During the Bush administration, the media perpetually pounded on news developments that highlighted real or imagined incompetence and/or the low regard with which the administration was held in foreign capitals.
But with the Obama administration's poor handling of the Libyan crisis, the MSM have been strangely mute.
Take for example the evaucation of American expatriates from Libya.
Hundreds of Americans crammed aboard a solitary ferry boat may not be able to leave Libya for Malta until tomorrow, the British paper the Daily Mail is reporting.
What's more:
[W]ith Libyan authorities still refusing to let American chartered aircraft land in Libya, there are growing calls for the U.S. military to join the evacuation effort.
The President has been under intense criticism for his silence on bloodshed in Libya, with speculation that Colonel Gaddafi has intimidated the White House into silence by blocking the evacuation of U.S. citizens.
With dozens of other countries managing to evacuate their citizens, critics have demanded the President take a firmer stance to get U.S. ex pats out.
Indeed, the Chinese, the British, and the Russians have had greater success in evacuating their nationals thus far.
Even so, the mainstream media so far have yet to highlight the stark difference between the evacuation efforts by the Obama administration and those of other countries. Indeed, one gets the impression that some journalists are all too ready to accept the administration's excuses.
Indeed, as I noted yesterday, in a February 22 article, Washington Post staffers Mary Beth Sheridan and Scott Wilson lamented that the "U.S. struggles with little leverage to restrain Libyan government":
As Libya's government brutally cracked down on demonstrators Monday, the Obama administration confronted a cold truth: It had almost none of the leverage it has exercised in recent days to help defuse other crises in the region.
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton condemned the violence in Libya on Monday evening, and said the United States is "working urgently with friends" around the world to pressure the government of Moammar Gaddafi. "Now is the time to stop this unacceptable bloodshed," she said in a statement.
