26-05-2004 21:32									#61
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quote: Well, I wasn't talking about the Chalabi case. Just the manner of performing 180° turns.

Slippery, slippery.

	26-05-2004 21:32									#62
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quote: Originally posted by DanS I think that "Washington is the center of the world" stuff is massively overblown.

Of course it's overblown, because we all know New York is.

	26-05-2004 21:33									#63
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Inasmuch as any city is the center of the world...

	26-05-2004 21:34									#64
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quote: Originally posted by DanS Their "outstanding" international reporting blew this one big-time. They recognize this.

Nobody's perfect. At least they do recognize it. Are any other paper's hands clean in this? Seems to me that the major U.S. papers were all in the same boat on this.

	26-05-2004 21:38									#65
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OK, then what would be your standing for criticizing Bush on the WMD issue? Nobody's perfect, after all. And the intelligence community is made up of a lot of people.

	26-05-2004 21:41									#66
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quote: Originally posted by chegitz guevara As in, we know these guys have serious biases, but we're not gonna bother to check it out. we'll just let our paper be their mouthpiece.

Is there anyone Iraqi who didn't have a serious bias one way or the other about the Hussein regime? WTF were they gonna do, ask Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf for confirmation?

	26-05-2004 21:49									#67
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quote: Originally posted by DanS OK, then what would be your standing for criticizing Bush on the WMD issue? Nobody's perfect, after all. And the intelligence community is made up of a lot of people.

Difference of responsibility. Newspapers, after all, aren't actually deciding to go to war nor do they wage it.

The NYT should have a full accounting of lapses and there should be a meting out of consequences for them. But since they NYT is admitting to its errors (gee, when has the administration done that? or the Intelligence community? Never.) and seeking to correct the problems, I can respect that.

	26-05-2004 22:00									#68
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quote: But since they NYT is admitting to its errors (gee, when has the administration done that? or the Intelligence community? Never.)

Thank god somebody eventually took the bait I was offering.

quote: Russert: Thank you very much, sir. In February of 2003, you put your enormous personal reputation on the line before the United Nations and said that you had solid sources for the case against Saddam Hussein. It now appears that an agent called Curveball had misled the CIA by suggesting that Saddam had trucks and trains that were delivering biological and chemical weapons. How concerned are you that some of the information you shared with the world is now inaccurate and discredited? Powell: I'm very concerned. When I made that presentation in February 2003, it was based on the best information that the Central Intelligence Agency made available to me. We studied it carefully; we looked at the sourcing in the case of the mobile trucks and trains. There was multiple sourcing for that. Unfortunately, that multiple sourcing over time has turned out to be not accurate. And so I'm deeply disappointed. But I'm also comfortable that at the time that I made the presentation, it reflected the collective judgment, the sound judgment of the intelligence community. But it turned out that the sourcing was inaccurate and wrong and in some cases, deliberately misleading. And for that, I am disappointed and I regret it.

	26-05-2004 22:10									#69
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Not long ago Woodward published a book in which he says he reveals the "secret" of how and why Bush decided to wage war on Iraq.

He bases it - as do the editors who publish his stuff and that of other reporters - on interviews he has conducted. In this case 60 in number. That is the material he draws upon and he makes no claim to have looked into anything said.

No different from any other journalist and remote from the inference which the irritating article asks us, mistakenly, to draw.

Incidentally I, in common with all the world, thought we owed a considerable debt to Woodward and Bernstein for their persistence over Watergate. But I have changed my mind since. Hardly a journalist exists who does not yearn to earn undying fame by exposing some poor soul through the wonders of "investigative journalism". Which means in practice that the only place you get any actual reporting of facts is in the sports pages or when the local paper sends someone to the flower show. Elsewhere there is just cheap, slanted, head hunting junk.

The price we are paying for the exposure of Richard Nixon, welcome as it was at the time, grows bigger as this wretched process goes on and on.

I keep thinking that people will get as fed up with it as I have become but newspapers still sell and people are - just about - still tuning in to the appalling stuff which passes now as political interview or commentary.

	26-05-2004 22:34									#70
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things like this make me wonder why so much of the media is grouped as "the liberal media"... often because they publish things which may go against the bush party line.

but, as some conservatives rightly point out:

quote: *GASP* Big articles based on fresh sources get put on the front page, while follow up ones, based on events a few weeks ago are buried in the paper! That NEVER happens!

well, DUH. the nyt, cnn, and a hundred other "liberal" sources hardly fit the bill simply because they go where they smell blood and noise, not because they have some left-wing agenda against our Dear Leader.

it was the same during the clinton era. were those outlets truly liberal, cnn, nyt, the whole shebang would have tried to downplay it rather than shoving it down our throats to the point where foreigners were asking if this is what we american truly cared about.

	26-05-2004 22:38									#71
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1. The NYT before the war was heavily opposign the march to war, both in its news pages and its editorial page. However the NYT also gives a lot of room to its star reporters, at least two of whom have been more hawkish on Iraq, Judith Miller and John Burns. Miller focused on WMD and got snookered, apparently, despite fine reporting in the past. John Burns has throughout been one of the most insightful reporters on Iraq.

2. The Times is generally liberal. Their hostility to Clinton was NOT a sign of conservatism as Che implies, but was largely based on their resentment of his third wayism. (A stand they shared with Harpers, for example) Especially his stand on welfare reform, which the NYT consistently criticized from the left. It is of course not the radical organ that Che would like either. Its between the radicalism of the Nation, et al, and the third wayism of the WaPo. IE its liberal.

3. Its clearly very fallible. Perhaps its not as much better than other US papers as it would like to think, but not terribly worse. And still a damned sight more reliable than UK papers.

	26-05-2004 22:38									#72
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Well they must be liberals if they're admitting a mistake based around support for Bush

	26-05-2004 22:42									#73
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quote: Originally posted by Q Cubed it was the same during the clinton era. were those outlets truly liberal, cnn, nyt, the whole shebang would have tried to downplay it rather than shoving it down our throats to the point where foreigners were asking if this is what we american truly cared about.

Again you are making the same mistake Che does, assuming that liberal = pro-Clinton. The NYT was NOT like Salon, assuming that if the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy disliked Clinton, Clinton must be a liberal hero. The Times dislike for Clinton no more shows the NYT as 'right' or center than the Guardian's dislike for Blair shows the Guardian to be 'right' or center. For Howell Raines, Clinton was a BETRAYER of liberalism, and this hit all the harder because Raines is himself a Southern liberal. Raines war on Clinton was motivated by hatred for his DLC third wayism. Note that Clinton was defended by the third wayish Washington Post.

	26-05-2004 22:47									#74
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it still doesn't change the fact that most major newspapers in the united states are far more interested in blood and action than they are politics.

	26-05-2004 22:47									#75
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quote: Originally posted by Q Cubed things like this make me wonder why so much of the media is grouped as "the liberal media"... often because they publish things which may go against the bush party line.

Youre not very old, are you? Some of us were aware of the various ideological slants and permutations before we'd heard of Dubya.

	26-05-2004 22:48									#76
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quote: He bases it - as do the editors who publish his stuff and that of other reporters - on interviews he has conducted. In this case 60 in number.

These are rich primary sources. Wouldn't you agree? (Btw, I thought it was 60 interviewees, 300 or 400 interviews.) All the historians that I know would give their left nuts for access to these kinds of primary sources.

quote: No different from any other journalist and remote from the inference which the irritating article asks us, mistakenly, to draw.

Could you tell me again the inference that the article asks us to draw?

It seems to me that some other print journalists do not reach the level of sourcing that Woodward does and that they envy him (at least in the US).

quote: Incidentally I, in common with all the world, thought we owed a considerable debt to Woodward and Bernstein for their persistence over Watergate. But I have changed my mind since. Hardly a journalist exists who does not yearn to earn undying fame by exposing some poor soul through the wonders of "investigative journalism". Which means in practice that the only place you get any actual reporting of facts is in the sports pages or when the local paper sends someone to the flower show. Elsewhere there is just cheap, slanted, head hunting junk.

I've come to similar conclusions myself over Iraq. The press is a weapon. It's disgusting. Personally, I have gotten into the habit of skipping the front section and going straight to the business and science & technology sections. But those sections have problems too.

However, I must admit again that I don't find the American print press as objectionable as Brit print press (excluding the FT, which seems on the whole to be a notch above the others). Reporting, analysis, commentary, and editorial is labeled as such. The reporting over here doesn't seem to be political, although the conclusions drawn do have bias -- sometimes more obvious than others.

Maybe you're right that all of these sophisticated structures don't amount to anything in the long run. Maybe the move away from print press as political party organ has made the reporting no less of a lie. Maybe I'm just having smoke blown up my ass. Sometimes I wonder which intelligence services are paying these reporters to write the things they do...

I've also come to lose a lot of faith in the human rights groups and the protest movement over Iraq. You add the press into the mix with these groups and it's one big circle-jerk.

I'll have to think about your point about Watergate more.

	26-05-2004 22:49									#77
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quote: Originally posted by Q Cubed it still doesn't change the fact that most major newspapers in the united states are far more interested in blood and action than they are politics.

that would charecterize TV. Maybe it charecterizes most papers. I daresay it did NOT charecterize the NYT under Raines.

	26-05-2004 23:14									#78
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quote: Originally posted by DanS I think that "Washington is the center of the world" stuff is massively overblown.

Note the

	26-05-2004 23:18									#79
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quote: Originally posted by DanS Thank god somebody eventually took the bait I was offering.

Not at all. Note that Powell didn't apologize for the administration's rush to war despite KNOWING beforehand they were using very shaky evidence (i.e. Niger uranium claims). It's a substantially different situation.

It's also too little, too late. The NYT hasn't been cornered, unlike the administration, into admitting its mistakes--it has done so without any sort of public embarassment beforehand. How long has it taken the administration to drag its heels on this? And still no acknowledgement of bad judgement on their part, just blaming everyone else for the problems.

	26-05-2004 23:41									#80
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Hey just because what you think are mistakes aren't acknowledged by the administration, doesn't mean they don't acknowledge their mistakes.

The administration acknowledged its mistakes on the question at hand, as has the NYT.

	26-05-2004 23:56									#81
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You don't seem to be able to recognize the difference between scapegoating others and admitting mistakes. The administration hasn't issued any mea culpa nor has it acknowledged that it made grievous errors in judgement. It's just shifted the blame to others, be it the CIA, FBI, Iraqi informants or "rogue soldiers."

But if you want to continue stretching this analogy of two dramatically different situations, be my guest.

	27-05-2004 00:05									#82
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Just because you label something a grievous error in judgment doesn't make it so.

On the issue here, Powell said that he was wrong on the facts, so far as he now knew. He described how he and the intelligence community got to the conclusions that he presented, but that in the end those conclusions weren't factual because the sources were wrong.

I don't know what more you were seeking. Wringing of hands? Nashing of teeth? Self-flagellation? BJs for everybody?

	27-05-2004 00:13									#83
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quote: Originally posted by DanS He described how he and the intelligence community got to the conclusions that he presented, but that in the end those conclusions weren't factual because the sources were wrong.

Except we have good reason not to trust his credibility here, as we know the administration actively ignored the warnings from intelligence officials in the past over their information being dubious. We come back again to the use of the "evidence" of the Niger uranium by Bush, despite them being told it should not be put into the SoU address.

Did the admin apologize for the deliberate deception? No, instead they passed the buck to the CIA.

Should we expect a little more delligence from our government and intelligence people when it's a matter of going to war? I certainly think so, and to compare it to the NYT affair is trivializing the seriousness of these "intelligence failures."

Of course, I wouldn't be surprised if the administration had known all along the intelligence was dubious and ran with it anyway to have every justification possible. We do have the reports, after all, that Powell's initial reaction when seeing the evidence he was to present to the UN was to toss the dossier aside and proclaim it "horseshit."

	27-05-2004 00:16									#84
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quote: Did the admin apologize for the deliberate deception?

It was neither deliberate nor a deception. I dismiss the rest of your post for the same reason -- your assumptions are bad.

	27-05-2004 00:18									#85
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DanS: Boris' point is that they (Bush and co.) have only admitted wrong when pressed hard, and have not taken as many steps towards verifying sources as the NYT.

	27-05-2004 00:21									#86
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However, in the issue we're dealing with now (Chalabi, et al.), neither of those things are true. The administration admitted it before the New York Times did and verified its sources better than the New York Times both before and after we knew the information was wrong.

	27-05-2004 00:25									#87
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quote: Originally posted by DanS It was neither deliberate nor a deception.

So you assume, but it's not hard to see why you're probably mistaken by using basic reasoning skills.

quote: I dismiss the rest of your post for the same reason -- your assumptions are bad.

I'd say you're the one making the bad assumptions by making some horrendously naive statements about what politicians are telling you.

	27-05-2004 00:30									#88
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quote: So you assume, but it's not hard to see why you're probably mistaken by using basic reasoning skills.

quote: I'd say you're the one making the bad assumptions by giving making some horrendously naive statements about what politicians are telling you.

It doesn't seem likely to me that an organization that can't keep sexually degrading pictures out of the paper could play-down such wide differences among the administration and the intelligence community. Washingtonians are very bad at keeping secrets like this.

There was a broad concensus that was flat wrong. The concensus on what Saddam had was palpable in this town, as evidenced by the Washington Post's strong editorial support for the war. The concensus was multiple sourced. The sources were checked. The former president's administration thought the same thing. It was a slam dunk. But in the end, the concensus was flat wrong.

I was here through it all. I don't need to assume.

	27-05-2004 00:42									#89
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quote: Originally posted by DanS It doesn't seem likely to me that an organization that can't keep sexually degrading pictures out of the paper could play-down such wide differences among the administration and the intelligence community. Washingtonians are very bad at keeping secrets like this.

So why did the Administration use the Niger uranium report in the SotU address again?

It's just an example of intentional misuse of material they knew was circumspect.

quote: There was a broad concensus that was flat wrong. The concensus on what Saddam had was palpable in this town, as evidenced by the Washington Post's strong editorial support for the war. The concensus was multiple sourced. The sources were checked. But in the end, the concensus was flat wrong.

And my point is that this is inexcusable in a situation wherein we are heading to war over such information and those making this consensus are charged with deciding the fates of men. The Washington Post and NYT et al. aren't intelligence agencies, and unless you're declaring that they should be as good at information-gathering and verification as the CIA. There's also the fact that the NYT got a lot of its information through the rose-colored lenses of the administration itself.

	27-05-2004 00:50									#90
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quote: Originally posted by DanS I was here through it all. I don't need to assume.

Oh I see...living in DC means you have some sort of special knowledge of the intent of the administration that, say, New Yorkers won't have? Sorry, unless you work for the CIA or administration, that doesn't mean much to me.