WHEN IT RAINES IT POURS

There's nothing subtle about the opposition of the New York Times to President Bush's plan for military action to depose Saddam Hussein in Iraq. This bias colors not just editorials but practically every news story on the subject. Consider the front-page, above-the-fold piece on August 16, declaring that top Republicans "break with Bush on Iraq strategy."

True, a handful of Republicans have heartburn over Bush's intentions in Iraq--but only a handful. The list grows thin after Nebraska's Chuck Hagel in the Senate, House Majority Leader Dick Armey, and former national security adviser Brent Scowcroft. The placement of the Times story, though, suggests a mass repudiation is taking place. It's not--far from it.

That's the distortion part of the story. The inaccurate part involves former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, whom the Times names as a critic of military action against Iraq. Not so. He's an ally of Bush. Kissinger laid out much of the case for invading Iraq to achieve regime change in an August 11 op-ed in the Washington Post. He explicitly endorsed Bush's policy of preemption: removing a threat before it strikes. The inviolability of the nation-state is no longer the rule, he wrote: "The terrorist threat transcends the nation-state; it derives in large part from transnational groups that, if they acquire weapons of mass destruction, could inflict catastrophic, even irretrievable, damage."