A lot of bloggers have disparaged the media coverage of recent comments by
retired Ricardo Sanchez about Iraq. It's a standard media-bias complaint: that
stories play up Sanchez's negative comments about the war effort, while giving
short shrift to his comments about the media. We weren't even going to bother
writing about this, but a piece in Saturday's Washington Post expresses this
bias in such a clever way that we thought it merited recognition. It begins:

Retired Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, who led U.S. forces in
Iraq for a year after the March 2003 invasion, accused the
Bush administration yesterday of going to war with a
"catastrophically flawed" plan and said the United States
is "living a nightmare with no end in sight."

Sanchez also bluntly criticized the current troop increase
in Iraq, describing it as "a desperate attempt by the
administration that has not accepted the political and
economic realities of this war."

"The administration, Congress and the entire interagency,
especially the State Department, must shoulder the
responsibility for this catastrophic failure, and the
American people must hold them accountable," Sanchez told
military reporters and editors. "There has been a glaring
unfortunate display of incompetent strategic leadership
within our national leaders."

The Post does mention his criticisms of the media--but only in the story's
final paragraph:

Sanchez opened by criticizing the U.S. news media, saying
he was unfairly labeled "a liar" and "a torturer" because
of the Abu Ghraib scandal, and he alleged that the media
have lost their sense of ethics. He said that members of
the media blow stories out of proportion and are unwilling
to correct mistakes, and that the "media environment is
doing a great disservice to the nation."

So the Post closes by telling us how Sanchez opened. Earlier--at paragraph 10,
the story first mentioned the Abu Ghraib connection:

But Sanchez may be best remembered for being the top U.S.
general in Iraq during the period when the abuse of
prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison occurred and was later
revealed. Photographs of Iraqi detainees being humiliated
shocked many and provoked a reevaluation of the U.S.
presence in Iraq. After those disclosures, some enlisted
troops and Army Reserve officers were charged, but in legal
proceedings and official reviews no top commanders were
deemed responsible for the scandal.

Sanchez retired after more senior defense officials, fearing
that a public confirmation hearing would go badly in light
of the abuse allegations, decided not to give him a fourth
star. He is now a senior mentor at the military's Joint
Warfighting Center.

A lot of bloggers have disparaged the media coverage of recent comments by
retired Ricardo Sanchez about Iraq.