The NY Times Tries To Cover It's Ass

[Joeve]

From today's NY Times:

Most Americans believed that their country had invaded Iraq to eliminate weapons of mass destruction, but we know now that those weapons did not exist. If we had all known then what we know now, the invasion would have been stopped by a popular outcry, no matter what other motives the president and his advisers may have had.

"Most" Americans were lied to not just by the administration, but by the national press corps, including the NY Times, who intentionally downplayed the actual popular outcry, some of the biggest protest marches ever seen in this country. Even today, supporters of Bush are labeled as "patriots" while people like Cindy Sheehan are derided as "anti-war extremists" by the national media.

Is the Times is just covering it's ass in order to protect their phoney-baloney jobs? Or are they so disconnected from reality by token of their well-paid and prominent positions that they really did just take the administration at its word about their reasons for going to war with Iraq? I just don't know. Either way, they ought to be drummed out of the business of "news", forced to retire in disgrace, because that's what they are: a national disgrace. The Bush administration has ample reason to do what they do: they're crooks who were smart enough to realize that you don't gave to rob the bank at gunpoint, you can bleed the bank dry if you're the ones who own it. But the media has no reason to go along with it, unless of course they're the ones sitting in the getaway car who later claim they had no idea what the people inside were doing.

[underpants]

1. Again?

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/26/international/middleeast/26FTE_NOTE.html?ex=1120881600&en=1bd452bb4c3112ea&ei=5070

[MisterP]

19. they always gibber "hindsight is 20/20," ESPECIALLY when a pithed baboon

could have seen that it was wrong beforehand

[txaslftist]

21. What is a pithed baboon?

Curious.

[txindy]

24. Not sure

Maybe a really, really mad baboon with a lisp?

Probably not.

[txaslftist]

26. Thath pothible.

not thure, though.

[The Backlash Cometh]

2. Hans Blix knew.

You should have listened to him. He sounds a whole lot smarter than most of the dweebs at the NYT. (Except for Paul Krugman, of course.)

[underpants]

3. I knew

I saw 250,000 or so other people on the streets of DC who knew.

[The Backlash Cometh]

6. I knew too.

I broke off two "friendships" over that one. Both over meals. I was having dinner with a friend of several years when I realized we no longer had anything in common. She said that it was better to attack Iraq now before they attacked us. She didn't want to wait for confirmation that they had attacked us on 9/11 or that there were WMD. She was convinced that Pre-emptive Strike was a good Foreign policy. And she was someone I considered intelligent. But, she had worked at the Chamber of Commerce for several years, and well, I believe she lost her ability for critical thinking a long time ago.

The other was at a diner about a few months after the "Mission Accomplished" fiasco. It was right when people realized that the mission was not accomplished and also, in the very early stages when people realized that they weren't finding the WMD. Two soccer dads, one a techie and the other a dittohead, were trying to come up with good reasons for being there anyway. One said, "EVERYBODY was convinced there were no WMDs." I said, no, Hans Blix didn't. But I couldn't remember his name exactly and stumbled on the last name. They dismissed me because they thought I meant Wolf Blitzer. I just lost it, really, and began to leave the table sputtering incoherently. The dittohead gave me an out when he said that it was time for the UN to come in and take over and I said, that we didn't listen to them in the first place so why was he so sure they would bail us out now?

Things have been deteriorating with the parents on that team ever since. I use to go out of my way to avoid them, but now they avoid me, and I think it's because they know they were wrong!

[underpants]

8. Yeah I have family members who don't bring it up either

IT's not a WIN either. We all lose in this situation.

[OmmmSweetOmmm]

14. I knew as well. I did research and found Hussein's son-in-law's

transcript declaring all of the chemical weapons were destroyed and that they never did realize a WMD program. His name was Hussein Kamel, and this transcript was readily available on the Internet.
http://middleeastreference.org.uk/kamel.html

There were also the reports by the IAEA that backed up the claim there weren't WMDs. And I believed Scott Ridder.

Iraq sent 13,000 pages to the UN showing all of this to be in compliance with the resolution, and the US held back about 8,000 of those pages.

[Burried News]

28. Sorry to hear that - at a certain age friends are irreplaceable.

I am close to that situation with a friend of 40 years and he basically agrees with me but has such anger towards liberals that he feel alienated by left and right. It is hard to hold the center - perhaps it goes against a natural law we are unaware of. Your story has probably occured more than a million times in the past year alone, amongst friends and families.

[Supersedeas]

11. and the political of personal assassination were trumpeted by the

Corporate Media against the likes of Blix.

[TankLV]

16. I knew too - ESPECIALLY appreciated the "cartoons" in place of PICTURES

that was when I CONFIRMED that they were all lying!

I mean, common, "can't show the pics because of national security" crap was old BEFORE 911!

So they couldn't show the pictures THEY ADMITTED THEY HAD because then the world would know THEY CAN TAKE THE PICTURES THEY CLAIMED THEY HAD and that's why they couldn't let us see them?

And our Democratic "leaders" just sat their in silence and clapped when it was all thru.

Sickening.

[oasis]

18. Hans Blix, history's forgotten man.

[The Backlash Cometh]

22. That man is a profile in courage.

Someone in Europe should be nominating him for some great award, because you know that he will never get the proper recognition from this country as long as the Bush Administration is in office.

[samsingh]

29. Scott Ritter knew

Dan Rather knew
Sean Penn knew

so many people knew.

[Burried News]

4. George Bush and the NY Times victims of poor intelligence?

Or perpeTRAITORS of a fraud?
Judy Miller knows but she isn't talking - a matter of princiPAL or principle?

[glitch]

5. in-fricking-deed.

I am going with 'perpeTRAITORS' :puke:

[bpilgrim]

7. "a (GLOBAL) popular outcry" == FOCUS GROUP to * and the M$MWs

http://media.globalfreepress.com

the M$MW's apparently got MAD-COW-DISEASE

peace

[librechik]

9. ooof, that's a BIG ol naked butt stickin out there

and Grey Lady Macbeth just can't get it covered, no matter how much she compulsively tries.

Until the paper ACTUALLY confesses and confronts "her" crimes, the NYT is going to be guilty and paranoid.

Get it over with and start telling the truth now!

[melissinha]

10. Frankly, I'm impressed

If New York Times doesn't take all the blame we wish it would... thats not the end of the world. The fact that they are writing with Conyersesque talking points is very encouraging. I was impressed. Its nowhere the admission of complicity that we'd like and that Michael Wolfe argues in his Vanity Fair article, but frankly its no use chastising them... we need them. We can't just speak out and alienate the organizations who are finally coming around. We know its all about business, they jsut knwo that our side is their business now, we need to keep it that way.

I liked this:
The president's strange declaration yesterday that the draft constitution would protect the rights of women and minorities, and his continuing attempts to clog the debate with misleading explanations, suggest his own lack of commitment to the only rationale for keeping American troops in Iraq - or, perhaps, his lack of faith in the likely outcome.

[Javaman]

12. Is it completely impossible for anyone to take responcibility...

for their actions anymore???

Hey NY Times, just tell us you fucked up and let's move on. Cut the crap on the woe is me bullshit, because it falls upon the dead ears of close to 16,000 dead and wounded American service men and women.

When we have a leader* that is incapable of admitting a single mistake or regret, we give rise to the same bullshit in our population that follows blindly the leader* over the cliff.

Suck it up, you fucked up, next!

colossal failure*

[OmmmSweetOmmm]

13. And that's why I don't shed one single tear of Judith Miller languishing

in jail. They can throw away her key for all I care.

[KansDem]

15. CBS doesn't know...

...we know now that those weapons did not exist.

CBS won't air Cindy Sheehan's ad accusing Bush of lying because it's not sure yet if there really are no WMDs...

Perhaps if the NYTimes and CBS got together, they could work this out.

NYTimes: Whadda'say, let's go back to real journalism? :pals: CBS: Ahhhhh, shucks. I thought you'd never ask!"

[MisterP]

17. like the largest single protest in world history, maybe?

naaahhh..

[Jacobin]

20. NYT has signed on to the PNAC agenda

Only now, after DSM, no WMDs, and IraqTheDisaster are all simply too obvious to ignore any longer, do they now try to distance themselves from it to try to regain some shred of credibility.

They gave that up when they signed up for Invasionapolooza and actively ignored and covered up all the contrary reasons to invade, while peddling the horseshit shoveled to Judy with gay abandon by Chalabi (Curveball, wasn't a clue, Judy?) and his neo-con thug friends.

Fork them

[Warren DeMontague]

23. Wow, that's funny. I seem to remember SCREAMING it before the war

I knew the rationales were bogus. I knew the case was manufactured. I knew the "Uranium Yellowcake" story had been discredited before the 2003 SOTU address because I remember screaming at the television "That's a lie and you know it, you korsakoff's-addled pinhead!" when he said those infamous 16 words...

"If we had all known"... That's a laugh. Who was responsible for getting the information that was already available out to the public?

...So the times can Cover its ass all it wants. Lots of us knew, and hundreds of thousands of us took to the streets BEFORE the war even started. The fact that the post 9-11, fully neutered US press didn't pay attention and do a little fucking actual reporting, as opposed to blind jingoism and war-boosting, is their OWN damn fault.

[Jacobin]

25. Wonder how they explain ignoring Scott Ritter?

I suppose Judy was instructed by the neo cons to not let his positions be published.

Oh, and Joseph Wilson?

Guess he couldn't be considered either.

:eyes:

[lateo]

27. Some of the biggest protest marches IN THE WORLD!

Remember the 1 million strong protest march?

[Burried News]

30. Nominated. It will be a bitter taste in my mouth till the day I die.

It really was a betrayal.

[Catrina]

31. Yes, it was a betrayal

I'm nobody and I knew because I listened to Hans Blix, to Scott Ritter, and I too had read about the forged documents from Niger. Also read about Tony Blair's plagiarized documents ~ like others, I screamed at the tv, until I couldn't stand it anymore, to hear them lying.

Ten million people went out in the streets around the globe to say that they knew also, and for every one of them there were maybe millions more calling, emailing, begging and looking to the media to help them out.

Sorry but so many dead people, so many lives destroyed ~ friends lost, families split ~ and rightwingers I had fought with, showing me the NYT as their proof!!

It was a huge betrayal, mostly of those who died. I don't know if there's anything they can do now to restore trust.

One thing would be to not rehire Judith Miller ~ then all of them, the NYT, WAPO, etc (except for the few real reporters whose columns were buried in the back pages) need to offer an apology to the country and to the people of Iraq ~ I would do it and I would quit rather than live with the knowledge of what I had contributed to.