Today's Washington Post features an article on the "disconnect" between the booming economy and public opinion. The paper reports that, according to its own poll, 52 percent of those polled do not like how the President is handling the economy, as opposed to 42 percent who do. The article cites reasons for this dissatisfaction as anger over Iraq, high gas prices, and small wage increases and cites several statistics, all of which are positive except for that of gasoline prices.

The article quotes four of those people who answered the poll, and who agreed to comment on their answers to support the lead. Of the four, three are negative comments and only one of them cites Iraq as a reason. The sole positive quote is less than noteworthy, saying simply "the economy is good" and that the President needs to remain positive. Two of the four were identified as Republicans and two were identified as "political independent[s]". None were Democrats.

In today's Washington Post, reporter Neely Tucker has an article that is essentially an advertisement for an anti-war documentary called "Original Bomb Child" that airs tonight on the Sundance Channel. The documentary uses a great deal of footage from the National Archives that was shot in Hiroshima and Nagasaki after the US dropped atomic bombs on both cities.

The doubt that this might be a straight news story can pretty much be dashed with this paragraph:

"To supporters, President Harry S. Truman hastened the end of a horrific war -- more than 50 million people died worldwide in six years -- by using the bomb to pacify a nation that had attacked Pearl Harbor, shown no mercy in the Bataan death march and committed any number of atrocities against the Chinese."

Though the litany of Japanese actions is true, Tucker entirely omits a far more important point. At the time, the White House and the War Department were considering the casualties that might result from invading the Japanese home islands. This operation, called Operation Downfall, would have resulted in roughly one million American casualties and, assuming the civilians fought as we have since learned they would have, upwards of ten million Japanese casualties.