February 10, 2007
When Will They Ever Learn?

Go read this whole story and…

WASHINGTON, Feb. 9 — The most lethal weapon directed against American troops in Iraq is an explosive-packed cylinder that United States intelligence asserts is being supplied by Iran.

The assertion of an Iranian role in supplying the device to Shiite militias reflects broad agreement among American intelligence agencies, although officials acknowledge that the picture is not entirely complete.

In interviews, civilian and military officials from a broad range of government agencies provided specific details to support what until now has been a more generally worded claim, in a new National Intelligence Estimate, that Iran is providing “lethal support” to Shiite militants in Iraq.
…ask yourself, What were they thinking? What in the name of God could the Times have been thinking?

Does the byline Michael R. Gordon sound familiar? It should. It appeared right along with Judith Miller’s on one of the most discredited stories in American journalism — the famous piece of drivel about dreaded aluminum tubes poised to create that dreaded mushroom cloud right over Main Street U.S.A. (See this from the Bad Attitudes archives.)

Does the technique sound familiar? That procession of unnamed Bush administration sources from undisclosed locations beating the drums for war? That almost total lack of opposing voices, and those buried near the end?

Is there the slightest reason to think that the very same crowd of Bush and his warhogs who lied us into Iraq are so prostrate with grief over heir former falsehoods that they may now be counted on to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth about Iran?

Can pigs be taught to whistle? Cows to jump over the moon? Editors of the New York Times to detect the subtle difference between bullshit and chocolate chiffon cake?

The answer, sadly, appears to be no.


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Posted by Jerome Doolittle at February 10, 2007 10:04 PM
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My thoughts exactly. In fact, I wrote the Times a snarky letter yesterday regarding the article (below). I'm sure they won't publish it. However, I'm considering canceling the mostly wonderful gift I got for Christmas from my wife, a print subscription to the NY Times. The money might be better served buying a Gamebox or whatever those fancy new toys you buy for mindlessly wasting your time are called. At least when you play those kind of games, no one dies. The mind games the Times plays can have devastating consequences, as one or two hundred thousand people or so, give or take a a dozen or so ten thousand have already found out from the disinformation campaign successfully conducted previously by Messrs. Miller and Gordon.

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I was glad to see that you got rid of fiction writer Judith Miller. Her short stories helped create a great deal of stress for many of your readers and many other unknown, unnamed innocents. Isn't it time you also retired the fiction writer of the article above, who seemed to have co-written many of the pieces that we got from Ms. Miller?

If the Times had funny papers, you might have a place for this kind of journalism, which we've experienced before. It certainly doesn't belong on the front page of the New York Times. Maybe though, with your sagging readership, you should add comic strips to keep the circus alive.

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Liberal Catnip has a nice piece up on this too. [Check out the link to the John Dean piece at the end]


Posted by: Bruce H. on February 11, 2007 9:16 AM

Jerry – and Bruce - you guys don’t get it this time. Sure it sounds like that the response of the media to Bush’s crying wolf is again to wallow itself in the role of war drummers.
But at close inspection, they don’t write “Iran does this and that”. Now newspapers prefer to write “The pentagon says that Iran…” which is in fact a very different way of conveying news that must in all cases be reported anyway.

In my opinion, this edito from the New York Times, for instance, is a great example that American media show attrition with the belligerent Bush’s regime; and even if an “nuclear” Iran must be stopped at all cost to become so, the editorial rooms around this country seem to refuse to dance around the Bushies bloody totem…

Posted by: Dante Lee on February 11, 2007 9:53 AM

Is there a bigger oxymoron than "United States intelligence?"

Posted by: Duff Orben on February 11, 2007 11:16 AM

Dante Lee:
Without wanting to discuss semantics as a non-native speaker, 'reflects broad agreement among American intelligence agencies' sounds pretty conclusive to me.
Apart from that, what American media hardly ever mention is that Iran (having signed the NPT treaty, unlike India, Pakistan and Israel and North Korea, which terminated the treaty with due notice in 2003 (?)) is absolutely entitled to develop nuclear technologies for civilian purposes, provided they allow IAEA controls, which they did until shortly - in spite of threats by the Bush-government.
Actually, the decades-long deployment of nuclear weapons to Germany by the US is much more of an infringement of the NPT treaty (by Germany, mind). But then Germany has no official treaty of peace with the US and might still be considered an occupied country, if you bend international law a little, which the current US-government is very likely to do.
I really don't want Iran and their fundamentalistic government to own nuclear weapons, living very much closer to Iran than you.
But to know an overkill-equipment of nuclear weapons in the hands of the re-born Bushies worries me a lot more, to tell the truth.

Posted by: Peter on February 11, 2007 11:29 AM

Peter:
"But to know an overkill-equipment of nuclear weapons in the hands of the re-born Bushies worries me a lot more, to tell the truth."

Your are right. It does scare Putin as well, as we've all heard it from Munich yesterday...

Posted by: Dante Lee on February 11, 2007 1:22 PM
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