XPost: alt.atheism, alt.fan.rush-limbaugh, alt.society.liberalism
XPost: talk.politics.guns
From: obama.gives.blowjobs@splcenter.org
On 04 Dec 2021, Klaus Schadenfreude
posted some
news:gs5nqg9pp78ooqeql3re2lpl7no8tq44q2@4ax.com:
> On Sat, 4 Dec 2021 08:08:30 -0800, Rudy Canoza
> wrote:
>
>>Seamen are one of my favorites.
>
> Shouldn't that read "dozens of Seamen..."?
Two decades after its catastrophic failure on Iraq, the Times still can’t
get basic facts straight.
FOR THE 20TH ANNIVERSARY of the start of the Iraq War, the New York Times
published an article by Max Fisher headlined “20 Years On, a Question
Lingers About Iraq: Why Did the U.S. Invade?”
The article is a fairly cogent summation of the evidence. However, when it
was first published, it was undermined by an extremely significant and
extremely funny mistake. After inquiries from The Intercept, the paper has
changed the original mistake into a fresh, new mistake.
Here’s how the article originally read:
Mr. Hussein had ejected international weapons inspectors, which was seen
in Washington as a humiliating policy failure for Mr. Clinton.
When the American leader was weakened by scandal later that year [in
1998], congressional Republicans pounced, passing the Iraq Liberation Act
…
One reason this is so funny is because in 1998 the Times accurately
reported what happened. The United Nations inspections team, called
UNSCOM, was not expelled by Saddam Hussein, but rather was withdrawn by
Richard Butler, the head of UNSCOM, after he consulted with the U.S. —
about the fact that the U.S. was about to start bombing Iraq, in a
campaign called Operation Desert Fox.
Even funnier is that the Times went on to claim erroneously that Iraq had
expelled UNSCOM in 1998 at least five times, twice in 1999 and then in
2000, 2002 and 2003. It issued corrections on the three latter articles.
Two decades later, the paper apparently wanted to recapture its youth by
being wrong again. The paper has now issued its fourth correction on this
subject. Its present-day story currently reads:
Hussein had ejected international weapons inspectors in 1997, which was
seen in Washington as a humiliating policy failure for Mr. Clinton.
Then, when Mr. Clinton was weakened by scandal in 1998, congressional
Republicans pounced, passing the Iraq Liberation Act …
Wonderfully enough, this is also wrong. Iraq did expel the American
members of the U.N. inspections team in 1997. But the rest remained in
Iraq until they were withdrawn by the United Nations. All, including the
Americans, returned to Iraq eight days later.
You can find this information in a story published when it happened, by a
little-known paper called the New York Times.
The corrected text in the 2023 story also leaves out the reason Iraq
expelled the (American) inspectors in 1997: Because some of the Americans
were conducting espionage against Iraq. Again, you can read about this in
the New York Times.
If you just want to chuckle morosely about the inability of America’s most
prestigious newspaper to get this story right — even now, after two
decades, after the death of hundreds of thousands of human beings in Iraq
because of the 2003 invasion — you can stop here. But if you want the
details about why this mistake truly matters, please continue reading.
IN THE RUN-UP to the Iraq War, one of the favorite talking points of its
proponents was that Saddam Hussein had expelled the UNSCOM team in 1998.
This claim appeared in numerous media outlets, not just the Times.
This little bit of propaganda was popular because of its obvious
implication. What possible reason would Iraq have to throw out the U.N.
weapons inspectors unless it was hiding something?
Telling the story accurately, however, makes clear why Iraq’s behavior was
congruent with having no banned weapons.
The UNSCOM inspections protocol was created by U.N. Security Council
Resolution 687, which ended the 1991 Gulf War following Iraq’s retreat
[continued in next message]
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)
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