NY Times caught in another whopper

[AngelWithHorns]

Paper of Bias Gets It Wrong -- Again

By Joel Mowbray
FrontPageMagazine.com | April 13, 2004

On Saturday, the New York Times—adhering to the P.T. Barnum school of journalism—screamed on its front page that President Bush was warned “that supporters of Osama bin Laden planned an attack within the United States with explosives and wanted to hijack airplanes.”</FONT> </FONT>





To drive home the point that “Bush lied,” the Times informed readers, “The disclosure appears to contradict the White House’s repeated assertions that the briefing the president received about the Qaeda threat was ‘historical’ in nature and that the White House had little reason to suspect a Qaeda attack within American borders.”



The source for this most sensational of charges, that the President was given some kind of advance warning of 9/11 and then lied about it? A single “government official.”



Ironically, the White House’s release Saturday of the now-infamous August 6, 2001 Presidential Daily Briefing (PDB)—triggered largely by the Times’ ****ing report that morning—“contradicted” the paper’s “repeated assertions” that Condi Rice misled the 9/11 commission.



What the Times did is akin to a psychic telling a poor sap that he sees “the color blue” and “the letter D”—and the sucker plays along by remarking, “Amazing! My favorite toy as a kid came from my brother David, and it was blue!”



To wit, here’s a rundown of the PDB:





*Near the top of the briefing, Bush was told, “Bin Ladin since 1997 has wanted to conduct terrorist attacks in the US.” Sounds “historical.”



*Soon after is a morsel that Bush critics, which obviously includes the Times, have chewed endlessly: “Bin Ladin told followers he wanted to retaliate in Washington.” But as the briefing notes just before, this threat was made “[a]fter US missile strikes on his base in Afghanistan in 1998.” In other words, a “threat” that was three years old by that point, or if you will, “historical” in nature.



*The briefing then runs through al Qaeda’s role in both the foiled “millennium” plot to bomb Los Angeles International Airport in 1999 and the successful bombings of the U.S. Embassies in East Africa in 1998. Again, “historical.”



(So “historical” was most of this information, in fact, that Bush wouldn’t have needed a top-secret briefing; a newspaper would have sufficed.)



*Near the end of the PDB, two references have received the extraordinary media attention: that “Bin Ladin wanted to hijack a US aircraft” and that the FBI had detected al Qaeda activity suggesting “preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks.”





But the kind of hijacking suggested in the briefing was one in the mold of the Palestinian Liberation Organization from decades past, specifically “to gain the release of ‘Blind Shaykh’ ‘Umar’ Abd al-Rahman and other US-held extremists.”



And the only suspicious activity highlighted in the document was “recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York.” Yes, it mentions “New York,” but that’s an awfully big place, chock-full of ripe targets—and the World Trade Center was not a “federal building.”



So, looking at what the Times claimed was in the August 6, 2001 PDB and then what was actually in it, the natural question is: Where is the retraction?



Surprisingly, there was one. Well, sort of.



In an article first appearing on the paper’s web site Saturday evening after the document was declassified, the second sentence offered this quasi-clarification: “But the briefing did not point to any specific time or place of attack and did not warn that planes could be used as missiles.”



The article’s next paragraph, however, promptly returned to the Times’ campaign to paint Bush as a liar: “But the page-and-a-quarter-long document showed that Mr. Bush was given more specific and contemporary information about terrorist threats than the White House had previously acknowledged.”



What “specific” and “contemporary” information exactly?



Referencing possible “hijackings or other types of attacks” is about as “specific” as a “yellow” versus “orange” terror alert.



Warnings that al Qaeda was recruiting “Muslim-American youth” or that al Qaeda had maintained a presence in the United States for many years was only “contemporary” in the sense that it was ongoing at the time of the briefing. People like Steven Emerson and Daniel Pipes had been issuing similar warnings about recruitments and radical Islamic activity on U.S. soil for years.



In short, there was nothing new, specific, or actionable in the much-hyped PDB. That’s not to say Bush shouldn’t have done more. The very fact that people like Emerson and Pipes had been sounding the alarm for years should have prompted immediate action.



But that’s not reality in government. To take the most relevant example, there was no mechanism in place to respond to a vague threat of a hijacking in fall 2001. The bureaucracies were broken. The FAA barely functioned, and Boston’s Logan International Airport was but one of many with near-nonexistent security.



Short of a cataclysmic event—such as 9/11—far-reaching reform succumbs to intransigence and inertia every time.



The ugly truth is that directing the massive U.S. bureaucracy to respond to the previously ignored threat of radical Islam in fall 2001 is like the Titanic captain steering once he spotted the iceberg.



What more could Bush have done? He could have gone to war in Afghanistan to eliminate al Qaeda’s base of operations, he could have initiated tougher efforts to follow the money trail and cut off al Qaeda’s oxygen supply, and he could have waged a fierce campaign to arrest or kill top Qaeda leadership around the world.



In short, Bush could have done all the things he has since done.



The most the White House can be faulted for in its handling of the PDB, in fact, is that it didn’t release it sooner. Granted, no prior administration had done such a thing, but given that some shameless Democrats and the Times have been floating conspiracy theories unchallenged, there was no other option.



And while only time will tell, the White House could be giving the appearance of overreaction with Bush’s prime time address tonight.



After all, it is clear to anyone who reads the briefing that there was sadly nothing specific in it that Bush could have acted on in order to prevent 9/11.



Anyone, that is, except the New York Times

[cb88]

I've figured it out....


Everyone is getting their news from the internet anymore and papers like the NY Slimes can't sell papers unless they have these sensational headlines, so they make them up. Fabricate, exaggerate, or outright lie, whatever works, right?

[AngelWithHorns]

You never know what they'll come up with next, don't you read the papers in the check out lines anymore cb? The next headlines will be titled "Bush pops out some nipple to win the elections"

[cb88]

Originally Posted by AngelWithHorns

You never know what they'll come up with next, don't you read the papers in the check out lines anymore cb? The next headlines will be titled "Bush pops out some nipple to win the elections"

that'd be really cool, especially if it was pierced!!!


(now doesn't that conjur up all kinds of humorous visuals!)

[AngelWithHorns]

Originally Posted by cb88

that'd be really cool, especially if it was pierced!!!


(now doesn't that conjur up all kinds of humorous visuals!)

It most certainly does.

[kruser79]

Listening to the testimonies and the subsequent play-by-play on NPR, it came painfully clear. The ranting of the Left and the constant demands for the Bush Administration to "come clean," have made the Commission's job all that much harder, and it's purpose all the more clouded.
The Commitee Chair, Kelley, has said that the public testimonies are for the American public. He said in an interview that they get much more useful information from the private sessions, and that the public hearings are little more than a 'circus.' He stopped just short of calling Clarke's moment 'in the spotlight' nothing more than simple grandstanding.
If we don't quit sticking our noses in, 'helping' the Commission, they'll never get to what it is they've been charged to do.....Finding the shortcomings, and advising on further action against terrorism.....

[KBay84]

Nice try, liberal smear media....if anyone's at fault, it's the past liberal seat of government who had ample time and evidence, yet did squat...oh, wait, sorry, he was too busy with The Human Humidor cigar holder to do anything remotely competent about the situation.