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It’s been two weeks now since General Petraeus offered his assessment of the success of the “surge” in Iraq. And have we been discussing his testimony? Ehhhhh, not so much. Well, maybe a little, but with nowhere near the volume or depth that we’ve discussed that MoveOn ad. In this writer’s eyes, the story/debate/controversy hit its pinnacle when President Bush assailed
assailed the ad in his Thursday press conference, conflating the ad’s message with insulting America’s soldiers on the ground in Iraq, saying “"I felt like the ad was an attack, not only on Gen. Petraeus, but on the U.S. military.”

And yesterday the New York Times Public Editor Clark Hoyt came out with a stinging rebuke of the Times accepting the MoveOn ad – as well as the discounted rate the interest group received:

For nearly two weeks, The New York Times has been defending a political advertisement that critics say was an unfair shot at the American commander in Iraq.

But I think the ad violated The Times’s own written standards, and the paper now says that the advertiser got a price break it was not entitled to…
By the end of last week the ad appeared to have backfired on both MoveOn.org and fellow opponents of the war in Iraq — and on The Times. It gave the Bush administration and its allies an opportunity to change the subject from questions about an unpopular war to defense of a respected general with nine rows of ribbons on his chest, including a Bronze Star with a V for valor. And it gave fresh ammunition to a cottage industry that loves to bash The Times as a bastion of the “liberal media.”

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