Robert Scheer's weekly column is up. Still nostalgic for the good ole days of unrestrained Ba'athism, apparently, Scheer continues to justify his opposition to the war by moaning about intelligence failures and "administration manipulation and mendacity". The column is one long riff on the ""Saddam not so bad" Canard". Because unless you are in the minority of Americans who still disapprove of the liberation of Iraq, why bother to fabricate stories about imperfections in the process that led us to this outcome?
Interesting to note how Scheer has backtracked on an earlier distortion. This week he wrote:
Keeping secret any information that contradicted the pro-war line of the administration allowed Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to fabricate what he called a "bulletproof" connection between Al Qaeda and Hussein.Contrast with what Scheer wrote on March 18
The United States lied to the world when Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said he had "bulletproof evidence" that Iraq was behind the Sept. 11 attacks and then failed to produce a shred of credible evidence.Rumsfeld apparently did say there was "bulletproof evidence" of "links" between Iraq and Al-Qaeda, but never anything about Iraq being behind 9/11. So Scheer and his sponsors at the L.A. Times are implicitly backing away from his earlier distortion without having the courage or professionalism to issue an explicit retraction. At least he's trying a little harder to get his facts right. I like to think I might have played a small part in this, having pointed out his earlier misquote in a blog entry that was linked around the blogosphere to the tune of 16,000 page views, including several visits from the L.A. Times. On the other hand, Scheer does exactly what he accuses the administration of doing -- ignoring facts that don't support his story. The Toronto Star produced evidence weeks ago confirming links between Iraq and Al-Qaeda. Scheer is either a lazy researcher or he is deliberately manipulating the truth. Either way, the L.A. Times is still behind him, in spite of his long track record of substandard work. Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at June 10, 2003 12:48 PM