The NYT reveals the name of KSM's interrogator

. . . against his wishes, and also against the wishes of the CIA.

Is nothing sacred?

The NYT ignores yet another gaffe from the Obama campagin

If your only news source is the NYT, you won't know anything about this. Because they haven't mentioned it at all.

Obama campaign gaffes are so common that I'm starting a new blog about them.

The NYT wants you to believe that foodborne disease is on the rise

Last year, the NYT published a claim by Paul Krugman that

Without question, America’s food safety system has degenerated over the past six years.

Just in case we hadn't gotten the message, Krugman repeated himself yesterday on the editorial page:

Bad Cow Disease

By Paul Krugman

“Mary had a little lamb / And when she saw it sicken / She shipped it off to Packingtown / And now it’s labeled chicken.”

That little ditty famously summarized the message of “The Jungle,” Upton Sinclair’s 1906 exposé of conditions in America’s meat-packing industry. Sinclair’s muckraking helped Theodore Roosevelt pass the Pure Food and Drug Act and the Meat Inspection Act — and for most of the next century, Americans trusted government inspectors to keep their food safe.

Lately, however, there always seems to be at least one food-safety crisis in the headlines — tainted spinach, poisonous peanut butter and, currently, the attack of the killer tomatoes. The declining credibility of U.S. food regulation has even led to a foreign-policy crisis: there have been mass demonstrations in South Korea protesting the pro-American prime minister’s decision to allow imports of U.S. beef, banned after mad cow disease was detected in 2003.

How did America find itself back in The Jungle?

It started with ideology . . . .

What about reality? Are we really facing a resurgence of foodborne disease? Enter the Centers for Disease Control, which keeps statistics on foodborne diseases. They track both cases and outbreaks. Going through their reports, and graphing their numbers, we end up with the following (click the chart to enlarge it):


Turns out foodborne disease has been more or less steady over the past eight years. Due to a methodological change at the CDC in 1998, prior data cannot usefully be compared. As expected, there is significant year to year variability. There may be a slight downward overall trend -- but the data are noisy enough that it's difficult to be sure.

Immediately after posting this, I will write the NYT, informing them of their error and linking to this post. If any correction is forthcoming, I'll post it on the blog.

Hat Tip: Alex Tabarrok

The NYT Blames Conservatives for a False Rumor Started on a pro-Hillary Blog

I cannot improve on the way Times Watch has exposed this deception.

The New York Times Supports Constitutional Rights for Terrorists, but not for Conservatives

Normally, this blog will deal with factual distortions at the NYT. That is, our main concerns are the times when the NYT alters reality in order to support its political bias.

However, two recent articles in the NYT is so galling that I am making an exception.

An article in the June 12 NYT was originally entitled "Out of Step with Allies, US Defends Freedom to Offend." So they were saying that the First Amendment makes us "out of step"?

Apparently this was too much even for the NYT, as the online version of the article is now entitled "Unlike Others, U.S. Defends Freedom to Offend in Speech".

In paragraph 7 of the article, we learn what draws the NYT's ire:

Under the First Amendment, newspapers and magazines can say what they like about minorities and religions — even false, provocative or hateful things — without legal consequence.

The Times then goes on to discuss Nazis, the Ku Klux Klan -- Mark Steyn.

To be sure, the article for which Steyn is on trial in Canada is provocative stuff, and some will find it hateful. But what about the Times' own article? Might Steyn find it to be provocative and hateful to be one of three major examples in an article, when the other two are Nazis and the KKK? Should the Times be prosecuted for doing such a thing?

And what about the Times' false, provocative, and hateful coverage of the Duke Lacrosse Case? Or the Times' false and provocative assertion that Saddam was not training terrorists? Should they be prosecuted for that?

Or is provocative speech unacceptable only when it is directed at minorities? Leaving Duke Lacrosse players, Mark Steyn, and George W. Bush [the implicit target of the Saddam assertion] all as fair game?

While the Times does quote from both sides of the dispute, it is clear enough that they want the reader to be on the side of regulation -- why else would they pick, as their other two examples, the KKK and the Nazis?

To go along with its assault on the First Amendment, the Times has an editorial celebrating the extension of habeus corpus rights to Guantanamo detainees, up to and including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. This Supreme Court did this in the Boumediene case, by a 5-4 vote, on purely Constitutional grounds, as Congress had passed, and President Bush had signed, a law explicitly denying that right.

As far as legal precedent is concerned, during all of the nation's past wars, the military has had the power to keep POWs locked up until the conflict was over. The present conflict is different from others, both in terms of the nature of the enemy, and in the conflict's likely duration. But does that justify forcing the military to fight at a tremendous disadvantage?

To make matters perfectly clear, here is a passage from Justice Scalia's dissent, describing the activities of certain released Guantanamo detainees:

In one case, a detainee released from Guantanamo Bay masterminded the kidnapping of two Chinese dam workers, one of whom was later shot to death when used as a human shield against Pakistani commandoes. See Khan & Lancaster, Pakistanis Rescue Hostage; 2nd Dies, Washington Post, Oct. 15, 2004, p. A18. Another former detainee promptly resumed his post as a senior Taliban commander and murdered a United Nations engineer and three Afghan soldiers. Mintz, supra. Still another murdered an Afghan judge. See Minority Report 13. It was reported only last month that a released detainee carried out a suicide bombing against Iraqi soldiers in Mosul, Iraq. See White, Ex-Guantanamo Detainee Joined Iraq Suicide Attack, Washington Post, May 8, 2008, p. A18.

These are the people whom the Court gave habeus rights in its decision. And the NYT lauds that. Meanwhile, it publishes a news article which is thinly disguised criticism of Mark Steyn's First Amendment protection. Go figure.

Hat tip: CounterColumn

Uncorrected

The NYT's pattern of non-corrections is revealing.

Here, we pointed to the overwhelming evidence that the NYT was incorrect when it asserted that Saddam was not training terrorists. Furthermore, I wrote the NYT about the matter, so it should have been aware of its error. Yet no correction was forthcoming.

Here, the widely-read Durham-In-Wonderland blog pointed to numerous inaccuracies in and critical omissions from the NYT's lengthy front-page story about the Duke Lacrosse case. Collectively, these omissions and falsehoods made it appear to a reader of the article that the prosecution might have a case. This was false. Again, the NYT must have known that its reporting was incorrect, as numerous people wrote it about the issue. Yet it did not correct its errors -- and even later claimed that its coverage of the case "generally fairly reported both sides".

Here, Countercolumn wrote about the NYT's false assertion that the Surge did not make Iraq safer for American troops. Again, we know that the NYT was aware of its error, because as Countercolumn discusses, the author wrote to Countercolumn that he saw nothing to correct.

To summarize:

Three times, the NYT printed something that was out and out false. We are not talking about matters of opinion -- but rather about indisputably incorrect factual statements.

All three times, the NYT was made aware of its error.

Yet on none of the three occasions did the NYT correct itself. Furthermore, on two of the three occasions, the NYT or one of its employees explicitly examined the issue and declined to find fault on the part of the NYT.

The Petraeus Ad, 9 months on

Remember this?

GENERAL PETRAEUS OR GENERAL BETRAY US?

Cooking the Books for the White House

General Petraeus is a military man constantly at war with the facts. In 2004, just before the election, he said there was "tangible progress" in Iraq and that "Iraqi leaders are stepping forward." and last week Petraeus, the architect of the escalation of troops in Iraq, said, "We say we have achieved progress, and we are obviously going to do everything we can to build on that progress."

Every independent report on the ground situation in Iraq shows that the surge strategy has failed. Yet the General claims a reduction in violence . . . .

More importantly, General Petraeus will not admit what everyone knows: Iraq is mired in an unwinnable religious civil war . . . .

That ad appeared, at a discount, in the NYT 9 months ago today. It is now indisputable that the central premise of the ad was wrong. According to any measure you care to use (Iraqi civillian casualties, US military casualties, suicide bomb attacks, and so on), violence is way down.

And yet, bizarrely, the NYT at times still appears wedded to the central theses of the ad. For example, a May 26 article claimed:

But the tactical success of the surge should not be misconstrued as making Iraq a safer place for American soldiers.

An editorial appearing on the same day said called the Iraq war an "unwinnable war."

The NYT's attitude even extends to book reviews -- it hypes a book whose title describes the war as a "fiasco", while ignoring a heavily-footnoted inside conservative account.

One could sum up the situation by saying that even though the NYT didn't write the ad, the NYT's coverage of the war has tried to support the central theses of the ad. Even though one of those theses ("the surge has failed") has now been proven false, and the other one ("unwinnable war") is looking more and more likely to be false as well.

More on Saddam and Terrorism

After my prior post, I wrote the NYT, telling them that their editorial's claim was false. I am unaware of any correction on their part -- and the online version of their editorial remains uncorrected.

There is an lengthy, footnoted report on Saddam's support of terrorism here. The report discusses his support of Abu Nidal and Abu Abbas as well as his financial support for the families of Palestinean Suicide Bombers. It includes photos of original documents.

The NYT is taking questions about its use of anonymous sources.

This seems like an ideal moment to take on the NYT for its routine evidence-free assertion that Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia is "homegrown". I sent a letter to askthetimes@nytimes.com asking about this. The text of my Email is below. If I receive any reply, I will post it here.

The NYT has routinely described Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia as "homegrown".

http://query.nytimes.com/beta/search/query?query=homegrown+Qaeda+Mesopotamia&srchst=cse

What is the evidence for this assertion? And why does the NYT routinely make this assertion without examining the extensive evidence that Al Qaeda in Iraq is a part of Osama Bin Laden's Al Qaeda:

* Would a "homegrown" organization choose a foreign leader?
* The Suicide bombers of Iraq are mostly foreigners. The biggest group is Saudi. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/22/world/middleeast/22fighters.html?pagewanted=print
* Yet the senior American military officials said they also believed that Saudi citizens provided the majority of financing for Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia. "They don't want to see the Shias come to dominate in Iraq," one American official said. [From the above article]
* In response to various questions regarding the structure and relationship between the various "Emirates" in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere, al-Zawahiri explained, "the Islamic State of Iraq [an Al Qaeda front group], the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan-and I would add to them the Islamic Emirate of the Caucasus-are individual Islamic emirates that do not yield to a single ruler… Shaykh Usama Bin Laden is a soldier of the Emir al-Mumineen, Mullah Mohammed Omar, may Allah protect him, and all of those you have cited help and cooperate with each other in order to support Islam and the jihad." Al-Zawahiri was also quick to defend Al-Qaida factions in Iraq, Algeria, and Afghanistan in the face of various critics. According to Dr. al-Zawahiri, "the methodology of the Islamic State of Iraq [is] among the purest banners and methodologies in Iraq… I ask those who have doubts about the Islamic State of Iraq: what is the point of destroying an Islamic state that has arisen after such a long wait in the heart of the Muslim world?" http://www1.nefafoundation.org/documents-aqstatements.html
* The Conflict between the Islamic State in Iraq and the Islamic Army in Iraq. The Islamic Army's complaints about the Islamic State basically amounted to that the Islamic State was a foreign group with foreign goals. [references easy to find via google]

If you are not yet convinced, I could provide more evidence.

The NYT says Saddam was not training terrorists

And Editorial ironically entitled "The Truth about The War" published today started out as follows:

It took just a few months after the United States’ invasion of Iraq for the world to find out that Saddam Hussein had long abandoned his nuclear, biological and chemical weapons programs. He was not training terrorists or colluding with Al Qaeda. The only real threat he posed was to his own countrymen.

The Times is correct when it writes that Saddam had abandoned his WMD programs. However, the portions I have put in boldface above are flat-out false. First of all, there are the invasions of Iran and Kuwait, which plainly show that Saddam was a threat to people other than his own citizens. Secondly, captured Iraqi documents make it clear that Saddam Hussein was nurturing numerous terrorist organizations, and this nurturing did include training terrorists, with intended targets both inside and outside of Iraq.

A report containing numerous translations of captured Iraqi documents is available here. The following excerpt from the Table of Contents gives a good idea of the contents of the report:

I.  Terror as an Instrument of State Power
     A.  Infrastructure for State Terrorism            1
     B.  State Sponsorship of Suicide Operations       7
II. State Relationships with Terrorist Groups             13
     A.  Managing Relationships                        13
     B.  Nurturing Organizational Relationships        15
     C.  Outreach Program                              20
     D.  "Quid Pro Quo"                                24
III.Iraq and Terrorism: Three Cases                       27
     A.  The Abu aI-Abbas Case                         27
     B.  Attacks on Humanitarian Organizations         30
     C.  Destabilizing Saudi Arabia and Kuwait         35
IV. The Business of Terror                                41
     A.  Venture Capitalists for Terrorists            41
     B.  The Terror "Business" Model of Saddam Hussein 42

In regards to the specific question of training, here is a portion of one translated document, from page 8 of volume 1:

[24 August 2002]
The National Command's office of the General Secretariat made clear in its Top Secret letter #1244 of 8/1/2002 that such cases will be dealt with in the future in light of the contents of the letter of the Presidency of the Republic's Secretary Top Secret and Immediate letter #474 of 1/29/1998. [p]aragraph 3 states that "Through the process of training, it is possible to select those suitable for suicide operations and those who truly wish to volunteer for suicide operations, given that their training will take place during the Summer vacation of schools and universities.

For another example, here is an excerpt from an internal Iraqi report on the status of Iraqi commandoes in Saudi Arabia [It naturally stands to reason that such people would have been trained in Iraq.]:

Commando Commissioner Police [NAME WITHHELD] has been sent to
settle. We are preparing to send other groups from Unit 999.
1st Lieut. Special Forces, [NAME WITHHELD], to stay in Riyadh City for the following purposes:
1. Monitor Kuwaiti Ruling Family and take the chance of eliminating some of them.
2. Collect information on vital American and Saudi target"s.
We prepared commando, [NAME WITHHELD], to be in Abu Dhabi [capital of the United Arab Emirates] for the following missions:
1. Collect vital information on the Emirates and other enemy nations
in the area.
2. To monitor the ruler and his son and to collect information on them
Previously we sent a Palestinian, [NAME WITHHELD], to Riyadh so he can eliminate the Kuwait ruling family. He is still there.

The NYT goes after Karl Rove on the flimsiest of evidence

without mentioning just how weak that evidence is.

Yesterday's Times had an editorial demanding that Rove testify under oath about the Siegelman affair:

In a recent appearance on “This Week With George Stephanopoulos,” Karl Rove was asked if he had a role in the Justice Department’s decision to prosecute Don Siegelman. The former Democratic governor of Alabama was convicted and sentenced to more than seven years, quite possibly for political reasons, and there is evidence that Mr. Rove may have been pulling the strings.

And what was that evidence? Later in the article, the Times gets around to mentioning that:

After Mr. Siegelman’s conviction, Dana Jill Simpson, a Republican lawyer, swore in an affidavit that she had heard another G.O.P. political operative, Bill Canary, boast in a phone call that his wife would “take care” of Mr. Siegelman and that Mr. Rove was involved in the planning. Mr. Canary’s wife is Leura Canary, the United States attorney for Montgomery, and her office prosecuted Mr. Siegelman.

In light of this, Ms. Simpson's credibility, or lack thereof, becomes crucial. What is remarkable about the Times' editorial is that it ignores the extensive evidence that Ms. Simpson cannot be believed.

Power Line detailed that evidence in a March post here. One highlight:

Simpson has told her story to 60 Minutes and to congressional investigators. But there are discrepancies.

* What was the nature of the dirty trick she was allegedly pulling on Siegelman. According to 60 minutes, she was trying to photograph him in sexually compromising positions. But a search for the letters "sex" in her lengthy congressional testimony about the affair comes up empty. Which version is correct?
* Did Simpson ever meet Rove, or not? She told 60 minutes that she had. And 60 minutes said that he had personally asked her to go after Siegelman. But in her congressional testimony linked above, she never mentioned any personal meeting with Rove. Instead, she talks about getting requests from Rob Riley and Bill Canary, whom she believed had received the requests from Rove. Again, which is it?

Not only that, but every single person with knowledge of her allegations says they are not true. Even Don Siegelman.

I've only scratched the surface here of reasons why Simpson is not a credible witness. Power Line goes into much more detail.

At any rate, the point is -- if the New York Times is going to use Simpson's "evidence" as a reason to demand testimony under oath from Rove, it owes it to its readers to check out her credibility. Furthermore, according to Power Line, several NYT employees read that blog -- so the NYT ought to have known since March that Simpson's testimony is simply not believable.

The Big Lie Campaign continues

The New York Times is at it again today -- describing, without evidence, Al Qaeda in Iraq as "homegrown", while ignoring evidence to the contrary:

“If the Iraqis are comfortable, we are comfortable, too,” General Thomas said of the negotiated surrenders of insurgent leaders sometimes described as members of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, the homegrown Sunni insurgent group that American officials say is led by foreigners.

Aside from the inherent absurdity of this sentence (would a homegrown group choose a foreign leader?), the Times is ignoring all sorts of recent evidence. First of all, there was this article, widely reported on the Web (but not in the NYT) about six Mosul youths who were forced to train as suicide bombers:

Iraqi army: 6 teens trained as suicide bombers

The Associated Press

Monday, May 26, 2008

BAGHDAD: The Iraqi military on Monday displayed a group of weeping teenagers who said they had been forced into training for suicide bombings by a Saudi militant in the last urban stronghold of al-Qaida in Iraq.

Four of the six boys were lined up for the media at police headquarters in the northern city of Mosul, where they said they had been training for a month to start suicide operations in early June.

The United Nations and the Iraqi and U.S. militaries say they fear that al-Qaida in Iraq is increasingly trying to use youths in attacks to avoid the heightened security measures that have dislodged the group from Baghdad and surrounding areas.

The youths, three wearing track suits and one with a torn white T-shirt, began crying as they were led into the police station.

"The Saudi insurgent threatened to rape our mothers and sisters, destroy our houses and kill our fathers if we did not cooperate with him," one of the youths, who were not identified, told reporters in Mosul, where security forces are cracking down on al-Qaida in Iraq and other Sunni insurgents.

And then there is this article, also widely reported (but also not in the NYT) about a group of mostly French militants convicted for sending fighters to Al Qaeda in Iraq:

Paris court convicts 7 on terror charges

PARIS (AP) — Seven men were convicted on terror charges Wednesday in Paris for helping funnel fighters to Iraq — a case that exposed how the war has sucked in radical youths from Europe.

The judge handed down sentences of up to seven years in prison. The suspects — five Frenchmen, a Moroccan and an Algerian — were convicted of "criminal association with a terrorist enterprise," a blanket charge used in many French terrorist cases that carries a maximum 10-year prison term.

Most acknowledged going to Iraq after the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, or planning to go, but all denied involvement in a cell accused of recruiting French fighters for Iraq's insurgency.

The men went on trial in March after years of investigation by French authorities. The case struck a nerve because it demonstrated how young devout Muslim Frenchmen were abandoning what they saw as bleak prospects in secular France for Iraqi battlefields. It also raised fears that French fighters could use those battlefield skills in terror attacks back home in Europe.

France strongly opposed the U.S.-led campaign in Iraq but has struggled to fight homegrown terrorism. France is home to western Europe's largest Muslim population: about 5 million people.

Investigators said the alleged network funneled about a dozen French fighters to camps linked to the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. They say the network sought to send more recruits before al-Zarqawi was killed in a U.S. airstrike in 2006. At least seven French insurgents have died in Iraq, some in suicide bombings, police said.