Paint Bush as the Incompetent Slacker He Is

Well. The mainstream media is finally letting some mild criticism of Bush seep into its coverage. Much of it is fairly wimpy, such as Washington Post media critic Howard Kurtz admitting, "Unfairly, perhaps, it smells like the administration wasn't being entirely candid in the aftermath." Duh. And this is the paper which supposedly exposed Watergate?

At least the Associated Press, CNN, and others have been letting family members of Sept. 11 victims criticize Bush & Co., so we can all see it's not partisan snipping by Democrats, as Republicans are saying. "It's shameful that they knew as much as they did and didn't warn anyone," Stephen Push, of Great Falls, Va., told the AP. His wife, Lisa Raines, was killed aboard the airplane that struck the Pentagon. "They put the business interests of the airlines above the lives of the citizens."

Donn Marshall of Marbury, Md., whose wife, Shelley, also died at the Pentagon, more directly put the blame on Bush, where much of it largely belongs. "It sort of makes you wonder where the get-tough president was when he was getting all this information, why they didn't react act more vigorously," Marshall told the AP. "The notion that American planes might be hijacked, that should have caused more concern, even if we didn't think that they might be flown into things."