From a Washington Post write-up yesterday:
Lost in the rhetorical firefight have been the drawbacks of such an approach in a military system that resolved only three cases during the Bush years, one with a guilty plea.
Whose fault is this? This has become a habit with coverage of policy disputes: Republicans base an entire argument on an outrageous, verifiable claim -- military commissions are better at dealing with terrorism cases -- and months later reporters actually decide to check out whether or not the claim is true. Only then do they find out that it isn't, months after public opinion has calcified and policy decisions have been made. The weakness of the military commissions was "lost in the rhetorical firefight" because media outlets decided the actual policy consequences were incidental to the rhetorical firefight.
To have emphasized this earlier would have been "taking sides."
-- A. Serwer
