Strategery update. I don't have the heart, on such a fine Chicago Sunday, to detail precisely how lazy and half-assed an excuse for reporting today's lazy, half-assed A1 report on the state of ad play in the Presidential campaign really is ("G.O.P. Offensive Puts Small Dent in Kerry's Image").  [One indicator:  if you were going to assess the effect that three months of advertising had had on the Presidential race, don't you think you'd offer in evidence more than just two lousy goddamn polls on candidate favorables, only one (the one less complimentary to Kerry, of course) with any trend information?]  Just remember, for future reference, that when you see either Adam Nagourney or Jim Rutenberg bylined on an article—and particularly when you see them jointly bylined—what follows is going to be an insult to your intelligence, and a trial of your patience.

But one aspect of the piece I just can't let pass.  Here's the lead:

When John Kerry effectively nailed down the Democratic presidential nomination on March 2, the White House was waiting. With relentless precision, it began a 90-day campaign to weaken Mr. Kerry's candidacy, a blast that included record spending on television advertisements and attacks on Mr. Kerry's credentials and ideology led by President Bush himself.

The Republican spring offensive—unusual in its early timing, its toughness and the decision of Mr. Bush to personally engage his opponent so far before November—effectively ends on Sunday, as the Bush campaign suspends its broadcast television advertising until next month.

Lost in all the martial music is the article's actual news hook, which slips unprepossessingly past in that last adverbial clause.  I'll bold it, since it's so easy to miss:  The Bush campaign is suspending its television advertising for most of the next two weeks.

Rutengourney's incuriosity about this development, for which they offer no rationale and whose significance they expend no energy trying to understand, mirrors that of the media at large—but cuts rather against the grain of this pair's previous coverage.  When the Bush ad campaign was first rolled out back in late March, the Times all but declared an official Bush/Rove Strategery Week, with both Nagourney and Rutenberg separately getting in on the act of celebrating, in tones of breathless awe and with ample quotes straight from the (anonymous) horses' mouths, the "coordinated blitz of advertisements, speeches and sound bites" (in Rutenberg's words) that was an almost certain bet to succeed at "defin[ing] Senator John Kerry as indecisive and lacking conviction."  What's more, when the Kerry campaign made a minor adjustment to its ad strategy last month—moving up a previously announced start date for its own national TV ads by a couple of days—Nagourneyberg were huffing and puffing all over it, parsing the non-development as an indicator of some kind of desperation at Kerry HQ.

I don't know whether the Bush ad suspension represents a change in schedule or not; Rutneyberg have nothing to tell me on the subject.  I don't know whether the change, if it is one, displays a chink in the Rovian armor.  I can't say I think it's of much significance in the larger electoral scheme of things either way.  I'd just like to see something—anything—by way of consistency or intellectual honesty from the Times when it reports on issues of campaign strategy.  And I think it's going to be interesting, when all this is over in a few months, to go back and chart the utter, cumulative wrongheadedness of the paper's all-spin 2004 political coverage. Assuming, that is, I can muster the strength by then.

posted by michael  2:42:38 PM  
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Israeli tactics. Buried on A10 today, another distressing moment in the ongoing Palestinianization of the Iraqi Shi'a*:

The American military on Saturday carried out a rare airstrike in a poor residential neighborhood in the volatile city of Falluja, firing missiles that killed at least 17 people, said residents and a doctor. An American general said the target of the assault was a terrorist safe house.

A warplane fired two missiles that reduced to rubble four homes in the Jubail district, residents said. People spent the morning and afternoon pulling bodies and body parts from the debris. They said women and children were among the dead.

Edward Wong and Somini Sengupta, "Strike Aimed at Terrorists Kills 17 in Falluja"

And, for once, a case in which it can be documented beyond question that everybody's favorite Osama bin Laden cutout, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, has been responsible for the loss of innocent life:

Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, a spokesman for the occupation forces, said the strike was aimed at a safe house for fighters linked to the Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, whom American officials accuse of being responsible for many of the spectacular suicide car bombs that have devastated Iraq.

"We know there were members of the Zarqawi network inside the house," the general said. He added that the attack was based on "actionable intelligence."

The Times article, a strong performance, makes it clear that the tactic of firing missiles at the houses of poor people is the direct result of the coalition's spectacular strategic failure in Falluja:

The strike was the first assault by the Americans on Falluja, 35 miles west of Baghdad, since the Marines withdrew from the city in late April. Falluja has become one of the strongest symbols of resistance to the occupation.

After a three-week assault that month, the Marines turned over control of the city to the Falluja Brigade, a 2,000-member militia composed partly of insurgents and former members of the ruling Baath Party. But the city remains firmly under the sway of hard-line Sunni clerics and guerrilla fighters. ...

The airstrike also allowed the military to stage an attack in Falluja without sending troops into the city, avoiding the kind of pitched urban battles that resulted in the April bloodbath. Ten marines and hundreds of Iraqis were killed. This strike could be the first of a series by the Americans in a new style of offensive there.

Expect these tactics to bear exactly the kind of fruit they have in the West Bank and Gaza:

In the late afternoon, gunmen with straps of bullets crisscrossing their chests stood at checkpoints in Falluja. Residents of the city predicted angry reprisals. "They want to provoke the people of Falluja," said Ahmed Sabah, 36. "This is a very bad violation. It's not only Falluja people who will stand up to them, it's all of Iraq."

Especially if this, from the Independent's account of the attack, turns out to be true:

Angry local people said at least five children and three women were among the dead, and that the Americans had sought to maximise casualties by firing a second missile at people trying to rescue victims.

[Thanks to Approximately Perfect for the link.]  Actually, it doesn't even need to be true—just believed, as it undoubtedly will be.  Except, perhaps, by that doughty two percent of Iraqis who still regard the U.S. as their liberators.

*Update: Falluja is, of course, a Sunni, not a Shiite town. I'm leaving the mistake up there to punish myself for hasty writing.

posted by michael  1:07:06 PM  
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