Recycling News

The latest thing is that the Agenda Media is acting like old news is something new. That isn't just my opinion. That opinion is also expressed in Michael Ledeen's and Jack Kelly's most recent columns for Jewish World Review.

Here's what Mr. Ledeen wrote:

In Sunday's Washington Post Dafna Linzer and Barton Gellman provide their gullible readers with a reprise of one of the great myths of the run up to the Iraq war: that President Bush used blatantly false information to justify the war.

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After Bush's State of the Union, Wilson claimed publicly that his trip had convinced him that the intelligence reports were groundless. However, he had reported privately, oddly enough in a verbal, not written, report to CIA, that a former high Nigerien official had said that the Iraqis had wanted high-level discussions about "increasing trade," which either meant uranium or goats.

Here's what Mr. Kelly wrote:

We journalists are environmentally friendly. We recycle. We've been recycling old news all weekend, without, of course, telling you it's old news. "A senior administration official confirmed for the first time on Sunday that President Bush had ordered the declassification of parts of a prewar intelligence report on Iraq in an effort to rebut critics who said the administration had exaggerated the nuclear threat posed by Saddam Hussein," reported David Sanger and David Johnston in the New York Times Monday.

For the first time? Here's the AP's Tom Raum on July 20, 2003: "The White House declassified portions of an October, 2002 intelligence report to demonstrate that President Bush had ample reason to believe Iraq was reconstituting a nuclear weapons program. The unusual decision to declassify a major intelligence report was a bid by the White House to quiet a growing controversy over Bush's allegations about Iraq's weapons programs," wrote Dana Milbank and Dana Priest in the Washington Post the day before.

Mr. Sanger and Mr. Johnston must have slept through that month.

If ever I could make the case that the Agenda Media isn't interested in facts, this would be Exhibit A. The Agenda Media's goal couldn't be more clear. Stir things up by not telling the truth, in fact, by knowingly telling lies, then acting like they're the great gatekeepers of all truth.

Mr. Ledeen also says:

Linzer and Gellman say, referring to the phony documents, that "the evidence Cheney and Libby selected to share with reporters had been disproved months before." And they add, in a triumphant tone reserved for the announcement of a knockout punch, that "the Bush administration and British Prime Minister Tony Blair maintained they had additional, secret evidence they could not disclose. In June, a British parliamentary inquiry concluded otherwise, delivering a scathing critique of Blair's role in promoting the story."

But Linzer and Gellman are wrong, indeed so clearly wrong that it takes one's breath away. The British government did indeed have information about Iraqi efforts to purchase uranium in Africa, and it wasn't connected to the forgeries. And the definitive British parliamentary inquiry, the Butler Commission Report of July, 2004, not only did not deliver "a scathing critique," but totally endorsed the position of British intelligence.

The key paragraph in the Butler Report is this:

We conclude that...the statements on Iraqi attempts to buy uranium from Africa in the Government's dossier, and by the Prime Minister in the House of Commons, were well-founded. By extension we conclude also that the statement in President Bush's State of the Union Address of 28 January 2003 that: "The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa" was well-founded. (Page 123, Paragraph 499)

It seems to me that this is another nail in the Agenda Media's coffin. They're discredited and they won't admit it. The numbers showing readership rapidly declining tell you all you need to know, though.

Cross-posted at California Conservative

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Posted Tuesday, April 11, 2006 9:43 AM

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