Posted on 03/18/2006 11:43:52 AM PST by blogblogginaway
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The New York Times said on Saturday it had identified the wrong man as the hooded prisoner standing on a box in a photograph that came to symbolize U.S. military abuses at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison.
The newspaper's March 11 profile about Ali Shalal Qaissi was challenged by online magazine Salon.com, which said an Army investigation had concluded the prisoner was a different man.
"The Times did not adequately research Mr. Qaissi's insistence that he was the man in the photograph," The Times said in an editor's note accompanying a front page story on the misidentification.
"A more thorough examination of previous articles in The Times and other newspapers would have shown that in 2004 military investigators named another man as the one on the box, raising suspicions about Mr. Qaissi's claim," it said.
The Times, one of the most respected U.S. newspapers, was stung in 2003 when former reporter Jayson Blair was found to have fabricated and plagiarized dozens of articles. Last year, the resignation of star reporter Judith Miller amid questions about her reporting in the run-up to the Iraq war further damaged the paper's standing.
In last Saturday's article, Qaissi, a former Baath Party official, described how he was arrested in October 2003 and held for nearly six months at Abu Ghraib. It said prison records confirmed he was in detention at the time.
The Times said other media outlets, including PBS and Vanity Fair, had accepted Qaissi's account and identified him as the prisoner in the photograph, which shows a man wearing a hood and a poncho with wires attached to his outstretched arms.
The paper said Qaissi did appear with a hood over his head in other photographs seized by Army investigators.
"However, he now acknowledges he is not the man in the specific photograph he printed and held up in a portrait that accompanied the Times article," the Times article said.
But, Qaissi told the newspaper, "I wore that blanket, I stood on that box, and I was wired up and electrocuted."
That seems kind of slow.
Well, why trust those military investigators anyway. They're only the ones that broke the story for you lousy reporters anyway.
/sarc
But the important thing is that it COULD have been him, or someone just like him.
In some marxist circles yes. In pro-western circles it is more accurately recognized as one of the most vile propaganda operations this side of 1980s Pravda.
If they'd be considerate enough to print it on toilet paper, I'd be considerate enough to help with the circulation of old issues.
What I like is they wait til Saturday to admit it when nobody's paying attention. Straight outta the Krintong Playbook.
Why revile Pravda? I am convinced that they had a higher regard for reality than the Times, although the Russian politicos wouldn't know the truth if it came up and bit them.
The old Pravda was a piece of work. Still, it took it's direction from the State. The New York Times takes it's direction from anti-American subversives. They have no cover for doing so, other than that they hate our nation.
Anyone going to ask the harder question? How many more "fake but accurate" stories is the NYTimes sitting on?
The Times does no service to the American public, no service to those protecting the Times right to publish and goes out of it's way to help the enemy.
Since when?
That's enough to get anyone Hal Raines old job at the NYT.
Maybe Pinch can work a package deal and get Baghdad Bob to do book reviews? Put him in the same cubicle as Frank Rich?
Did she look like this?
I always thought boy is she homely....
No. The important thing is that when they get those facts wrong, then we cannot trust ANY of what they reported.. including the assertion that ANYONE was actually treated like that.
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