As we've said here 1,000 times if we've said it once, the New York Times, as token "leader" of America's WHORE "major media," is in the LIE, CHEAT, STEAL, MISINFORM, DISTORT, DISTRACT, and help the radical right-wing loot, steal, and plunder business, in part because the Times is the official organ of the AIPAC neo-con lobby, and in part because Arthur Sulzberger & crew are insatiably greedy liars joining corporate America in an all out assault on 100 years of American social progress.
(That is, the whore, Lyin' Times, like Rush Limbaugh, Fox 'news," the Wall St. journal, and other right-wing publications, want to take America BACK to the pre-Depression days, when there was NO social safety net, VERY LITTLE restrictions or oversight on Big Business, women were not allowed to vote (until the 19th Amendment in 1919), and official, state-enforced SEGREGATION was the law of the land, even though it (segregation) violated the spirit and law of the 15th amendment.)
In this case, the successful insurgent attack that amazed the US command was likely SUNNI insurgents (being as the targets were Shiite-dominated Iraqi government facilities), and Iran is OPPOSED TO THE SUNNI INSURGENCY, whether secular (Baathist) or sectarian (Sunni fundamentalist, often Al Qaida.)
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Ghost of Judith Miller: NYT Drinks the Kool-Aid, Claims Iran is Behind Attacks on U.S. Soldiers in Iraq
Robert Naiman and Robert Naiman, Just Foreign Policy,
January 31, 2007
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mark-weisbrot-and-robert-naiman/ghost-of-judith-miller-n_b_40120.html
If there's something you were thinking of apologizing for, but you were holding back on the grounds that apologizing might be taken as an implicit commitment not to make the same mistake in the future, I can now reassure you.
No less venerable an institution than the New York Times has shown the path.
You can apologize, be contrite, tear your hair, rend your garments, and then do the same damn thing again.
This is what the New York Times wrote in May 2004 about its pre-war reporting on Iraq:
"information that was controversial then, and seems questionable now, was insufficiently qualified or allowed to stand unchallenged...Articles based on dire claims about Iraq tended to get prominent display, while follow-up articles that called the original ones into question were sometimes buried. In some cases, there was no follow-up at all."
Today the New York Times, on page A10, informs us that "Iran May Have Trained Attackers That Killed 5 American Soldiers, U.S. and Iraqis Say"
Note that:
- the claim that Iran "may have" trained attackers gets the headline and the lede. Of course, green Martians "may have" trained the attackers. The key question is: is there real evidence?
- there is not a single named source in the article.
- there is no rebuttal, no point of view different from the allegation, even though plenty of knowledgable analysts (Juan Cole, Gareth Porter, Trita Parsi, for starters) could have easily been found to give a contrary view. A recent Los Angeles Times piece found "scant evidence" for the claim that Iran was behind attacks on U.S. soldiers in Iraq.
- no "direct evidence" exists, as the article acknowledges (further down.)
- the only "evidence" given is that the attack was sophisticated (what are they saying - Iraqis are too dumb to do this by themselves ?!) and that Iran has a motive for retaliating against the U.S. Which is no evidence at all - lots of folks have a motive for retaliating against the U.S.
In no way did this unsourced, unsubstantiated speculation deserve this article and this headline.
This is a dangerous development. Just as before the Iraq war, much of the media is drinking the Kool-Aid. That the New York Times is again drinking the Kool-Aid is particularly worrisome, given its (undeserved) role as a leader for other media.
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