New York Times, Rudy Giuliani, September 11, World Trade Center

New York Times falsely reports September 2007 polls results about Giuliani

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“No man has a good enough memory to make a successful liar.” — Abraham Lincoln

The New York Times could have written today that, “86% of all Republicans surveyed said Mr. Giuliani would do as good a job or better than as the other candidates when it came to fighting terrorism.” They did not. Instead, they skewed their own reporting.

On September 11, 2007, the Times wrote:

“Eighty-two percent of Republican primary voters said Mr. Giuliani has strong leadership qualities. Mr. Giuliani’s strongest appeal remains his handling of the aftermath of the attacks on the World Trade Center in New York six years ago, with an overwhelming majority of Republicans, and a clear majority of all voters, saying he did a good job.

“But 61 percent of Republican voters [emphasis added mine and you will see why in a moment] said Mr. Giuliani would do about the same job as his rivals for the nomination in combating the threat from terrorism; Mr. Giuliani has made keeping the United States “on offense” against terrorism a centerpiece of his campaign…”

And here’s the proof of what I assert. Today, the New York Times wrote:

“In a New York Times/CBS News poll in September, Mr. Giuliani’s supporters were asked [emphasis added mine. Note the difference between this and the bolded text above] if they thought he would do a better job fighting terrorism compared with the other candidates running for the Republican nomination. A quarter of them said they thought Mr. Giuliani would do a better job than his opponents, but the large majority — 61 percent — said they would expect Mr. Giuliani to be about the same as the other candidates when it came to fighting terrorism.”

Back on September 11, 2007, the Times did not write that only “Mr. Giuliani’s supporters” were asked that question. And they failed to report that additional “quarter” (25%) who said Giuliani would do a better job of fighting terrorism.

This is how the Times, back on September 11, 2007, characterized those polled:

“The nationwide telephone poll was conducted Sept. 4-9 with 1,263 adults, including 357 voters who said they planned to vote in a Republican primary. The margin of sampling error was plus or minus three percentage points for all adults and five percentage points for Republican primary voters. The detailed questions focusing on Mr. Giuliani, who has been leading for months in most national polls, were not asked about the other candidates.”

As usual, the Times failed to publish the full poll results in order to avoid scrutiny while spinning the results.

Iraq, War on Terror

Terrorist’s Tet offensive in Iraq coming

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While the surge successfully headed off the “mini-Tet” General Petreaus predicted this past July, yesterday’s assassination of former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto by al Qaeda will likely rejuvinate the morale of terrorists in Iraq.

Retired Army Colonel Austin Bay seems to agree:

Sometime within the next six months or so, al Qaeda or Saddamist terrorists will attempt a Tet offensive.

No, Middle Eastern mass murderers don’t celebrate the Vietnamese festival of Tet, but trust that America’s enemies everywhere do celebrate and systematically seek to emulate the strategic political effects North Vietnam’s 1968 attack obtained.

This spring marks the 40th anniversary of Hanoi’s offensive (yes, 40 years, two generations). It will also mark the umpteenth time American enemies have attempted to win in the psychological and political clash of an American election what they cannot win on the battlefield.

In Tet 1968, North Vietnamese, American and South Vietnamese forces all suffered tactical defeat and achieved tactical victories; that’s usually the case in every military campaign. At the operational level, the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) suffered a terrible defeat. As NVA regiments emerged from jungle-covered enclaves and massed for attack, they exposed themselves to the firepower of U.S. aircraft and artillery. The NVA units temporarily seized many cities at the cost of extremely heavy casualties.

However, Tet achieved the grand political ends North Vietnam sought. Tet was a strategic psychological attack launched in a presidential election year during a primary season featuring media-savvy “peace” candidates. “Peace” in this context must be italicized with determined irony; in the historical lens it requires an insistent blindness steeled by Stalinist mendacity to confuse the results of U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam (e.g., Cambodia’s genocide) with any honest interpretation of peace.
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Their “ultimate Iraqi Tet” would feature simultaneous terror strikes in every major Iraqi city. These simultaneous strikes would inflict hideous civilian casualties with the goal of discrediting Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s and Gen. David Petraeus’ assessments that Iraqi internal security has improved. The terrorists would reduce Iraqi government buildings to rubble. Striking the Green Zone would be the media coup de grace, intentionally echoing North Vietnam’s assault on the U.S. Embassy in Saigon. Al Qaeda terrorists would also attack Shia shrines. Kidnapping or assassinating senior Iraqi leaders would be another objective.

Yet Colonel Bay also says that the terrorists in Iraq are poorly organized for such an offensive:

Actually executing a genuine Giap Tet-type offensive in Iraq, however, borders on fantasy. On a daily basis, Iraq’s assorted terrorist organizations and militia gangs want to cause such system-shaking, simultaneous carnage, but they don’t because, well, they can’t. A Giap Tet requires a level of coordination the terrorists have never exhibited because they simply don’t have it. It requires internal Iraqi political support that the terror cadres and militias lack; fear is not a political program.

Still, the terrorists will attempt a series of terror spectaculars, and kill several hundred civilians in the process, because — in the quadrennial turmoil of an American presidential contest — sensational carnage that even momentarily seeds the perception of defeat is their only chance of victory.