You're still missing the point. It's not a question of right vs wrong or lawful vs unlawful. It is a matter of effective vs ineffective. And to be effective in this war, credibility is the most important commodity after military power and intelligence. For an administration that has hired some top advertising and marketing people, their "branding" (for lack of a better word) has absolutely sucked. When you sell stuff like "rule of law" and "transparency of process" to skeptical people, the branding message is a lot stronger if you practice what you're selling. And with the prison abuse, the problem wasn't so much that it happened - yes, soldiers do lose discipline, officers do get overzealous, that stuff happens. Politicians never learn - the coverup is always worse than the crime. Did Rumsfeld really think that ordinary Iraqis would find out about Abu Ghraib reading the New Yorker and watching 60 Minutes? I do agree that prison abuse wasn't the worst mistake in War on Terror and War on Iraq. But you can't make your Abu Ghuraib-for-Bremer's bad decisionmaking trade because they go hand in hand - the prison abuse was just one symptom of the poor planning and overstretched resources. Prison abuse points to a combination of breakdown in discipline amd institutional recklessness. Why is breakdown in discipline? Because soldiers aren't being trained properly, because they're overworked, because there isn't communication through the ranks. Why would there be instutional recklessness? Because they're trying to do too much with too little, because there isn't a clear appreciation for consequences of such a scandal. Ultimately, it all comes back to poor planning and management. And while the prison abuse scandal isn't Bush's biggest mistake, it's certainly the most symbolic of Bush's mishandling of the war.
The Tampa Tribune (my local paper) has refused to endorse any candidate, despite having endorsed Republican candidates for the past 40yrs.!!!! Our other main local paper, The St. Petersburg Times, has endorsed Kerry! Most of the major newspapers in Florida (Miami Herald, Orlando Sentinel, etc.) have endorsed John Kerry this year.
I'm not sure you can label them as easily as that. They're probably centre-right on economic and foreign policy issues, but on social issues they're much more liberal (anti death penalty, pro legalisation of "soft" drugs etc.).
True, to a qualified extent. But then, the same could be said for most of the mainstream corporate mass media in America. It seems that many of the Economist's problems with Bush stem from his extremism concerning things they'd probably not have found fault with in a candidate less extreme. This extremism has led Bush to make critical mistakes which exacerbate the Economist's reactions against him. If Bush hadn't been so extreme, they'd probably not whack him so hard for some of his blunders. I think the big story here and in the other threads about the media endorsement is that the media have noticed something that has largely escaped the vast majority of the American people: that the old party stereotypes from the '60s - Dems as radical lefties and Reeps as stolid conservatives - are obsolete. The Dems are now more truly conservative while the Dem capture of the center-right under Clinton has driven the Reeps into radicalism. The media have hipped onto this even though it has largely gone unnoticed by the Great Unwashed. That's why the normally politically and economically conservative media are largely backing Kerry in this fight. That and Bush's four year track record of incompetence.
Up here, the Scotsman, which has been going more right-wing in the last 3-4 years (was previously a "liberal" - UK definition - paper) and has the same ownership as the Telegraph and the Spectator, hasn't endorsed either candidate. I was a little surprised by this, they have been very sympathetic towards Bush (by European standards, at least) over the recent years and have a very right-wing political editor. This editor had an interesting take on the Bin Laden video, saying it should help Bush (thinking Americans would react defiantly), but also suggesting that it could be a double-bluff by Bin Laden, ie he might want Bush to win. http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=1255432004 leader article: http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/letters.cfm?id=1255342004&20041030111939 NB you have to free register to view some of their content. I haven't seen it, but the leftist paper, the Herald will 100% definitely endorse Kerry. Not that that would surprise anyone.