Does Public Editor Barney Calame know about this?

Another Times reporter has gone onto PBS's Charlie Rose show and suggested that putting more U.S. troops in Iraq may have a "good effect."

No good deed goes unpunished?

Fallout from the execution of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein still dominates the New York Times, and it's not just conservatives who see some definite themes emerging from the massive coverage.

Slate's "Today's Papers" column noticed even back on Sunday:

"TP couldn't help but pick up on the distinct strain of grudging admiration that ran through the NYT's coverage of Hussein's trip to the gallows. An early edition of the paper's lead story said that although the witnesses it interviewed were enemies of the dictator, 'their accounts of the execution were redolent of respect for the way in which their former tormentor died.' The final edition version of the story omits the prior passage but says the widely broadcast videotape of the event suggested that he 'lived his final moments with unflinching dignity and courage, reinforcing the legend of himself as the Arab world's strongman.' An accompanying front-page piece about the dictator's final moments relates that he 'looked strong, confident and calm." A fitting final performance, I suppose, for a master propagandist.'"

It's unanimous! Times Watch guest judges Stephen Spruiell, who runs National Review Online's Media Blog, and Times critic William McGowan, author of the upcoming book Gray Lady Down, both picked as his worst quote of the year one from New York Times Publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. (The quote also earned Quote of the Year honors from Times Watch's parent organization, the Media Research Center.) Spruiell says it was the "sheer arrogance" of Sulzberger's speech that put the paper's publisher over the top.

Sabrina Tavernise reports from a village in Lebanon for Friday's "A Girl's Life Bound Close To Hezbollah," and honors the mantra of the terrorist group as a "social services network," just like her colleague John Kifner did on Wednesday -- and again, without using the word "terrorism."

"Israel's goal of uprooting Hezbollah from southern Lebanon has frequently been questioned by critics who say the group is deeply woven into society and cannot simply be cut out. An afternoon with the Fadlallah family in this southern Lebanese village shows that the group not only is part of society, but also helps form the shape of life itself.

New York Times reporter Sabrina Tavernise, in Beirut while parts of the city are being bombarded by Israeli air strikes, files "Beirutis Try to Plumb the Abyss Between Elegance and Chaos."

She describes the divide between the Shiites in the vulnerable South and the more cosmopolitan Lebanese of the North and uses the term "folk hero" in a description of the leader of the terrorist group Hezbollah:

"For the south, which suffered for more than a decade under Israeli occupation, Hezbollah's leader, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, is a folk hero who helped drive out the Israelis. But many middle-class Lebanese who have worked for the past decade to generate an economic revival are tired of war and resent Hezbollah’s capture of two Israeli soldiers in a cross-border raid on July 12."