Has Reality Changed?

Under the headline Campaign Promises on Ending the War in Iraq Now Muted by Reality, The New York Times proceeds in a contortionist way to explain why Barack Obama has reneged on his campaign promise to bring back the troops. For those of us who believe in a withdrawal based on political and military realities, Obama’s change of heart is a welcome development. For those who voted Democratic based on this promise, it must be a bitter disappointment.

It will be interesting to see how this venerable newspaper manages to put a positive spin on this development that contradicts what their editorial stated about Obama when they endorsed him for president:

While Iraq's leaders insist on a swift drawdown of American troops and a
deadline for the end of the occupation, Mr. McCain is still talking about some
ill-defined "victory." As a result, he has offered no real plan for extracting
American troops and limiting any further damage to Iraq and its neighbors.

Mr. Obama was an early and thoughtful opponent of the war in Iraq, and
he has presented a military and diplomatic plan for withdrawing American forces.
Mr. Obama also has correctly warned that until the Pentagon starts pulling
troops out of Iraq, there will not be enough troops to defeat the Taliban and Al
Qaeda in Afghanistan.

Notice the first two lines in the second paragraph. The fact is that pundits and journalists on the left in conjunction with democratic operatives, used the issue of troops withdrawal in a cynical and misleading way. The attacks on McCain over his “one hundred years in Iraq” using this statement out of context were unfair. The promises made by Obama, especially during the primaries, were a typical case of bait and switch.

What did the NYT mean when they used the term muted by reality in their headline? Was the reality different prior to November 4th? I assume that the reporters and editorial writers of the Gray Lady must have been aware of these realities in the pre-election period. If so, they were not reporting; they were campaigning.

To think that we paid to get from the New York Times what we could have gotten for free from the Democratic National Committee.

Is it a sucker that is born every minute or a NYT reader?