WSWS: The New York Times and the road to war

[NeoConsSuck]

On October 3, the New York Times published an extensive article detailing the history of one of the fabrications employed by the American government to justify the war against Iraq: the charge that aluminum tubes imported by Saddam Hussein were intended for use in the development of a nuclear weapons program.

The article (“How the White House Embraced Disputed Arms Intelligence,” by David Barstow, William Broad and Jeff Gerth) is an indictment of the Bush administration. But the information it presents is also a political indictment of the role played by the Times itself in facilitating the drive to war.

This, of course, was not the intention of the newspaper’s publisher and editors. On the contrary, the publication of the article was, in large measure, motivated by a desire to present the Times as a conscientious critic of the war. Hence the follow-up editorial that appeared on October 5, in which the editors struck a pose of shock and dismay over the findings outlined in their October 3 article.

The editorial failed to note the salient fact—which emerges clearly from the Times’ own account published two days before—that the newspaper played an indispensable role in “feeding misinformation to the world.” As the October 3 article revealed, the Times served as a conduit for administration officials, uncritically reporting their claims and lending them badly needed credibility.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2004/oct2004/nyti-o13.shtml