In reviewing its Iraq coverage, the New York Times said, "we have found a number of instances of coverage that was not as rigorous as it should have been. In some cases, information that was controversial then, and seems questionable now, was insufficiently qualified or allowed to stand unchallenged. Looking back, we wish we had been more aggressive in re-examining the claims as new evidence emerged —- or failed to emerge."
As soon as our article on Bush's "State of the Union" speech came out in 2003 lambasting Bush and the New York Times, it became one of our most popular articles ever garnering many thousands of hits over the months. It tapped into obviously widespread suspicions among the people.
On the question of the metal tubes supposedly used in atomic weapons manufacture, MIM Notes said in January 2003: "The New York Times also talks about some aluminum tubes and attempted uranium purchases by Iraq, but Ritter points out that a real nuclear weapons program is not a matter of some aluminum and uranium. It takes tens of billions of dollars and Ritter says the process emits substances detectable by Big Brother--U.$. spy technologies. Talking about how 'high intelligence' in England supposedly caught someone trying to buy uranium makes great theater, but it is dishonest when that same 'high intelligence' knows that more goes into making a nuclear bomb. What the New York Times leaves out is discussion of whether or not Ritter is correct that the Uncle $am would have to know if Iraq were producing nuclear weapons."
The New York Times is now getting around to admitting something about this: "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."
It's good that the New York Times admitted its errors. Something was definitely going on with those alarmist pop-up editorials on the New York Times web page unusual even by New York Times imperialist standards. "Articles based on dire claims about Iraq tended to get prominent display, while follow-up articles that called the original ones into question were sometimes buried. In some cases, there was no follow-up at all." The persyn who did those pop-ups should be fired under suspicion of being a government agent for Bush/Sharon and the editor(s) who bury news opposing the neo-conservative "Revolution" should switch to writing restaurant reviews.
We also have to say that the New York Times still harbours the illusion that WMD may be found. While recognizing that many specific past claims regarding WMD are wrong, the New York Times sees nothing wrong in saying that more than a year later it is possible to say credibly what happened if WMD do show up in Iraq.
The ground is shifting in this war on Iraq. The New York Times has had to pay increasing attention to its audience since the Internet became popular. Intellectuals typical of the New York Times audience were not fooled by the drumbeat for war. We only wish the New York Times had acted prior to the war or at least prior to the latest campaign against Chalabi. Anyone not intelligent enough to understand the motivations of defectors spreading false information to call forth a war had no business running the government or reporting news in the first place.
We cannot afford not to read the New York Times, the imperialist newspaper of record. Nonetheless, we at MIM Notes have a better record on all the major questions: 1) the WMD; 2) the Democrats' role; 3) the likelihood of Iraqi resistance and 4) even the fact that our peace movement was too petty-bourgeois to stop the ground invasion. We've said it before and we will say it again: The public is better off reading MIM Notes, because Bush may spend 11 digits a year on "intelligence" and the New York Times can call more people than we at MIM can, but neither the government nor its mouthpieces have any possibility of piecing together what they know concerning war & peace or other substantial issues of politics in a useful manner. Capitalism corrupts truth production processes.
Note:
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/26/international/middleeast/26FTE_NOTE.html?8dpc
