Wishing Doesn't Make It So

Excitable reporters and headline writers at washingtonpost.com:

The Senate delivered President Bush its strongest rebuke yet on the conduct of the Iraq war, voting 98-0 to pass a defense policy bill that codifies the treatment of military detainees, establishes new legal rights for terrorism suspects and demands far more information from the White House on the progress of the conflict.

The measure's controversial provisions must still win passage in the House, but they mark the Senate's most dramatic foray into war policymaking and a challenge to the administration, which has issued a stern veto threat. The Senate rejected a Democratic resolution that would have pressured the administration to outline a plan to draw down U.S. forces in Iraq, but, by a 79-19 vote, lawmakers approved a weaker Republican version that insists on regular reports to Congress detailing the military's progress toward the goal of bringing the troops home.

"This is a war of values," said Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.). "We can win this war, ladies and gentlemen, without sacrificing our values."

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) took to the Senate floor to insist that his colleagues were in no way trying to shift administration policy or rebuke the White House, calling such an assessment "absurd" and "ridiculous."

"It's not a change in policy," he said. "It's a continuation of the oversight we've been conducting for years in United States Senate."

But rank-and-file Republicans -- even some of Bush's most loyal supporters -- conceded the political atmosphere has changed....

Notice how we go from a "rebuke" to a "strongest rebuke" to "most dramatic foray" to a "concession" that "the political atmosphere has changed."  Follow that trend line and by the end of the story we'd have a dramatic victory for Bush. But alas, reporters Jonathan Weisman and Shailagh Murray do not.

The truth lines somewhere between the "changed political atmosphere" to Frist's business-as-usual assessment, which, granted, isn't very convincing either. But the Post is breaking out the party hats a little too early, starting in the hed.

Update: The story has been erased as of late Tuesday evening and replaced with a toned-down version, slated to appear on Wednesday's front page. The link supplied above connects not to the original, but to the replacement. Noted here.