Friday, January 21, 2005
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January 21, 2005A Bloody Crime in New Jersey Divides EgyptiansBy ANDREA ELLIOTT JERSEY CITY, Jan. 20 - Muslim and Christian students of Egyptian descent suddenly no longer sit together during lunch at Dickinson High School on Palisade Avenue. At Halal butcher shops and Christian-owned grocery stores, sales clerks speak in equally hushed tones about the unsolved murder last week of a Christian Egyptian family, wary of who may be listening. And friendships that were once free of religious division are now strained, in ways subtle and blunt, as speculation that four members of the family were killed because of their religion has run rampant, even though there have been no official findings by the authorities.For years, Mohsen Elesawi, a Muslim Egyptian, shared shisha pipes and games of chess with Christian Egyptians at the Christian-owned El Saraya cafe on Vroom Street. Now, when he walks into the room, he often hears a quiet pause, "like a subject change," he said. "Now there is no trust between Muslims and Christians and there is a lot of anger," said Mr. Elesawi, 52, a limousine driver who immigrated to Jersey City 21 years ago. "It's changed dramatically."In the words of Fakher Fahmy, 53, a Christian Egyptian who owns a construction company in Jersey City, Muslims and Christians "spoke as friends" before the murders. "Now everybody is scared of everybody," he said.For decades, Jersey City has been an experiment in peace between Muslims and Christians from Egypt. At odds in their homeland, the two groups had bonded as immigrants, mingling at the same cafes, schools and taxi stands, glued by one language and national identity. They shared eagerly in forging a new, American life.But in the week since four family members, including an 8-year-old girl, were found in their home here with their throats slit, a centuries-old rift has come to the surface.To the outsider, the extent of vitriol and near-paranoia provoked by the slayings seems hard to fathom: the police have yet to make an arrest and believe that robbery was a motive. Still, in the days after the four victims were found bound, gagged and stabbed to death, the scant known facts of the case have been supplanted by a swirl of rumor and innuendo that the victims were the targets of Muslims, leading to scenes of chaos at the funeral, with mourners shoving each other and threatening to beat a sheik who attended. The murder case, while tragic on its own, has opened a wound and produced an outpouring of emotion that even Egyptian Christians and Muslims struggle to explain. The answer is layered: there are old-world grievances, a largely unspoken anger toward Egyptian Muslims after 9/11, and a newfound immigrant power that has left the Egyptian Christians - a repressed minority in Egypt - unafraid to assert their voice here.The murder victims - Hossam Armanious, 47, Amal Garas, 37, and their daughters, Sylvia, 15, and Monica, 8 - were Copts, or members of the Coptic Orthodox church. In Egypt, Muslims are the majority and Copts, who are roughly 10 percent of the population, live with varying degrees of social, political and religious discrimination, according to the United States State Department and human rights groups. But in Jersey City, which has the largest Coptic Egyptian community in the United States, Copts are estimated to outnumber Muslims, and the balance of power between them is more equal.Many Copts, along with Muslims, have enjoyed financial success. Fred Ayad, a Copt who left Cairo for Jersey City 35 years ago, rose to become deputy mayor. And Copts from all walks of life, from surgeons to cab drivers, will attest that in America, they have found a new social comfort. They no longer live on the margins of society: they are among the religious majority.But if anything altered that newfound comfort, and helped stoke the recent friction over the murder case, it was Sept. 11.Muslims in the United States were not alone in suffering a social backlash. Arabs of other religions have also been subjected to hate crimes, searches at airports, loss of jobs and other problems experienced by Muslims after the attacks. But that shared distress has wrought some hard and painful realities within the Arab community, with non-Muslims wishing to distance themselves from Muslims."Here in the United States, they think all Egyptians are alike," said a 51-year-old Copt from Jersey City who identified himself only as A. Iskander. "We have nothing to do with 9/11. It makes me angry."That anger strikes many Muslim Americans as deeply unfair - they often make a point of saying that they, too, had nothing to do with 9/11. But it may explain the rather startling scene that unfolded on the steps of the slain family's church on Bergen Avenue last Sunday. Hundreds of Copts stood watching as members of the American Coptic Association gathered before television cameras and declared the family's murder a religious "execution," drawing comparisons to slayings by terrorists in Iraq and Egypt."Wake up America!" yelled Dr. Monir Dawoud, the president of the group. If newcomers to the Arab community found the image of Arabs denouncing other Arabs as terrorists surprising, it was not unusual for Dr. Dawoud, whom some have criticized as using the murder case to advance Coptic rights in Egypt. Almost immediately, rumors flew: Mr. Armanious had engaged in fiery debates about Christianity and Islam in Internet chat rooms, and may have been threatened with murder, his friends said. The police would not confirm or deny that, but discounted newspaper reports that a tattoo of a cross on Sylvia Armanious's wrist had been stabbed. Muslim leaders responded by condemning the killings, but also decrying the recriminations against their religion, at a news conference on Wednesday. They invited a representative of the Coptic church to speak, but no one came."It's not the time for us to speak about anything now," said the Rev. David Bebawi, a priest at the slain family's church, St. George and St. Shenouda Coptic Orthodox Church. The press conference was "appropriate for them," he said. "It's not appropriate for me. We are grieved."It is impossible to know what permanence, if any, the friction in Jersey City will have. There are still moments of harmony - Copts and Muslims continue to share tables at El Saraya, for instance, and Copts still shop at King M & M Halal Meat on West Side Avenue. But many Muslims and Copts agree that, for the time being, a shift has occurred. It is both subtle and nakedly obvious, if perhaps short-lived."I'm not going to be friends with Muslims anymore - their parents killed my best friend," said a 17-year-old boy who attends Dickinson High School, his eyes welling with tears.Sylvia Armanious was a star student at Dickinson, where fights between Muslims and Copts have been brewing since news of the murders hit, students and school officials said. One girl's headscarf was pulled off, according to several students, though school officials said they did not know about the incident. "Why are they blaming the Muslims?" asked a 15-year-old student from Pakistan, cloaked in a black hijab, as she briskly walked home from school Wednesday afternoon. "I feel scared."School officials said that counselors at the school had been enlisted to address the tension and grief. Of the roughly 3,000 students who attend Dickinson, about 150 are Egyptian."The superintendent is trying to do everything possible to make sure that nothing happens in the school," said Dr. Sharon Bartley-Monos, executive assistant to Jersey City's public schools superintendent, Charles T. Epps, Jr.The city's first Egyptians, both Copts and Muslims, began noticeably arriving here in the 1960's. Today, both groups number in the tens of thousands. (The census does not track religious affiliation, but both Coptic organizations and the Jersey City chapter of the Council on Arab-Islamic Relations estimate the number of Copts to be above 30,000 and Muslims to total about 25,000, out of the city's population of 239,000.)The city's oldest mosque and its oldest Coptic church - the pillars of the Egyptian community - stand five blocks apart. Both were built in the 1970's, and are filled with hundreds of congregants every week. But when they are not worshipping apart, Muslims and Copts are working, shopping, walking and studying in many of the same places. And until this week, they seemed yet another example of how immigration to a new world can breed peaceful plurality.For many children of Egyptian immigrants, the anguish surrounding the murders has brought to life a division they only heard about at the dinner table. Some have made their parents' grievance their own. Others have worked hard, despite the intensity of emotions over the last week, not to."We never talk about religion," said Moustafa Ahmed, 18, a Muslim of Egyptian descent, as he sat with his three best friends - a Muslim and two Copts - after school one day. The four young men, all of whom are students at Dickinson, began their lives together in Jersey City as neighbors in the same building, when their families first moved here, and have remained friends ever since."We don't put religion in our friendship at all," said Mario Gerges, 17, who is a Copt.Nonetheless, young Copts like Mr. Gerges grew up hearing the stories of repression: how Copts in Egypt do not, for the most part, hold high-ranking positions in the government, the army or in universities; how the government appoints and pays the salaries of imams in mosques, but does not help finance or repair Christian churches. "In my country, I can't have one tenth of this," said Mr. Ayad, the Copt who served as deputy mayor in Jersey City for nine years, until 2001. Mr. Ayad, who is also a Coptic deacon and a real estate investor, said he dreamed of being a politician in Egypt but never had the chance, given his religious affiliation. And then there are the clashes between the groups, which date back more than 1,300 years, to when Islam took over as Egypt's leading religion. The most recent large-scale strife, in the upper Egyptian town of El Kusheh in 2000, left 20 Christians and one Muslim dead.In June, the country's highest court upheld the acquittal of 94 suspects who were charged in the incident, leaving public prosecutors and human rights activists with no further legal redress, according to the State Department's International Religious Freedom Report. The rage felt by many Jersey City Copts at the murder of the Armanious family was tethered, in part, to resentment over the Kusheh massacre, many Copts who were interviewed said."Why did so many people go into the streets, expressing their anger and belief that this is terrorism?" Dr. Dawoud asked. "Because the same things happened in Egypt."Egyptian Muslims often provide a different portrait of life in their homeland, characterizing the complaints of Copts as far-fetched or exaggerated."If you go there, you wouldn't see what you hear here," said Hamed Elshanawany, the vice president of the Egyptian American Group, a nondenominational organization based in Jersey City.Despite the lack of confirmation by the police, numerous Copts interviewed, from entrepreneurs to blue-collar workers, said they were sure the slaying was an act of religious hatred, given the way in which the victims were killed. But that notion does not sit well with Muslims, who have grown weary of seeing their faith tainted by extremists."I don't know what being slaughtered the Muslim way means," said Mr. Elesawi, the Muslim limousine driver. "The person who does such an act does not belong to any religion."
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January 21, 2005A Bloody Crime in New Jersey Divides EgyptiansBy ANDREA ELLIOTT JERSEY CITY, Jan. 20 - Muslim and Christian students of Egyptian descent suddenly no longer sit together during lunch at Dickinson High School on Palisade Avenue. At Halal butcher shops and Christian-owned grocery stores, sales clerks speak in equally hushed tones about the unsolved murder last week of a Christian Egyptian family, wary of who may be listening. And friendships that were once free of religious division are now strained, in ways subtle and blunt, as speculation that four members of the family were killed because of their religion has run rampant, even though there have been no official findings by the authorities.For years, Mohsen Elesawi, a Muslim Egyptian, shared shisha pipes and games of chess with Christian Egyptians at the Christian-owned El Saraya cafe on Vroom Street. Now, when he walks into the room, he often hears a quiet pause, "like a subject change," he said. "Now there is no trust between Muslims and Christians and there is a lot of anger," said Mr. Elesawi, 52, a limousine driver who immigrated to Jersey City 21 years ago. "It's changed dramatically."In the words of Fakher Fahmy, 53, a Christian Egyptian who owns a construction company in Jersey City, Muslims and Christians "spoke as friends" before the murders. "Now everybody is scared of everybody," he said.For decades, Jersey City has been an experiment in peace between Muslims and Christians from Egypt. At odds in their homeland, the two groups had bonded as immigrants, mingling at the same cafes, schools and taxi stands, glued by one language and national identity. They shared eagerly in forging a new, American life.But in the week since four family members, including an 8-year-old girl, were found in their home here with their throats slit, a centuries-old rift has come to the surface.To the outsider, the extent of vitriol and near-paranoia provoked by the slayings seems hard to fathom: the police have yet to make an arrest and believe that robbery was a motive. Still, in the days after the four victims were found bound, gagged and stabbed to death, the scant known facts of the case have been supplanted by a swirl of rumor and innuendo that the victims were the targets of Muslims, leading to scenes of chaos at the funeral, with mourners shoving each other and threatening to beat a sheik who attended. The murder case, while tragic on its own, has opened a wound and produced an outpouring of emotion that even Egyptian Christians and Muslims struggle to explain. The answer is layered: there are old-world grievances, a largely unspoken anger toward Egyptian Muslims after 9/11, and a newfound immigrant power that has left the Egyptian Christians - a repressed minority in Egypt - unafraid to assert their voice here.The murder victims - Hossam Armanious, 47, Amal Garas, 37, and their daughters, Sylvia, 15, and Monica, 8 - were Copts, or members of the Coptic Orthodox church. In Egypt, Muslims are the majority and Copts, who are roughly 10 percent of the population, live with varying degrees of social, political and religious discrimination, according to the United States State Department and human rights groups. But in Jersey City, which has the largest Coptic Egyptian community in the United States, Copts are estimated to outnumber Muslims, and the balance of power between them is more equal.Many Copts, along with Muslims, have enjoyed financial success. Fred Ayad, a Copt who left Cairo for Jersey City 35 years ago, rose to become deputy mayor. And Copts from all walks of life, from surgeons to cab drivers, will attest that in America, they have found a new social comfort. They no longer live on the margins of society: they are among the religious majority.But if anything altered that newfound comfort, and helped stoke the recent friction over the murder case, it was Sept. 11.Muslims in the United States were not alone in suffering a social backlash. Arabs of other religions have also been subjected to hate crimes, searches at airports, loss of jobs and other problems experienced by Muslims after the attacks. But that shared distress has wrought some hard and painful realities within the Arab community, with non-Muslims wishing to distance themselves from Muslims."Here in the United States, they think all Egyptians are alike," said a 51-year-old Copt from Jersey City who identified himself only as A. Iskander. "We have nothing to do with 9/11. It makes me angry."That anger strikes many Muslim Americans as deeply unfair - they often make a point of saying that they, too, had nothing to do with 9/11. But it may explain the rather startling scene that unfolded on the steps of the slain family's church on Bergen Avenue last Sunday. Hundreds of Copts stood watching as members of the American Coptic Association gathered before television cameras and declared the family's murder a religious "execution," drawing comparisons to slayings by terrorists in Iraq and Egypt."Wake up America!" yelled Dr. Monir Dawoud, the president of the group. If newcomers to the Arab community found the image of Arabs denouncing other Arabs as terrorists surprising, it was not unusual for Dr. Dawoud, whom some have criticized as using the murder case to advance Coptic rights in Egypt. Almost immediately, rumors flew: Mr. Armanious had engaged in fiery debates about Christianity and Islam in Internet chat rooms, and may have been threatened with murder, his friends said. The police would not confirm or deny that, but discounted newspaper reports that a tattoo of a cross on Sylvia Armanious's wrist had been stabbed. Muslim leaders responded by condemning the killings, but also decrying the recriminations against their religion, at a news conference on Wednesday. They invited a representative of the Coptic church to speak, but no one came."It's not the time for us to speak about anything now," said the Rev. David Bebawi, a priest at the slain family's church, St. George and St. Shenouda Coptic Orthodox Church. The press conference was "appropriate for them," he said. "It's not appropriate for me. We are grieved."It is impossible to know what permanence, if any, the friction in Jersey City will have. There are still moments of harmony - Copts and Muslims continue to share tables at El Saraya, for instance, and Copts still shop at King M & M Halal Meat on West Side Avenue. But many Muslims and Copts agree that, for the time being, a shift has occurred. It is both subtle and nakedly obvious, if perhaps short-lived."I'm not going to be friends with Muslims anymore - their parents killed my best friend," said a 17-year-old boy who attends Dickinson High School, his eyes welling with tears.Sylvia Armanious was a star student at Dickinson, where fights between Muslims and Copts have been brewing since news of the murders hit, students and school officials said. One girl's headscarf was pulled off, according to several students, though school officials said they did not know about the incident. "Why are they blaming the Muslims?" asked a 15-year-old student from Pakistan, cloaked in a black hijab, as she briskly walked home from school Wednesday afternoon. "I feel scared."School officials said that counselors at the school had been enlisted to address the tension and grief. Of the roughly 3,000 students who attend Dickinson, about 150 are Egyptian."The superintendent is trying to do everything possible to make sure that nothing happens in the school," said Dr. Sharon Bartley-Monos, executive assistant to Jersey City's public schools superintendent, Charles T. Epps, Jr.The city's first Egyptians, both Copts and Muslims, began noticeably arriving here in the 1960's. Today, both groups number in the tens of thousands. (The census does not track religious affiliation, but both Coptic organizations and the Jersey City chapter of the Council on Arab-Islamic Relations estimate the number of Copts to be above 30,000 and Muslims to total about 25,000, out of the city's population of 239,000.)The city's oldest mosque and its oldest Coptic church - the pillars of the Egyptian community - stand five blocks apart. Both were built in the 1970's, and are filled with hundreds of congregants every week. But when they are not worshipping apart, Muslims and Copts are working, shopping, walking and studying in many of the same places. And until this week, they seemed yet another example of how immigration to a new world can breed peaceful plurality.For many children of Egyptian immigrants, the anguish surrounding the murders has brought to life a division they only heard about at the dinner table. Some have made their parents' grievance their own. Others have worked hard, despite the intensity of emotions over the last week, not to."We never talk about religion," said Moustafa Ahmed, 18, a Muslim of Egyptian descent, as he sat with his three best friends - a Muslim and two Copts - after school one day. The four young men, all of whom are students at Dickinson, began their lives together in Jersey City as neighbors in the same building, when their families first moved here, and have remained friends ever since."We don't put religion in our friendship at all," said Mario Gerges, 17, who is a Copt.Nonetheless, young Copts like Mr. Gerges grew up hearing the stories of repression: how Copts in Egypt do not, for the most part, hold high-ranking positions in the government, the army or in universities; how the government appoints and pays the salaries of imams in mosques, but does not help finance or repair Christian churches. "In my country, I can't have one tenth of this," said Mr. Ayad, the Copt who served as deputy mayor in Jersey City for nine years, until 2001. Mr. Ayad, who is also a Coptic deacon and a real estate investor, said he dreamed of being a politician in Egypt but never had the chance, given his religious affiliation. And then there are the clashes between the groups, which date back more than 1,300 years, to when Islam took over as Egypt's leading religion. The most recent large-scale strife, in the upper Egyptian town of El Kusheh in 2000, left 20 Christians and one Muslim dead.In June, the country's highest court upheld the acquittal of 94 suspects who were charged in the incident, leaving public prosecutors and human rights activists with no further legal redress, according to the State Department's International Religious Freedom Report. The rage felt by many Jersey City Copts at the murder of the Armanious family was tethered, in part, to resentment over the Kusheh massacre, many Copts who were interviewed said."Why did so many people go into the streets, expressing their anger and belief that this is terrorism?" Dr. Dawoud asked. "Because the same things happened in Egypt."Egyptian Muslims often provide a different portrait of life in their homeland, characterizing the complaints of Copts as far-fetched or exaggerated."If you go there, you wouldn't see what you hear here," said Hamed Elshanawany, the vice president of the Egyptian American Group, a nondenominational organization based in Jersey City.Despite the lack of confirmation by the police, numerous Copts interviewed, from entrepreneurs to blue-collar workers, said they were sure the slaying was an act of religious hatred, given the way in which the victims were killed. But that notion does not sit well with Muslims, who have grown weary of seeing their faith tainted by extremists."I don't know what being slaughtered the Muslim way means," said Mr. Elesawi, the Muslim limousine driver. "The person who does such an act does not belong to any religion."
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today's papersSowing His OathsBy Eric UmanskyPosted Friday, Jan. 21, 2005, at 1:03 AM PT
Everybody leads big with the inauguration during which President Bush, of course, invoked "expansion of freedom" as the "calling our time." Declaring that "America's vital interests and our deepest beliefs are now one," the president said, "All who live in tyranny and hopelessness can know the United States will not ignore your oppression or excuse your oppressors."
Bush also seemed to connect the roots of terrorism to oppression in the Mideast and elsewhere: "For as long as whole regions of the world simmer in resentment and tyranny—prone to ideologies that feed hatred and excuse murder—violence will gather and multiply in destructive power and cross the most defended borders and raise a mortal threat."
What the president didn't do was name any countries. As a Washington Post analysis puts it, "The celebration of democratic values was harnessed to almost no specifics." As the Post and others note, last week secretary of state designee Condoleezza Rice did I.D. six "outposts of tyranny," which also happen to be countries on the outs with the U.S.: Belarus, Burma, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, and Zimbabwe.
A Los Angeles Times graphic fills in some of the blanks, pointing to some of the U.S.'s finer allies, such as Saudi Arabia, which one human-rights group apparently described as "one of the world's least free nations."
The New York Times' news analysis, which is meatier than usual, notices a few other words not mentioned: "Iraq," "Afghanistan," "Sept. 11," or "terrorism." Sticking to generalities, says the Times, allowed the president "to cast the crises and controversies of his first four years and the ones he welcomes in the next as a seamless struggle in defense of the nation's founding creed: freedom."
Page One analyses in the NYT, LAT, and WP all ponder the gaping dissonance between the lofty talk and the administration's actual policies. But you'd have a tough time knowing that from the headlines, particularly the Post's: "AN AMBITIOUS PRESIDENT ADVANCES HIS IDEALISM."
The Post eventually gets down to business, noting that the speech is "at odds with the administration's increasingly close relations with repressive governments in every corner of the world." Except that quote is from a different story—"ANALYSTS NOTE GAP BETWEEN BUSH RHETORIC AND REALITY"—safely tucked away on page A25. (Slate's Fred Kaplan wonders about Bush's failing to acknowledge that.)
An op-ed derides Bush's speech as "God-drenched" and landing "somewhere between dreamy and disturbing." Etc., etc. The interesting part is where it was published: The Wall Street Journal.
There were a few protests and a handful arrested. But most spots on the route were stacked with Bush supporters or those willing to fork over a few 20s. And when many of them spotted protesters, the chant would begin: "U.S.A.! U.S.A.!"
The NYT notices that not all protesters got shafted. "We have bleachers, a stage, a sound system," crowed a spokeswoman for one lefty outfit, "and we're right along the parade route."
Early this morning at least 13 Iraqis were killed in the bombing of a Baghdad mosque. One GI was killed this morning in central Iraq. Yesterday, there was an explosion at a Brit base in Basra, wounding several. Insurgents also tried, unsuccessfully, to overrun a hospital in Mosul. And officials said that two days ago a British contractor along with his Iraqi guard were killed in an ambush north of Baghdad, and a Brazilian contractor was kidnapped. The Post counts 10 car bombs from Wednesday.
The Post announces inside: "MOST IRAQIS REMAIN COMMITTED TO ELECTIONS, POLL FINDS." USA Today, using the same poll: "HOPES FOR FAIR ELECTIONS DIMINISH." The skinny: Last June, 88 percent of poll respondents said they were "very likely" to do so; 64 percent said the same in the latest poll. Bonus points to USAT for actually printing a graphic on the numbers.
The Post mentions inside that the U.S. has suspended the release of Iraqi prisoners until after the elections; the total number of prisoners has surged recently to about 9,000. Though the WP doesn't mention it, a similar number were being held last year, during which time the Red Cross complained, and the military later agreed, that 70 percent to 90 percent appeared to be innocent.
Not Necessarily the News ... "TOP REBEL IN IRAQ SAYS WAR WITH U.S. MAY LAST FOR YEARS"—NYT. Tip: Is something still a story if the opposite would be big news? Imagined: "TOP REBEL IN IRAQ: 'WE'RE POOPED;' WAR TO 'END IN MONTHS.' "
Back to the balls ... The NYT notices a heartwarming multi-culti moment at an inauguration party. As "at least some locals watched in dismay," a group of Texans ordered up a Lone Star special: Merlot with 7-Up, "described as a Texas version of sangria
Everybody leads big with the inauguration during which President Bush, of course, invoked "expansion of freedom" as the "calling our time." Declaring that "America's vital interests and our deepest beliefs are now one," the president said, "All who live in tyranny and hopelessness can know the United States will not ignore your oppression or excuse your oppressors."
Bush also seemed to connect the roots of terrorism to oppression in the Mideast and elsewhere: "For as long as whole regions of the world simmer in resentment and tyranny—prone to ideologies that feed hatred and excuse murder—violence will gather and multiply in destructive power and cross the most defended borders and raise a mortal threat."
What the president didn't do was name any countries. As a Washington Post analysis puts it, "The celebration of democratic values was harnessed to almost no specifics." As the Post and others note, last week secretary of state designee Condoleezza Rice did I.D. six "outposts of tyranny," which also happen to be countries on the outs with the U.S.: Belarus, Burma, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, and Zimbabwe.
A Los Angeles Times graphic fills in some of the blanks, pointing to some of the U.S.'s finer allies, such as Saudi Arabia, which one human-rights group apparently described as "one of the world's least free nations."
The New York Times' news analysis, which is meatier than usual, notices a few other words not mentioned: "Iraq," "Afghanistan," "Sept. 11," or "terrorism." Sticking to generalities, says the Times, allowed the president "to cast the crises and controversies of his first four years and the ones he welcomes in the next as a seamless struggle in defense of the nation's founding creed: freedom."
Page One analyses in the NYT, LAT, and WP all ponder the gaping dissonance between the lofty talk and the administration's actual policies. But you'd have a tough time knowing that from the headlines, particularly the Post's: "AN AMBITIOUS PRESIDENT ADVANCES HIS IDEALISM."
The Post eventually gets down to business, noting that the speech is "at odds with the administration's increasingly close relations with repressive governments in every corner of the world." Except that quote is from a different story—"ANALYSTS NOTE GAP BETWEEN BUSH RHETORIC AND REALITY"—safely tucked away on page A25. (Slate's Fred Kaplan wonders about Bush's failing to acknowledge that.)
An op-ed derides Bush's speech as "God-drenched" and landing "somewhere between dreamy and disturbing." Etc., etc. The interesting part is where it was published: The Wall Street Journal.
There were a few protests and a handful arrested. But most spots on the route were stacked with Bush supporters or those willing to fork over a few 20s. And when many of them spotted protesters, the chant would begin: "U.S.A.! U.S.A.!"
The NYT notices that not all protesters got shafted. "We have bleachers, a stage, a sound system," crowed a spokeswoman for one lefty outfit, "and we're right along the parade route."
Early this morning at least 13 Iraqis were killed in the bombing of a Baghdad mosque. One GI was killed this morning in central Iraq. Yesterday, there was an explosion at a Brit base in Basra, wounding several. Insurgents also tried, unsuccessfully, to overrun a hospital in Mosul. And officials said that two days ago a British contractor along with his Iraqi guard were killed in an ambush north of Baghdad, and a Brazilian contractor was kidnapped. The Post counts 10 car bombs from Wednesday.
The Post announces inside: "MOST IRAQIS REMAIN COMMITTED TO ELECTIONS, POLL FINDS." USA Today, using the same poll: "HOPES FOR FAIR ELECTIONS DIMINISH." The skinny: Last June, 88 percent of poll respondents said they were "very likely" to do so; 64 percent said the same in the latest poll. Bonus points to USAT for actually printing a graphic on the numbers.
The Post mentions inside that the U.S. has suspended the release of Iraqi prisoners until after the elections; the total number of prisoners has surged recently to about 9,000. Though the WP doesn't mention it, a similar number were being held last year, during which time the Red Cross complained, and the military later agreed, that 70 percent to 90 percent appeared to be innocent.
Not Necessarily the News ... "TOP REBEL IN IRAQ SAYS WAR WITH U.S. MAY LAST FOR YEARS"—NYT. Tip: Is something still a story if the opposite would be big news? Imagined: "TOP REBEL IN IRAQ: 'WE'RE POOPED;' WAR TO 'END IN MONTHS.' "
Back to the balls ... The NYT notices a heartwarming multi-culti moment at an inauguration party. As "at least some locals watched in dismay," a group of Texans ordered up a Lone Star special: Merlot with 7-Up, "described as a Texas version of sangria
