Powerline has this post today linking to Gabriel Shoenfeld's review of Henry Kissinger's third-volume of memoirs. Important reading for many reasons.

This portion of the review is worth pondering:

In the beginning, middle, and end of this episode, Kissinger shows to telling effect, the barbaric nature of the Communist Khmer Rouge was painted over in soothing tones by much of the American press. The New York Times was the most flagrant offender. In one dispatch, its correspondent Sydney Schanberg described a ranking Khmer Rouge leader as a "French-educated intellectual" who wanted nothing more than "to fight aginst feudal privileges and social inequities." A bloodbath was unlikely, Schanberg reported: "since all are Cambodians, an accomodation will be found." As the last Americans were withdrawn, another upbeat article by Schanberg appeared under the headline, "Indochina Without Americans: For Most, a Better Life." In short order, the Khmer Rouge proceeded to march nearly two million of their fellow Cambodians to their deaths in the killing fields. Also, in short order, Schanberg went on to greater glory and a Pulitzer prize.*

*Although tucking them away in a footnote, Kissinger also provides the later and second thoughts of the journalist William Shawcross, whose highly influential book,
Sideshow: Kissinger, Nixon, and the Destruction of Cambodia, had placed the blame for the Cambodian tragedy squarely on the United States. Wrote a repentant Shawcross in 1994: "[T]hose of us who opposed the American war in Indochina should be extremely humble in the face of the appalling aftermath: a form of genocide in Cambodia and horrific tyranny in both Vietnam and Laos. Looking back on my own coverage for the [London] Sunday Times of the South Vietnamese war effort of 1970-75, I think I concentrated too easily on the corruption and incompetence of the South Vietnamese and their American allies, was too ignorant of the inhuman Hanoi regime, and far too willing to believe that a victory by the Communists would provide a better future."

Media writers are not necessarily smarter or more informed than their readers. In their comments and in their slanting of the news, media writers can be horribly mistaken, with tragic results. Keep that in mind when reading the New York Times on Iraq.