NY Times continues to kiss W's butt

Put a fantasy spin on multiple failures, line them up in a row, and call it success. From a sycophantic article by Todd Purdum in today's NY Times:

He has gone out of his way not to crow, or even to take direct credit. But not quite two years after he began the invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein, and not quite two months after a second Inaugural Address in which he spoke of "ending tyranny," President Bush seems entitled to claim as he did on Tuesday that a "thaw has begun" in the broader Middle East.

At the very least, Mr. Bush is feeling the glow of the recent flurry of impulses toward democracy in Iraq, the Palestinian territories, Lebanon and even Egypt and Saudi Arabia, where events have put him on a bit of a roll and some of his sharpest critics on the defensive. It now seems just possible that Mr. Bush and aides like Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz were not wrong to argue that the "status quo of despotism cannot be ignored or appeased, kept in a box or cut off," as the president put it in a speech at the National Defense University here.

This is all such puke, but Purdum gets outdone by Bill Clinton in hypocrisy:

Mr. Clinton was more ebullient, noting that the Iraqi elections "went better than anyone could have imagined." In Lebanon, he said, "the Syrians are going to have to get out of there and give the Lebanese their country back, and I think the fact that the Lebanese are in the street demanding it is wonderful."

Asked about huge demonstrations on Tuesday, sponsored by Hezbollah, that demanded just the opposite, Mr. Clinton said: "I find it inconceivable that most Lebanese wouldn't like it if they had their country back. You know, they want their country back and they ought to get it."

More likely, you pompous sellout, they'll get their civil war back. Demonstrating further that we're stuck in a one-party plutocracy in this country, Purdum quotes other Democrats buying the BS--Joe Lieberman obviously, but even Ted Kennedy.

The US continues to support dictators in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Uzbekistan and elsewhere; it supports Israel's brutal occupations; it runs its own in Afghanistan and Iraq; and is becoming less democratic by the day at home. Freedom may be on the march, but it's marching right off of this planet.