to happen regardless of what's going on on the ground in Iraq. While I'm certain that contingency plans exist somewhere to get the troops out of Iraq next year, those plans rely entirely on how the fight is going. If it's going well, we might see some reduction. If it isn't, we won't.

Based on the reaction from the left side of the blogosphere, it seems as if not even they are buying this latest NYT effort to embarrass the Administration.