NYTimes Editorial - The Failure to Find Iraqi Weapons

[MoonAndSun]

this editorial really made by blood boil!!




<http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/26/opinion/26FRI1.html>


snip> This page did not support the war in Iraq, but it never quarreled with one of its basic premises. Like President Bush, we believed that Saddam Hussein was hiding potentially large quantities of chemical and biological weapons and aggressively pursuing nuclear arms. Like the president, we thought those weapons posed a grave danger to the United States and the rest of the world. Now it appears that premise was wrong. We cannot in hindsight blame the administration for its original conclusions. They were based on the best intelligence available, which had led the Clinton administration before it and the governments of allied nations to reach the same conclusion. But even the best intelligence can turn out to be mistaken, and the likelihood that this was the case in Iraq shows why pre-emptive war, the Bush administration's strategy since 9/11, is so ill conceived as a foundation for security policy. If intelligence and risk assessment are sketchy — and when are they not? — using them as the basis for pre-emptive war poses enormous dangers.




what a bunch of crock!! The NYTimes is trying to rewrite its history of enabeling this evil administration. They have no shame.

[Rose Siding]

1. And Saddam was contained

in 98 and in 2003. CONTAINED. No threat to us. (you can't see but I'm speaking slowly and using sign language for emphasis)

Is this that new editor? These gangster pols will have teflon until the press takes a brillo pad to 'em!

[benddem]

2. Re read the last sentence

They are saying this was a terrible reason for a preemptive war. I'm not praising the NYT. They have printed enough lies but I do read them to say that this shouldn't have been done.

[Swede]

3. We haved enraged 1,000,000,000 people.

Do you feel safer?

[Jack Rabbit]

4. I must take exception to some of this

This page did not support the war in Iraq, but it never quarreled with one of its basic premises. Like President Bush, we believed that Saddam Hussein was hiding potentially large quantities of chemical and biological weapons and aggressively pursuing nuclear arms. Like the president, we thought those weapons posed a grave danger to the United States and the rest of the world. Now it appears that premise was wrong. We cannot in hindsight blame the administration for its original conclusions. They were based on the best intelligence available, which had led the Clinton administration before it and the governments of allied nations to reach the same conclusion.

Baloney.

The information was out there, for anybody who wanted to look for it, to support the assertion that Saddam was nothing but a paper tiger. link:www.salon.com/people/feature/2002/03/19/ritter/index.html|Scott Ritter] stated that almost all of Saddam's biochemical aresenal had been destroyed. The transcript of General Kamel's interview with UN weapons inspectors, in which the General told of ordering the destruction of Saddam's chemical program shortly after the end of the 1991 war, was available on the web. There was no argument put forward by the American junta or by Mr. Blair's government that was not disputed by reputable sources or simply refuted.

Of course, anyone who got his information from the New York Times and other outlets of the US multinational corporate media would not have known this. One needed to look at foreign sources like the Guardian of London, anti-establishment sources like Pacifica radio or sources on the fringe of the establishment like The Nation to learn what was going on in Iraq and elsewhere.

Many of us who marched against the war did so not as dreamy pacifists but as realistic, informed citizens. We were informed, and no thanks to the New York Times.

The runup to war in Iraq represents a colossal failure by mainstream US journalists, including those on the staff of the New York Times such as Thomas Friedman and Judith Miller, to inform the citizens of a democracy of the true facts. Instead of informing Americans, these outlets simply helped the Bush junta beat the drums of a war predicated on lies. The mainstream media allowed junta spokesmen to lie unchallenged. The New York Times was as much a part of the problem as Fox News.

The US media, including the Times, has much for which to answer.

[bemildred]

5. Ah, you know Jack,

butt covering is really coming into vogue.

This is the "we were wrong but we meant well" defense,
and they slip in the important lie as an afterthought:

This page did not support the war in Iraq

Expect a lot more.