You can never be sure what's in people's hearts, but you can make good guesses. New York magazine's media critic in general makes me crazy: he's arrogant and he knows very, very little about war and the military. (The words "Ritz-Carlton" and "war correspondent" simply do not belong in the same sentence, but he managed it during the war, when he was camped out in Doha, Qatar, looking for a way to make himself a part of the show, and ultimately finding it.)
Nonetheless, although you can only guess, I think his articulation of the debate over good news/bad news may well represent what a lot of the reporters covering Iraq, particularly covering the war in Iraq from Washington as a political story think the Bushies mean when they discuss the issue. That's telling, and also disturbing, because it's a view so cynical.
