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Wednesday, June 02, 2004

# Posted 2:05 AM by Ariel David Adesnik  

THE UNKINDEST CUT: The headline of the actual story in the WaPo (print & online editions) reads "Many Hurdles Ahead for US". But on the WaPo homepage, the story gets listed as "White House is Hopeful Tide has Turned in Iraq." (Technichal question: Do the WaPo and NYT file cached versions of their respective homepages? It's frustrating to link to headlines that disappear.) Anyhow, talk about being set up for a fall:
With the introduction of both a new Iraqi government and a new U.N. draft resolution, the Bush administration senses the beginning of the end to its controversial and costly intervention in Iraq...

President Bush was almost giddily buoyant during a Rose Garden news conference about Iraq's interim government...Not since the "Mission Accomplished" photograph aboard the USS Lincoln on May 1 last year, when Bush declared an end to major combat operations in Iraq, has the administration appeared as upbeat about the future.
The funny thing is, Bush didn't actually say anything terribly optimistic at yesterday's press conference. I'm guessing he did appear quite giddy, however, since his moods tend to be fairly transparent. (Either that, or he is a far better actor than Ronald Reagan ever was.) I guess you might say that Bush learned the lesson of the "Mission Accomplished" debacle: don't go on the record as an optimist if you aren't pretty damn sure that the breaks will go your way. After all, when the administration gets dealt its next blow in Iraq, what are the critics going to say? That the President's smile was too broad back on June 1st?

UPDATE: The WaPo has changed the headline on its homepage to "Many Hurdles Still Ahead for United States in Iraq".
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