NY TIMES sheds all pretense of their Partisan Liberal Bias

Now watch all the liberal sycophants here on Usenet come to their defense.

This should be fun....

http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/07/21/mccain.nyt/index.html

(CNN) -- The New York Times has rejected an essay that Sen. John McCain 
wrote defending his Iraq war policy.

The piece was in response to an op-ed from Sen. Barack Obama that was 
published in the paper last week.

In an e-mail to the McCain campaign, Opinion Page Editor David ****pley
said 
he could not accept the piece as written, but would be "pleased, though,
to 
look at another draft."

"Let me suggest an approach," he wrote Friday. "The Obama piece worked for

me because it offered new information (it appeared before his speech);
while 
Senator Obama discussed Senator McCain, he also went into detail about his

own plans. It would be terrific to have an article from Senator McCain
that 
mirrors Senator Obama's piece."

In a statement released Monday, The New York Times said it is "standard 
procedure on our Op-Ed page, and that of other newspapers, to go back and 
forth with an author on his or her submission."

"We look forward to publi****ng Senator McCain's views in our paper just as

we have in the past. We have published at least seven Op-Ed pieces by 
Senator McCain since 1996. The New York Times endorsed Senator McCain as
the 
Republican candidate in the presidential primaries. We take his views very

seriously," the statement said.

McCain's rejected op-ed was a lengthy critique of Obama's positions on
Iraq 
policy, particularly his view of the surge.


"Senator Obama seems to have learned nothing from recent history," wrote 
McCain, criticizing Obama's call for an early withdrawal timeline. "I find

it ironic that he is emulating the worst mistake of the Bush
administration 
by waving the 'Mission Accomplished' banner prematurely."

Obama's July 14 essay had taken shots at McCain for not further
encouraging 
the Iraqi government to take control of the country.

"Instead of seizing the moment and encouraging Iraqis to step up, the Bush

administration and Senator McCain are refusing to embrace this transition
--  
despite their previous commitments to respect the will of Iraq's sovereign

government," Obama wrote in his op-ed.

"They call any timetable for the removal of American troops 'surrender,' 
even though we would be turning Iraq over to a sovereign Iraqi
government." 
Read Obama's essay

****pley, who was President Bill Clinton's senior speechwriter from 1995 to

1997, had advised the McCain campaign that "the article would have to 
articulate, in concrete terms, how Senator McCain defines victory in Iraq.

"It would also have to lay out a clear plan for achieving victory -- with 
troops levels, timetables and measures for compelling the Iraqis to 
cooperate. And it would need to describe the senator's Afghanistan
strategy, 
spelling out how it meshes with his Iraq plan."

He added that he hoped the parties could "find a way to bring this to a 
happy resolution."

McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds said Monday the Arizona senator's position 
will not change based on the "demands of the New York Times."

"John McCain believes that victory in Iraq must be based on conditions on 
the ground, not arbitrary timetables," he said. "Unlike Barack Obama, that

position will not change based on politics or the demands of the New York 
Times."

The newspaper endorsed McCain for the Republican presidential nomination
in 
January, shortly before the New York primary.

In February, after it became clear McCain would be his party's presumptive

nominee, the paper published a thinly sourced re****t that McCain once had
a 
close relation****p with a female lobbyist.

McCain said he was disappointed in the New York Times piece. The paper
said 
that it stood by its re****ting and that "the story speaks for itself."

McCain's campaign sent out fundraising appeals based on the article.

The article "is particularly disgusting -- an un-sourced hit-and-run smear

campaign designed to distract from the issues at stake in this election," 
McCain's campaign manager, Rick Davis, wrote in a e-mail to sup****ters.

"We need your help to counteract the liberal establishment and fight back 
against the New York Times by making an immediate contribution today," the

e-mail said in text that linked to an online contribution form on the
McCain 
campaign's Web site.