It's fine, just run it through the de-informationizer for us. Some people attached somehow to the government think some things about political transition in Iraq, but if Steven R. Weisman told you any more ("Bush Urges U.N. to Help Fix Iraqi Clash on Rule") he'd probably have to kill you.

President Bush pressed Kofi Annan, the United Nations secretary general, on Tuesday to have his aides mediate among quarreling factions in Iraq and forge a consensus behind a plan that would allow the transfer of sovereignty to a government in Baghdad by June 30, administration officials said.

They said that without rapid progress on the political issues, the White House might agree to postpone Iraqi self-rule, but several officials said such a step would be a "last resort."

"Administration officials said," and they keep on saying, at exactly that level of attribution, throughout the entire article.

• Mr. Annan has been given a dozen options for the transfer of sovereignty, the officials said ...
• "We are trying to put this issue in Kofi Annan's lap and let him run with it," one official said.
• Officials said Mr. Annan would have wide latitude to present Washington with a plan for Iraq's future governance ...
• But other officials warned that Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld were still likely to oppose giving the United Nations virtual supervisory control over the political future of Iraq
• [T]op American officials say the situation pulls the secretary general in several directions.
• Some administration officials said Mr. Bremer was relieved ...
• But some officials say there is also fear at the Defense Department that a sweeping victory by Shiites will deepen the problems American forces have had ...
• The administration official said the hope was ...
• "There are more than a dozen different possibilities that have been floated at one time or another," an administration official said.

And there you go. Except for one unnamed "European diplomat familiar with the negotiations" and a former CIA Middle Eastern specialist and American Enterprise Institute fellow (other than Kofi Annan, the sole named source in the piece), the entire information content of the article is based on stringing together quotes and paraphrases from anonymous "administration officials."

Just whose purposes does this level of anonymity serve? It sure as hell isn't the reader's. Is there any actual need for everything to be hidden behind this scrim, or is it a mere product of reflex? Do these sources have any unexpressed agendas, are they trying to push the story in any particular direction, are they players in the current internal policy struggle? (Since I gather from the article, dimly, that there is some internal struggle or at least debate going on about the U.N.-takeover policy.) Who lines up where in the struggle? I'm guessing that Steven Weisman knows—naive of me, though, to think that it's his job to report what he knows. It's OK, Steven, I'm good so long as I can tell that you're in the loop ...

posted by michael  3:10:09 PM  
tell me about it []