Opinion

BLUE PAPER’S RED PENCIL

The New York Times is showing its true color again (i.e., cobalt blue): Just days after running an essay by Barack Obama slamming John McCain‘s Iraq policy proposals, the paper summarily nixed the Arizona senator’s rejoinder.

Unless the GOP candidate agreed to change his proposals to something approximating Obama’s.

Weird but true.

Could there be a more graphic example of the newspaper’s liberal Democratic bias than that?

“I’m not going to be able to accept this piece as currently written,” Times op-ed editor David Shipley told McCain.

Shipley claimed he was “very eager to publish” a piece by the GOP candidate – so long as it embraced Obama’s plan for Iraq, spelling out a detailed schedule for withdrawing US troops.

“The article would have to articulate, in concrete terms . . . troop levels, timetables and measures for compelling the Iraqis to cooperate,” wrote Shipley, who served in the Clinton administration.

Trouble is, McCain opposes timetables.

Indeed, he says so straight out in the piece Shipley rejected: “Any draw-downs must be based on a realistic assessment of conditions on the ground, not on an artificial timetable crafted for domestic political reasons,” McCain writes. (His op-ed appears in full HERE.)

McCain agrees with what military leaders in Iraq say: “Leaving based on a timetable would be ‘very dangerous.’ ”

So why would McCain want to draw up such a plan and “articulate” it in a newspaper essay?

Now, was Shipley really demanding the Republican contender change his policy – to make it more like Obama’s – if he wanted the Times to run his piece?

Or did he simply not want to run McCain’s column, period, and imposed what he knew would be impossible conditions on the senator?

Let’s be clear: Newspapers are under no obligation to run countervailing op-eds. The Post rarely does.

And the Times has every right to push a dangerous plan that would hand a huge victory to terrorists – and every right to bar dissenting views.

But on an issue as central to the presidential race – and as critical to America’s War on Terror – as this, you’d think “the paper of record” would let each side make its case. Ha!

The irony, of course, is that millions of Americans will now see McCain’s piece, anyway. And the only party damaged in the process is . . . the Times.

Sounds about right to us.