Callimachus voices a similar thought in his “Legacy Schmegacy” post:

“Can anyone tell me where the media gets these ideas? Where is the slightest shred of evidence that Dubya ever gave a moment’s thought to a legacy? Look at the last six years. Does this look like an administration that loses sleep over what historians, who hate him now, are going to say in the future…”?

Dicentra and Callimachus both got it right: This is projection on the part of the media. They cannot seem to make the necessary shift of paradigm in order to view Bush’s and Blair’s actions as they are, instead choosing to view them through with the paradigm that anyone who believes what they do practice power politics and self-aggrandizement, rather than act to personal beliefs of what’s the right, proper thing to do. Which is so amazingly hypocritical on the MSM’s part, I’m taken aback; I hardly ever see such analysis made of people like Carter, and rarely saw such made of people like the late Yassir Arafat. That judgement seems to be applied selectively. And in a way, even though in their minds they probably believe they’re judging the following people as evil &/or malicious, they backhandedly hand people like Bin Laden and Nasrallah compliments by portraying them as simply yet truly believing in their twisted philosophies, rather than considering that they might actually know their agenda is manipulative and openly malicious, yet be cynical enough pursue them in order to gain power. Or in short, to be engaging in BS simply to dazzle the crowd of useful fools. I simply never see that analysis applied to leaders such as that, only to Western leaders who deviate from the norm that the MSM attempts to establish.

Acting on behalf of Big Oil is “acting unselfishly”. I see.

Maybe it’s projection: you know, assuming that everyone else is similarly motivated?

Or perhaps it’s the mark of a “respected” reporter to be unflinchingly cynical because it shows that he’s not blinkered by the charming naiveté of the masses.

Of course, cynicism and naiveté have in common their ability to blind people from half of reality: the naive from the world’s ugliness and the cynical from those rare instances of actual nobility.

Skepticism, darlings, is the way to go: fact-check, fact-check, fact-check.
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The NYTimes are amateurs when all is said and done, in propaganda.

It would provide an instructive classroom for people to see how the MSM is trying to manipulate them.

In my opinion, “warlike” was the most biased part of that lede.