I will be the first one to rail against a media giant like CBS, But dammit, when they get it, they get it.
Observe if you will the clipped tone of the sentences; it is almost poetry:
Mr. Bush would not say whether he shared the assessment of the commander of coalition forces in Iraq, Army Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, who said Thursday that U.S. forces will remain in Iraq at least two years.
Mr. Bush would only say "I will do what's necessary to win the war on terror." Mr. Bush said Americans have "got to understand I will not forget the lessons of Sept. 11," when America was hit with its worst ever terrorist attack.
The president also would not say whether he had an estimate on how many more soldiers would die. Nor did he answer a question on future costs of the American presence in Iraq.
The repetition of "would," implying the cold tones of a robot, clashing with the inherent emotion and subtle imagery of soldiers dying. Refusal to answer. The picture painted is ugly, a smear across the bright Texas sky under which George and Donald speak their piece. "he would only say..."
Even the order of pictures speaks an almost populist tone: the pictures of soldiers sweating behind machine guns, guarding the car-bombed Jordanian embassy in Baghdad, denied their return home three times and counting, contrast mightily with tanned and relaxed Bush speaking from his vacation, on his ranch, in his home, in Texas. it is a startling juxtaposition and more so because of its presence on CBS.
Compare, also, the tone between the description of Mr. Bush's comments, delivered in clipped, almost mechanical tones, with the rich imagery of the situation on the ground in Iraq:
Mr. Bush would not say... Mr. Bush would only say... Mr. Bush said... The president also would not say...
versus
In a new raid, U.S. snipers killed at least two men unloading weapons for sale in a market in Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit.
Defense officials say genetic material found in a prison cell in Iraq did not match that of Michael Scott Speicher, a pilot missing since the 1991 Gulf War, but investigators continue to search for other evidence of his fate.
Joseph C. Wilson, the former U.S. envoy who investigated and found no proof of claims that Iraq tried to buy uranium in Niger, tells The New York Times that he's been the victim of a campaign meant to discourage dissent. His wife was recently identified by name as a covert CIA operative in a column. The information was attributed to a senior administration official. Revealing covert agents' names is a crime.
Companies are dropping out of the competition for a potential $1 billion contract to rebuild Iraq's oil industry because they think Halliburton, the former firm of Vice President Dick Cheney, is favored to win the bid, The New York Times reports.
More than 50 people were wounded in the powerful explosion at the Jordanian Embassy, which set cars on fire, flung the hulk of one vehicle onto a rooftop and broke windows hundreds of yards away. On Friday, the Jordanian flag flew at half-staff as U.S. and Iraqi investigators looked through the debris for clues.
Morgue officials on Friday raised the death toll from the embassy blast to 19, from 11 reported the day before.
Real words, real concepts: death toll; dropping out; powerful explosions, all which clang like a poorly tuned banjo against the administration's ever more banal pronouncements.
Observe if you will the clipped tone of the sentences; it is almost poetry:
Mr. Bush would only say "I will do what's necessary to win the war on terror." Mr. Bush said Americans have "got to understand I will not forget the lessons of Sept. 11," when America was hit with its worst ever terrorist attack.
The president also would not say whether he had an estimate on how many more soldiers would die. Nor did he answer a question on future costs of the American presence in Iraq.
The repetition of "would," implying the cold tones of a robot, clashing with the inherent emotion and subtle imagery of soldiers dying. Refusal to answer. The picture painted is ugly, a smear across the bright Texas sky under which George and Donald speak their piece. "he would only say..."
Even the order of pictures speaks an almost populist tone: the pictures of soldiers sweating behind machine guns, guarding the car-bombed Jordanian embassy in Baghdad, denied their return home three times and counting, contrast mightily with tanned and relaxed Bush speaking from his vacation, on his ranch, in his home, in Texas. it is a startling juxtaposition and more so because of its presence on CBS.
Compare, also, the tone between the description of Mr. Bush's comments, delivered in clipped, almost mechanical tones, with the rich imagery of the situation on the ground in Iraq:
Mr. Bush would not say... Mr. Bush would only say... Mr. Bush said... The president also would not say...
versus
In a new raid, U.S. snipers killed at least two men unloading weapons for sale in a market in Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit.
Defense officials say genetic material found in a prison cell in Iraq did not match that of Michael Scott Speicher, a pilot missing since the 1991 Gulf War, but investigators continue to search for other evidence of his fate.
Joseph C. Wilson, the former U.S. envoy who investigated and found no proof of claims that Iraq tried to buy uranium in Niger, tells The New York Times that he's been the victim of a campaign meant to discourage dissent. His wife was recently identified by name as a covert CIA operative in a column. The information was attributed to a senior administration official. Revealing covert agents' names is a crime.
Companies are dropping out of the competition for a potential $1 billion contract to rebuild Iraq's oil industry because they think Halliburton, the former firm of Vice President Dick Cheney, is favored to win the bid, The New York Times reports.
More than 50 people were wounded in the powerful explosion at the Jordanian Embassy, which set cars on fire, flung the hulk of one vehicle onto a rooftop and broke windows hundreds of yards away. On Friday, the Jordanian flag flew at half-staff as U.S. and Iraqi investigators looked through the debris for clues.
Morgue officials on Friday raised the death toll from the embassy blast to 19, from 11 reported the day before.
Real words, real concepts: death toll; dropping out; powerful explosions, all which clang like a poorly tuned banjo against the administration's ever more banal pronouncements.
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