News-O-Matic

I've figured out how the NYTimes works now. Everyone should just ignore all articles except those called "News Analysis." The other articles are just press releases. The "News Analysis" is the, well, news, as long as you filter out all the rhetorical questions and hemming and hawing.

For example, today's brilliant "News Analysis" reads in part:

Mr. Bush faces fundamental questions about his strategy for bringing stability to Iraq. How can the United States - with the help of Iraqi security forces whose performance has been uneven at best - assure the safety of Iraqis who go to the polls on Jan. 30 when it cannot keep its own troops safe on their own base?

And are Mr. Bush and his defense secretary, Donald H. Rumsfeld, more vulnerable to criticism that they have failed to provide American forces with everything they need to take on a shadowy, fast-evolving enemy that, as the Tuesday attack showed, continues to display a notable degree of resilience?

Run this through the news-o-matic, and you get:

"Mr. Bush's strategy for bringing stability to Iraq has failed to keep even our own troops safe on their own base. Iraqi security forces are not much help, and yet Mr. Bush insists that elections will go ahead on January 30th as planned and that somehow, some way, it will be safe for Iraqis to vote. Mr. Bush and his defense secretary have failed to provide American forces with the tools they need to win the war, and as a result, as the Tuesday mess tent slaughter shows, they are in fact not winning the war."

At last, reality-based coverage of the war.