Posted on 05/26/2004 6:35:07 PM PDT by wagglebee
The New York Times acknowledged Wednesday that some of its coverage of the Iraq crisis "was not as rigorous as it should have been" and relied on reports from informants whose credibility was later called into question.
During the run-up to the war, reports of claims that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction or ties to international terrorists contained information that was unchallenged by editors and was not adequately followed up, the Times said in an editor's note.
"In some cases, information that was controversial then, and seems questionable now, was insufficiently qualified or allowed to stand unchallenged," the newspaper said. "Looking back, we wish we had been more aggressive in re-examining the claims as new evidence emerged or failed to emerge."
The Times also said it had featured articles containing alarming claims about Iraq more prominently than follow-up stories that countered those claims.
Many of the stories used information from Iraqi exiles and critics of Saddam Hussein who were pressing the United States to oust the Iraqi leader, but the newspaper said it did not always emphasize the informants' motivations.
Among the sources used by the Times was Ahmad Chalabi, who has been mentioned in Times articles since at least 1991 and became a paid broker of information from Iraqi exiles.
Chalabi, once thought by the Pentagon to be a possible successor to Saddam, has fallen out of favor with the United States, which has accused him of giving sensitive information to Iran about the U.S. occupation of Iraq. Last week, U.S. soldiers and Iraqi police raided his home and offices.
Several articles in question were written by Judith Miller, who has been criticized by some in the news industry for her reporting on weapons of mass destruction before the war. The editor's note did not mention any reporter by name.
Among the stories cited by the editor's note was one published on Dec. 20, 2001, that cited an Iraqi defector who described himself as a civil engineer.
According to the story by Miller, the defector said "he personally worked on renovations of secret facilities for biological, chemical and nuclear weapons in underground wells, private villas and under the Saddam Hussein Hospital in Baghdad as recently as a year ago."
Knight Ridder reported last week that the defector was taken to Iraq to point out the sites where he said he had worked but no weapons were found, the Times noted.
"Editors at several levels who should have been challenging reporters and pressing for more skepticism were perhaps too intent on rushing scoops into the paper," the editor's note said.
The Times also said stories on Oct. 26 and Nov. 8, 2001, described claims that were never independently confirmed. Those stories cited Iraqi defectors who described a secret camp in Iraq where terrorists were trained and biological weapons were produced.
Times spokeswoman Catherine Mathis said she could not comment on whether disciplinary action would result from the newspaper's investigation.
The Times said it reviewed hundreds of articles. It posted a sampling of the stories on its Web site, covering issues such as hidden weapons facilities and the destruction of weapons.
Nearly all the stories were published during the tenure of former Executive Editor Howell Raines, who resigned last June in the wake of the Jayson Blair scandal. Raines and former Managing Editor Gerald Boyd left after a Times investigation found fabrications or plagiarism in dozens of Blair's stories.
The NY Times is such a joke.
Enemy aiding, abetting, comfort giving to NY Slimes, go straight to the trash basket where your worthless TASS and Pravda B.S. belongs!!!!:-(
So, Bush is off the hook. The Iraq war is all the fault of the NYT. If they had done their job all this could have been avoided and Saddam would continue to be our ally, the French would love us and the lambs will lie down with the lions.
[vomit]
Maybe one day they will question all the non-snese they headline about the bogus global warming scare.
I don't know who has been listening to Hannity and Colmbs (Sp?). Carl Berstien was on and declared in pretty clear language that this election must not be allowed to take place, at least not with GW Bush on the ticket.
He envoked the name of George will as an allie and said that like Nixon and Johnson, "brave party leaders" must convince Bush to resign and take Chaney, Rice, Rumsfeldt, etc. with him for what has happened in Iraq.
This fits perfectly with Gore's rant and Kerry's setup of Bush for the blame in any terrorist attack. The Media and left wing interests has decided what the country will look like from gay marriage to the White House and I don't see us doing anything about it. In fact, there is probably nothing outside of an armed uprising that we could do it they are successful in their attack on Bush. Republicans are dropping away from the Administration like flies.
General Giap gave testimony to the effectiveness of the American left in losing wars. Tet, which should have been the last offensive in the Vietnam War because it was such a huge defeat foor the North, became through the peace activists, the North's greatest victory. Remember, Kerry, Clinton, Kennedy, Bernstien and all the others who want to run the government now were part of the Vietnam treason.
Now we are told we cannot question Kerry's patriotism. I cannot live with this outfit in charge of this country. The queers and dykes and metrosexuals have taken over our popular culture -- why not Washington?
If I was still foolish enough to read the Times I might want to send back the front page with a QUESTION MARK on it.They can tell us how to run a nation a war and they can't run a freakin yellow rag.The sooner they go belly up the better.
But this is really not much of an apology - in point of fact, their earlier stories about WMD in Iraq were nearly all correct, at least respecting the ones we already saw. If those now prove politically inconvenient, that's too bad. The Times here is actually apologizing for printing the truth.
McKinley?
No, it wasn't McKinley. I can't recall the name myself at the moment, but I do remember he had a really nasty wife. Roosevelt?
Wow, what a long memory.
Grover Cleveland (D) was elected in '92.
Dang it. I knew it had to be somebody like that.
I think a Democratic administration at this time of our nation would lead, one way or another, to an end of the republic.
Obviously, I agree!!!
Hurtling towards irrelevance.
"Sorry I wasn't more anti-Ukrainian."
-Uncle Joe
"Sorry I wasn't more pro-aryan"
-Adolph
Why wouldn't the NYT have believed the reports of WMD? They were the same reports that Clinton, Gore and Kerry had been citing for years before 9-11.
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