Luckily "progressives" doubt all media sources. From yesterday's 'OpinionJournal.com Best of the Web' e-mail:
Best of the Web Today - August 11, 2003
By JAMES TARANTO
Inventing a Quagmire
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/07/pageoneplus/corrections.html
We missed this last week, but it's so stunning that it's worth highlighting even a few days late. The corrections column of Thursday's New York Times carried the following "editor's note":
*** QUOTE ***
An article on Sunday about attacks on the American military in Iraq over the previous two days, attributed to military officials, included an erroneous account that quoted Pfc. Jose Belen of the First Armored Division. Private Belen, who is not a spokesman for the division, said that a homemade bomb exploded under a convoy on Saturday morning on the outskirts of Baghdad and killed two American soldiers and their interpreter. The American military's central command, which releases information on all American casualties in Iraq, said before the article was published that it could not confirm Private Belen's account. Later it said that no such attack had taken place and that no American soldiers were killed on Saturday.
Repeated efforts by The Times to reach Private Belen this week have been unsuccessful. The Times should not have attributed the account to "military officials," and should have reported that the command had not verified the attack.
*** END QUOTE ***
Consider that: The New York Times is acknowledging that it published a fabricated account of American casualties in Iraq. There's no reason to doubt the Times' contention that its source, as opposed to its reporter, was behind the original fabrication, but it seems fair, based on the paper's account, to say that the Times "sexed up" its reporting by promoting a single private to "military officials" (plural) and by failing to note Centcom's doubts, much less wait for confirmation before running with the story. (The original article is no longer available free on the Times Web site, but here's a later version that appeared in the Tri-Valley Herald http://www.trivalleyherald.com/Stories/0,1413,86%7E10669%7E1549667,00.html of Pleasanton, Calif.)
The Times, of course, used its news pages as well as its editorials to crusade against the liberation of Iraq, and it's hard not to interpret this latest foul-up as reflecting an unhealthy eagerness to believe Iraq is a quagmire producing large numbers of casualties. Anyway, remember this the next time some Times editorial or op-ed columnist raises troubling questions about the Bush administration's credibility.
Also worth noting from OpinionJournal: Peter Beinart says the Dean candidacy is the fruit of seeds planted by the first two years of the Clinton Administration (
link) while the Daily Telegraph reports that the heads of seven major tribes in Fallujah have "agreed to work with American troops to stamp out the looting as well as the rocket and grenade attacks, that have made Fallujah a byword for instability and danger." (
link)
Imagine that, peace in Iraq.
