I can’t believe I’m still shocked by this kind of thing, but here it is. We have two stories on the farewell press conference of Zalmay Khalilzad, but one is not like the other. The first, from New York Times reporter Alissa J. Rubin, bears the sobering headline “Departing Envoy to Iraq Says Time Is Running Out.” Says Rubin,
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Although his comments were dressed in the carefully muted language of diplomacy, Mr. Khalilzad’s overall message was that Iraq faced profound troubles and that American patience for helping Iraq deal with those problems was dwindling.
In his opening statement, his most optimistic evaluation was only a little hopeful. “Success,” he said, is “still possible.”
But, he added, “to sustain U.S. support, things have to move at a certain pace.” And, he said, time is running out.
Then there’s the AP story, on the same press conference, by Kim Gamel:
The departing U.S. ambassador said Monday that talks with insurgent representatives are focusing on persuading them to join forces against al-Qaida, hoping to take advantage of anger over attacks increasingly targeting Sunnis as well as Shiites.
In a farewell news conference, Zalmay Khalilzad said he was cautiously optimistic about efforts to bring stability to Iraq.
“In my view, though difficult challenges lie ahead and there is a long way to go, Iraq is fundamentally headed in the right direction and success is possible,” he said, pointing to a nearly 25 percent reduction in violence during a six-week-old security crackdown in Baghdad as well as economic progress.
Read both stories and compare–the defeatism of the Times is every bit as disturbing as it is predictable. It’s such an important story–slow but steady success in peeling off insurgent groups and turning them against al Qaeda–but the Times barely mentions it between editorializing on the ambassador’s tone and listing the day’s insurgent attacks.
