Following a link to Power Line on Bashar Assad's speech, I noticed that weblog author John Hinderaker excerpted President Bush's warning to Syria, made Friday, in a manner that suggested those words were the president's response to Bashar Assad. Knowing that Hinderaker's intention was not to confuse, I read the Associated Press article myself and found that the author, lacking any personally delivered speech response from the White House (the only known return at post time and date is a press release from the State Department), decided to simply use material from Friday. The reporter did indicate that statements from President Bush and White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan were a day old but still left readers with a conversation of global proportions where incomplete response "B" preceded stringent demand "A."

We know that the president made clear his expectations for full withdrawal, and that they were non-negotiable. But the Associated Press has assumed that if Syria simply refused, the White House would reply with boilerplate. In fact, the State Department's response could very well lead to a severe American posture, from sanctions to troop deployment.

Elsewhere, reporter Ed O'Loughlin of Australia's Age commits a bald factual error (emphasis and transoceanic grammatical changes mine):

With Lebanon's political crisis into its fourth week, high-level statements in Washington and Damascus — including a Syrian proposal to withdraw troops from its neighbor — have done little to resolve tensions. US President George Bush has rebuffed what appears to be a proposal for only a partial withdrawal from Lebanon, saying all Syrian forces should be out before planned May elections.

Mr. Bush also accused Damascus of supporting terrorism, "a key obstacle to peace in the broader Middle East."

His remarks came hours after Syrian President Bashar Assad made a carefully worded address to his parliament saying Syria would eventually withdraw its 14,000 troops in Lebanon to the "Lebanese-Syrian border areas."

As of this entry time and date, President Bush has not offered a personal statement. The State Department communiqué could be considered more or less from the president's desk but departmental actions are usually credited to administrations, not individuals. What cannot be debated is the time of the president's weekly radio address and its relation to Bashar Assad's speech in Damascus: the radio address was delivered a few hours before, yet O'Loughlin decided it was good enough for a few hours after. Given that Assad has spit in Washington's eye, the context shift has enormous implications.

Sparing the leftist media our recorded history of their intent to obfuscate in Iraq, we can soundly claim that in Lebanon they suffer from a mixture of impatience and carelessness. Because the observation and evaluation of Lebanese events depends on the work of journalists, we ought to be careful about what we choose.

ELSEWHERE IN OZ: The Australian Near East correspondent seems to have a preference for fresher news. More commentary as events occur.