In contrast to Saturday pg.1 Michael Gordon article, Sunday NYT pg.1 says "Surge" goals unmet

Editor&Publisher: "Surge" Has Fallen Short, Reporters Claim
By E&P Staff
Published: September 08, 2007

NEW YORK Damien Cave and Stephen Farrell, in a lead story for The New York Times on Sunday, conclude that gains for the security situation in Iraq claimed by "surge" advocates --on the eve of the big re-assessment in Washington, D.C. -- are modest compared to what is needed. Their conclusion stands in stark contrast offered by the paper's Michael Gordon, a longtime surge advocate, on the front page on Saturday, who touted the official numbers on alleged declines in attacks and civilian deaths.

The Sunday article opens as follows. It is quite lengthy and is at www.nytimes.com, along with an interactive "neighborhood" guide:

Seven months after the American-led troop “surge” began, Baghdad has experienced modest security gains that have neither reversed the city’s underlying sectarian dynamic nor created a unified and trusted national government....

The overall impact of those developments, so far, has been limited. And in some cases the good news is a consequence of bad news: people in neighborhoods have been “takhalasu” — an Iraqi word for purged, meaning killed or driven away. More than 35,000 Iraqis have left their homes in Baghdad since the American troop buildup began, aid groups reported.

The hulking blast walls that the Americans have set up around many neighborhoods have only intensified the city’s sense of balkanization. Merchants must now hire a different driver for individual areas, lest gunmen kill a stranger from another sect to steal a truckload of T-shirts.

To study the full effects of the troop increase at ground level, reporters for The New York Times repeatedly visited at least 20 neighborhoods in Baghdad and its surrounding belts, interviewing more than 150 residents, in addition to members of sectarian militias, Americans patrolling the city and Iraqi officials.

They found that the additional troops had slowed, but far from stopped, Iraq’s still-burning civil war. Baghdad remains a city where sectarian violence can flare at any moment, and where the central government is becoming less reliable and relevant as Shiite or Sunni vigilantes demand submission to their own brand of law. “These improvements in the face of the general devastation look small and insignificant because the devastation is so much bigger,” said Haidar Minathar, an Iraqi author, actor and director. He added that the security gains “have no great influence.”...

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003637233

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LINK TO ARTICLE, At Street Level, Unmet Goals of Troop Buildup: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/09/world/middleeast/09surge.html?ref=todayspaper

contradiction to the smarmy lies being generated by the bush** administration ass kissers.

This is not the first time he has had his name on an "article" which seems to have been written by WH PR groups.