Articles That Mysteriously Change In The Night

The New York Times declared on its website early Friday in a headline that the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, had warned to U.S. was on the "precipice of full-scale civil war." Their headline? "U.S. Envoy in Baghdad Says Iraq Is on Brink of Civil War."

Within an hour and without explanation, the Times yanked the headline in favor of "U.S. Envoy Says Sectarian Violence Threatens Iraq's Future."

Originally, their lead paragraph had read: "The American ambassador to Iraq said Friday that the country was on the precipice of full-scale civil war, and that Iraqi leaders would have to come together and compromise if they wanted to save their homeland."

An hour later: "The American ambassador to Iraq said Friday that sectarian violence this week had endangered the future of Iraq, and that Iraqi leaders would have to come together and compromise if they wanted to save their homeland."

Catherine Mathis, the New York Times Company's Vice President for Corporate Communications, did not immediately return a call seeking comment.

Later in the morning, the Times changed the story again to reflect the relative calm that cloaked Baghdad in the day after a rash of bombings: "As Violence Ebbs, U.S. Envoy Warns of Danger to Iraq's Future."

They still, however, offered no accounting for how Iraq went from the "precipice of civil war" to "endangered" based on the same remarks by a U.S. ambassador.

They are not even trying to hide it anymore. Over at AMERICAblog, another "missing" story is reported:

Earlier tonight, the Washington Post had a pretty blistering article on Bush's foreign policy speech today to the American Legion. There was no question from reading that piece that Bush really thinks things are going well with his foreign policy. And, it left no doubt that Bush's optimism is not widely shared. I started to write a post because I was struck by this passage:

Outlining what he called a "forward strategy for freedom," Bush painted
a generally optimistic picture of events overseas that have led critics to
charge that his foreign policy is built largely on geopolitical fantasy.(my
emphasis, not the Post's)

I cut and pasted the paragraph above and started to write the post. But, when I went back to the Post to get the link, the article was gone. The link is now to another story that incorporates Bush's foreign policy speech today in to the Iraq debacle.

If they don't print it, it can't be read, and therefore, in the Bush alternate world, it's not happening, right?