Re: Dishonest, Reprehensible, Corrupt ...


Are you on some kind of
quest to find the least
credible publications in
the world, John -- the
New York Sun editorial
page? You've got to be
kidding....

"John Wheaton" <wheatonjohn@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

>
>"Bruce Morgen" <editor@xxxxxxxx> wrote in message news..
>> Dishonest, Reprehensible, Corrupt ...
>> By Frank Rich
>> The New York Times
>>
>
>Dishonest, reprehensible, and corrupt? That typifies Frank Rich!
>
>Frank Rich's War
>"Those who charge President Bush and Vice President Cheney with lying to get
>America involved in the war in Iraq, as the New York Times columnist Frank
>Rich did yesterday, have a special obligation to get the truth correct
>themselves. It's one thing for Mr. Rich to disagree with the decision to go
>to war in Iraq and to blame Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney for the decision. It's
>another for Mr. Rich to accuse our elected leaders of misleading the country
>while the columnist himself goes about misleading readers of The New York
>Times.
>The Niger Uranium
>
>Mr. Rich's New York Times column yesterday refers to Mr. Bush's 2003 State
>of the Union address with the "bogus 16 words about Saddam's fictitious
>African uranium." Those words were, "The British government has learned that
>Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from
>Africa." But those 16 words are neither bogus nor fictitious. They were and
>are true. A July 2004 report of the bipartisan Senate Select Committee on
>Intelligence reported that an Iraqi delegation visited Niger in June of 1999
>and met with Niger's then-prime minister, Ibrahim Mayaki. The committee
>relayed that Mr. Mayaki said the meeting was about "expanding commercial
>relations" between the two countries, which Mr. Mayaki interpreted to mean
>"that the delegation wanted to discuss uranium yellowcake sales."
>
>A July 2004 report by the British government's Butler Commission found that
>Mr. Bush's State of the Union comment was "well-founded." As the Commission
>put it, "It is accepted by all parties that Iraqi officials visited Niger in
>1999.The British Government had intelligence from several different sources
>indicating that this visit was for the purpose of acquiring uranium. Since
>uranium constitutes almost three-quarters of Niger's exports, the
>intelligence was credible. ... The forged documents were not available to
>the British Government at the time its assessment was made, and so the fact
>of the forgery does not undermine it."
>
>According to the Butler Commission, Saddam Hussein's government claimed that
>a 1999 mission to Niger by Iraq's ambassador to the Vatican was for the
>purpose of conveying an invitation to the Nigerian president to visit Iraq.
>Now, it's possible that, in the aftermath of September 11, 2001, if Frank
>Rich were president, he would have concluded that the Iraqi ambassador to
>the Vatican probably just had jetted down to Niger for the purpose of
>hand-delivering an invitation. But the British concluded otherwise, and it's
>hardly "bogus" or "fictitious" for Mr. Bush to have said so. Given Saddam's
>known nuclear ambitions - remember Osirak? - and Niger's main export, would
>it have been prudent for Mr. Bush to take the word of Saddam's envoy over
>that of the British?
>
>Two Commissions
>
>Mr. Rich's New York Times column yesterday accuses Messrs. Bush and Cheney
>of "falsely claiming they've been exonerated by two commissions that looked
>into prewar intelligence - neither of which addressed possible White House
>misuse and mischaracterization of that intelligence." Yet two major reports
>that looked into the matter of the administration and intelligence did
>exonerate the president. Here is a quote from the report of the bipartisan
>Robb-Silberman commission: "The Commission found no evidence of political
>pressure to influence the Intelligence Community's pre-war assessments of
>Iraq's weapons programs. As we discuss in detail in the body of our report,
>analysts universally asserted that in no instance did political pressure
>cause them to skew or alter any of their analytical judgments."
>
>Here is a quote from the report of the bipartisan Senate Select Committee on
>Intelligence: "The Committee did not find any evidence that Administration
>officials attempted to coerce, influence, or pressure analysts to change
>their judgments related to Iraq's weapons of mass destruction capabilities."
>Yet, in contravention of those conclusions - reached by groups that included
>Democrats such as Senators Edwards, Levin, Wyden, and Durbin and Clinton
>administration officials Lloyd Cutler, William Studeman, and Walter
>Slocombe - Mr. Rich speaks of "the administration's deliberate efforts to
>suppress or ignore intelligence that contradicted its Iraq crusade."
>
>September 11 and Iraq
>
>Mr. Rich accuses Mr. Cheney of dissembling by conflating the terrorists of
>September 11, 2001, with those we are fighting in Iraq. As evidence that Mr.
>Cheney is lying he cites an American general who says the Iraqi insurgency
>is 90% homegrown. But it's undisputed that the leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq is
>a Jordanian, Zarqawi, who shares with the rest of Al Qaeda, including the
>September 11 terrorists, the goal of re-establishing the caliphate.
>Certainly in their violent targeting of civilians and their jihadist
>rhetoric, those who attacked New York office buildings on September 11 and
>those who are blowing up restaurants and hospitals in Iraq have a lot in
>common. One may choose to emphasize or de-emphasize the similarities, but
>emphasizing the similarities as Mr. Cheney has done hardly amounts to
>dissembling.
>
>The DIA Report and Senator Levin
>
>Mr. Rich references a report of the Defense Intelligence Agency released by
>Senator Levin, a Democrat of Michigan, which Mr. Rich said demolished the
>credibility of a source the administration used "for its false claims about
>Iraq-Al Qaeda collaboration." Here's how Mr. Levin hyped the report in a
>press release. "In February 2002, the DIA stated the following, which has
>remained classified until now: 'Saddam's regime is intensely secular and is
>wary of Islamic revolutionary movements. Moreover, Baghdad is unlikely to
>provide assistance to a group it cannot control.' That DIA finding is
>stunningly different from repeated Administration claims of a close
>relationship between Saddam and al-Qaeda. Just imagine the impact if that
>DIA conclusion had been disclosed at the time. It surely could have made a
>difference in the congressional vote authorizing the war."
>
>The only stunning thing here is the disingenuousness of Messrs. Levin and
>Rich. First of all, the DIA report is not much different from what Bush
>administration officials were saying publicly at the time. On February 6,
>2002, the director of Central Intelligence, George Tenet, made a similar
>argument in public testimony before the Senate Select Committee on
>Intelligence, saying, "Baghdad has a long history of supporting terrorism,
>altering its targets to reflect changing priorities and goals. It has also
>had contacts with al-Qa'ida. Their ties may be limited by divergent
>ideologies, but the two sides' mutual antipathy toward the United States and
>the Saudi royal family suggests that tactical cooperation between them is
>possible - even though Saddam is well aware that such activity would carry
>serious consequences."
>
>Moreover, the notion that the secular Baathists and the Islamic jihadists
>are so ideologically divergent that they will not work together has been
>disproven by what is going on now in Iraq, where they are cooperating
>against Iraqi moderates and American troops.
>
>James Bamford
>
>Mr. Rich cites the reporting in Rolling Stone of James Bamford. Yet even Mr.
>Rich's own newspaper, the Times, in reviewing Mr. Bamford's 2001 book,
>remarked on Mr. Bamford's "palpable distaste for the Israeli state." Said
>the Times review, "Rather too credulously, Bamford sides with the conspiracy
>theorists."
>
>The Truth
>
>Mr. Rich writes that the White House's record on the road to Iraq recalls
>the saying, "Every word she writes is a lie, including 'and' and 'the.'"
>Here is what Mr. Bush said in his 2003 State of the Union address, the one
>whose 16 words about Uranium in Africa caused such a storm. "The dictator
>who is assembling the world's most dangerous weapons has already used them
>on whole villages - leaving thousands of his own citizens dead, blind, or
>disfigured. Iraqi refugees tell us how forced confessions are obtained - by
>torturing children while their parents are made to watch. International
>human rights groups have catalogued other methods used in the torture
>chambers of Iraq: electric shock, burning with hot irons, dripping acid on
>the skin, mutilation with electric drills, cutting out tongues, and rape. If
>this is not evil, then evil has no meaning."
>
>That the president spoke the truth has been sadly confirmed in free Iraq.
>The Associated Press's Nadia Abou El-Magd interviewed Firas Adnan, whose
>tongue had been cut off with a box cutter by a Saddam loyalist. Mr. Adnan,
>"his slurred words barely comprehensible," said of Saddam, "He is a despot,
>the biggest despot, Iraq will be much better without him." Susan Sachs of
>Mr. Rich's own New York Times reported from the mass graves of Hilla: "On
>April 11, 1991, a few weeks into the Shiite rebellion, Iraqi helicopters
>dropped leaflets over Karbala ordering everyone to leave or be attacked with
>chemical weapons. Mr. Mohani piled his relatives into a pickup truck and a
>car and fled. About four miles south of the city, the escape route was
>blocked. There, he said, he saw Mr. Hussein's son-in-law, Hussein Kamal,
>executing people randomly at a checkpoint. 'He was telling people to get out
>of their cars and then he would shoot them, shoot them until his arm was too
>tired to do it anymore.'"
>
>Does Mr. Rich think his own colleague and the Associated Press are also part
>of what he derides as "propaganda" and "the disinformation assembly line"?
>And when it comes time for a new generation to ask their elders what they
>did during the war to end the tyranny of Saddam Hussein, what are the
>editors of the Times going to have to say for themselves?"
>http://www.nysun.com/article/23556
>
>
>




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