At any rate, Jim emailed to ask for a link to this story, as he heard it this morning on the radio.
The New York Times has an article apologizing for printing lies about the issue of WMD and other Chalabi-fed B.S.
It turns out that most every lie they printed was in an article bylined Judith Miller. It's been many, many months since I was reading in the blogosphere what a load of crap Judith Miller's articles were, but I guess the Times has just now figured it out. So I'd say the apology is not exactly helpful, nor is it a good trade-off for the horror that is the war in Iraq which might have been avoided if the Times had bothered to have anyone checking into the information they were passing.
On the other hand, I don't know of any other major news source that's even admitted they were less than professional in the deal.
Here's a pretty critical sampling of the editorial:
On Sept. 8, 2002, the lead article of the paper was headlined "U.S. Says Hussein Intensified Quest for A-Bomb Parts." That report concerned the aluminum tubes that the administration advertised insistently as components for the manufacture of nuclear weapons fuel. The claim came not from defectors but from the best American intelligence sources available at the time. Still, it should have been presented more cautiously. There were hints that the usefulness of the tubes in making nuclear fuel was not a sure thing, but the hints were buried deep, 1,700 words into a 3,600-word article. Administration officials were allowed to hold forth at length on why this evidence of Iraq's nuclear intentions demanded that Saddam Hussein be dislodged from power: "The first sign of a `smoking gun,' they argue, may be a mushroom cloud."
Five days later, The Times reporters learned that the tubes were in fact a subject of debate among intelligence agencies. The misgivings appeared deep in an article on Page A13, under a headline that gave no inkling that we were revising our earlier view ("White House Lists Iraq Steps to Build Banned Weapons"). The Times gave voice to skeptics of the tubes on Jan. 9, when the key piece of evidence was challenged by the International Atomic Energy Agency. That challenge was reported on Page A10; it might well have belonged on Page A1.
Five days later, The Times reporters learned that the tubes were in fact a subject of debate among intelligence agencies. The misgivings appeared deep in an article on Page A13, under a headline that gave no inkling that we were revising our earlier view ("White House Lists Iraq Steps to Build Banned Weapons"). The Times gave voice to skeptics of the tubes on Jan. 9, when the key piece of evidence was challenged by the International Atomic Energy Agency. That challenge was reported on Page A10; it might well have belonged on Page A1.
Yeah, I think so.
....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.
