What changed
Mark Trahant published a retrospective on his years as editorial page editor at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, recalling the paper’s sharp criticism of the Iraq war and its recurring “Rummy of the Week” feature aimed at Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
The piece revisits Rumsfeld’s own claims about public opinion, media freedom and the pace of the invasion, alongside the account of his resignation in 2006 after sustained criticism of the war.
Why it matters
The point of Trahant’s memory is not that a new policy has been announced or that a present crisis has been resolved. It is that old political language can look very different once the outcome is known.
Rumsfeld once said Americans had a “pretty good center of gravity” even as polls moved sharply. He also described the coalition’s achievements in Iraq as potentially without historical parallel. Later, President George W. Bush said Rumsfeld’s departure was the right move and acknowledged that Iraq policy was not working well enough or fast enough.
That contrast gives the retrospective its bite. Confident language can survive in an archive long after the confidence behind it has collapsed. The Seattle paper’s old jokes now function as a record of how institutions sounded while a war was still being defended in public.
Trahant also remembers the Seattle Post-Intelligencer being called the “worst paper in the country” by Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly. In the piece, that insult sits beside the paper’s vanished newsroom and the late Newseum, turning a newsroom feud into something more durable: a reminder that newspapers can disappear while their arguments remain available for judgment.
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