To the Editors,
Whatever personal vendetta or dislike the Times may have against John Kerry, it must stop infiltrating your reporting.
Ms. Zernike's piece is as full of venom as it is devoid of facts.
The senator, for instance, never supported the war itself, but a resolution that authorized the President to use force in Iraq when all other otions were exhausted.
Since then -in light of the President's failure to use those other options, and in light of the reasons for the Iraq invasion becoming ever more muddled and non-existent- Senator Kerry has repeatedly criticized the administration and has been consistent in his view that the war itself is wrong.
This is just one egregious example of Ms. Zernike's twisting the facts into an unrecognizable shape.
Her aim was clearly twofold;
First to portray John Kerry in a less than positive light; to have him appear politically calculating, a thorn in his fellow Democratic senators' side, and an object of ridicule by said senators (see the poorly sourced statement of Sen. Dodd 'winking behind Kerry's back').
Second to perpetuate the Republican talking points and the myth that the Democrats are deeply divided over the Iraq issue. This is not the case at all, and Ms. Zernike, I suspect, knows this.
The divisions are minor and over semantics, and the overall consensus of the Democratic senators agrees with the majority of the American people; The war is a mistake, and we need to get our troops home.
As a final note, I point Ms. Zernike and the Times to a piece of reporting on this same issue that can be used as an example of how it should be done;
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060621/ap_on_go_co/us_iraqMs. Sidoti, an AP writer, tells the same story as does Ms. Zernike, but oh the difference! Her reporting is honest, fair, unbiased, and informational. In short, the kind of reporting that is slowly becoming extinct in favor of sensationalistic, unfactual, agenda-based drivel.
Regards,
Kerstin Levenson