NY Times: “A report by the Pentagon inspector general has finally confirmed that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s do-it-yourself intelligence office cooked up a link between Iraq and Al Qaeda to help justify an unjustifiable war.” 
Caterina: “Pipes is getting us closer and closer to nerdvana.”
Don Park: “Another case of reality tormenting geeky ideals.”
Scripting News Annex 
Posted by metapundit on February 9, 2007 at 11:26 pm
FYI – I assume the NY Times is editorializing based on the same faulty info the Washington Post was headlining today. The Post already has a correction up at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/08/AR2007020802387.html and I hope the Times will do so as well.
It would be nice if you would post the correction here as well though – read the WaPo correction for the details, but basically people are (Chris Matthews did so today on Hardball as well) attributing to the office of inspector general what is actually from a report issued by Democratic Senator Carl Levin. This is not quite the same thing…
Posted by hexatron on February 10, 2007 at 7:18 am
The Times dutifully reports unnamed sources for the war that is to come…
Deadliest Bomb in Iraq Is Made by Iran, U.S. Says
Now if they had only headlined it “Deadliest Bomb in Iraq Is Made by Iran, U.S. Says, in Replay of Misinformation that Paved the Path to War with Iraq”.
Or is that obvious.
Posted by hexatron on February 10, 2007 at 7:49 am
The Washington Post correction notes that the “The two reports (the Inspector General’s and the Levin report) employ similar language to characterize the activities of Feith”, but some of their direct quotes were from the Levin report.
The only quote in the Times editorial is about conclusions “that were not supported by the available intelligence.”
The Post correction quotes from the Pentagon report:
The inspector general’s report further states that Feith’s briefing to the White House in 2002 “undercuts the Intelligence Community” and “did draw conclusions that were not fully supported by the available intelligence.”
So the Times has nothing to correct. And metapundit is as trustworthy as any other pundit.
Or is that obvious.
Posted by Dave Winer on February 10, 2007 at 9:29 am
Hexatron, I had the same thiought reading the same article a few minutes ago. They should have put a disclaimer on the article saying last time we carried Bush Administration propoganda like this it led to the resignation in disgrace of the reporter, loss of over 3000 American lives needlessly, hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives, and the loss of about a trillion dollars of American taxpayer money. Or better yet, forget the whole thing.
Another thought, why are the Americans in Iraq in the first place presenting such juicy targets for Iranians? Maybe the headline should credit Bush with the deaths of Americans, not the Iranians.
Net-net — looks like the Times is still in their pocket.
Posted by metapundit on February 10, 2007 at 2:21 pm
hexatron: I suspect that the Times intro sentence “a report by the Pentagon inspector general has finally confirmed that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s do-it-yourself intelligence office cooked up a link between Iraq and Al Qaeda” is an accurate summation of Senator Levin’s views but perhaps not so clearly the summation of the statement by of the Inspector General. It is true that this is an editorial piece and the only quotes from the piece are short and did appear in similar forms in either report.
The Times piece does have a quote near the beginning “that were not supported by the available intelligence.” that also appears in different form as “was not fully supported by the available intelligence.” That “fully” seems to me to be the mark of the Inspector general writing for bipartisan consumption; I don’t know if the Times elided it in the earlier quote, if one is a quote from Levin, or if both forms of the quote actually appear in the Inspector General’s report…
In any event event I suspect you are right on two grounds: I suspect the Times will not issue a correction even if they were editorializing based partly on a mis-attribution, and I probably am about as trustworthy as any other pundit-blogger. My intent was to give Dave a heads up that the NYTimes is potentially reading from the same page that caused the Washington Post to issue a correction to a front page story. That seems relevant to me, and if you disagree – fine.
After reading Dave’s comment though, I suspect I shouldn’t bother. Anybody who asserts with seriousness that “Net-net – looks like the Times is still in [the Bush Adminstration’s] pocket” has their mind pretty well made up …