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Tuesday, December 04, 2007

A Blow to Bush's Tehran Policy

By Peter Baker and Robin Wright
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, December 4, 2007; Page A01

President Bush got the world's attention this fall when he warned that a nuclear-armed Iran might lead to World War III. But his stark warning came at least a month or two after he had first been told about fresh indications that Iran had actually halted its nuclear weapons program.


Now that is what I call a lead*. The contrast couldn't be more sharp with Baker's recent effort to thoroughly inform all readers who get to paragraph 8 that Karl Rove is a liar about which I posted at the linked post.

Oddly the pointless post to which I link got a link from my absurdly generous friend Brad DeLong and, get this, my first ever link from Matthew** Yglesias ! I was amazed by its success but don't claim that it is the cause of Baker's sudden discovery of frank journalism.


* it is also what people who are or pretend to be journalists call a lede.
** I recently pissed off Ezra Klein teasing him for something written by someone else so I decided to pretend to be a mature adult and ignore the fact that mathew speled Waldmann "Waldman".

1 comment:

Hans Suter said...

Dear Robert, headlines are important, this one reads: A Blow to Bush's Tehran Policy.
Is this accurate ? In the face of "he had first been told about fresh indications that Iran had actually halted its nuclear weapons program." shouldn't a headline with words like "Bush proved to a f..ing liar once more"be more to the point ?