New York Times Spinning Iraq for McCain

The New York Times is reporting that the Bush administration is thinking of speeding the pace of withdrawal from Iraq.

The Bush administration is considering the withdrawal of additional combat forces from Iraq beginning in September, according to administration and military officials, raising the prospect of a far more ambitious plan than expected only months ago.

Such a withdrawal would be a striking reversal from the nadir of the war in 2006 and 2007.

One factor in the consideration is the pressing need for additional American troops in Afghanistan, where the Taliban and other fighters have intensified their insurgency and inflicted a growing number of casualties on Afghans and American-led forces there.

More American and allied troops died in Afghanistan than in Iraq in May and June, a trend that has continued this month.

So what will be the politics of this?  Guess who the traditional media think this will benefit?

The most optimistic course of events would still leave 120,000 to 130,000 American troops in Iraq, down from the peak of 170,000 late last year after Mr. Bush ordered what became known as the “surge” of additional forces. Any troop reductions announced in the heat of the presidential election could blur the sharp differences between the candidates, Senators John McCain and Barack Obama, over how long to stay in Iraq. But the political benefit might go more to Mr. McCain than Mr. Obama. Mr. McCain is an avid supporter of the current strategy in Iraq. Any reduction would indicate that that strategy has worked and could defuse antiwar sentiment among voters.

This "analysis" is troubling on a variety of levels.

First, it echoes the CW that the surge has worked and thus McCain and Bush should be vindicated.  A debatable point at best.

Secondly, this notion that bringing  troop levels down to 120-130K is going to be enough to blur the differences on Iraq in the election is absurd.  This is window dressing.  But that will not stop the traditional media, who enabled this mess in the first place, from spinning a modest reduction of troop levels into another "mission accomplished" narrative.

Thirdly and most importantly, the key here is Afghanistan.  It seems like the increasing chaos there is what is driving Bush to consider pulling out a few brigades from Iraq.  Hello, New York Times, Barack Obama has been talking about the need to divert more resources to Afghanistan for a while.  The increase in violence there is a failure of the McCain/Bush "strategy" of neglect.    

The increase in violence in Afghanistan is far more vindication of Obama's calls to pay more attention to the region then reductions in violence in Iraq vindicate McCain and Bush for their decision to divert from hunting Bin Laden to look for nonexistent WMD's in a contained country that wasn't helping Al Qaeda.

But the media narrative is going to play this in a pro-McCain direction.  Apart from the corporate media's pro-GOP biases, I think that there is an element of wishful thinking going on in the media.   They enabled this war and they seek vindication as well.  

And so I predict that the low-information voting public is going to hear a lot more about "success in Iraq" than the failures in Afghanistan.

Let the disinformation campaign begin, started by the "liberal" New York Times.