The Perspective section about the Iraq war printed in Wednesday’s paper is misleading at best and a farce at worst. It claims to not take a position on the war, and that it will present the numbers and let the reader decide. This article does take a position however, and it is categorically anti-war. The fact selection and presentation belie the façade of neutrality it proffers.

As Homer Simpson once said: “Facts!? Facts are meaningless! You can use facts to prove anything!”

Though this sounds absurdly counter-logical, it is largely true (if you define ‘prove’ loosely that is). By selectively incorporating which facts will be reported, the article deliberately skews any kind of fair fact balancing analysis.

The article only presents statistics based on death, displacement, time away from home, etc. It fails to present statistics to the war’s merit such as number of free elections, increase in civil rights and freedoms, decrease in arbitrary government sponsored executions, quality of life, threat level posed to the people of the U.S. (directly or indirectly), strength of al-Qaida, Congress’ approval rating, etc. Naturally when you only present the bad statistics about something, people will think badly of it. In order for people to properly decide, they need a representative sample of all the facts.

The illustrations in the article further my point – plastic toy army men, a goofy caricature of Bush, Iraq lined with crosses – these are images designed to induce an anti-war opinion. They speak for themselves.

If you are going to present a balanced factual analysis, then do it right. Don’t claim to not take a position and present a superficially neutral article, only to push an agenda. It is irresponsible and deceptive for the press to misinform in order to foment support for a particular position.


Kevin O’Connor
2nd year graduate student,
College of Law

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