Washington Post Praises Bush Leak, Mangles Facts (Plamegate)

http://thinkprogress.org/2006/04/09/post-mangles-facts/
Washington Post Praises Bush Leak, Mangles Facts

This morning, the Washington Post published an editorial — entitled “A Good Leak” — vigorously defending President Bush’s decision to authorize a leak of classified information as part of a political effort to discredit former Ambassador Joseph Wilson. Apparently, it isn’t a very strong case because, in order to make their point, the editors had to mangle the facts –

CLAIM: Wilson said Cheney sent him to Africa “Mr. Libby’s motive in allegedly disclosing her name to reporters, Mr. Fitzgerald said, was to disprove yet another false assertion, that Mr. Wilson had been dispatched to Niger by Mr. Cheney.”

FACT:

Wilson never said that Cheney sent him, only that the vice president’s office had questions about an intelligence report that referred to the sale of uranium yellowcake to Iraq from Niger. Wilson, in his New York Times article, said CIA officials were informed of Cheney’s questions.

CLAIM: There is no evidence of a White House effort to punish Wilson. “Mr. Wilson subsequently claimed that the White House set out to punish him for his supposed whistle-blowing by deliberately blowing the cover of his wife, Valerie Plame, who he said was an undercover CIA operative…After more than 2 1/2 years of investigation, Mr. Fitzgerald has reported no evidence to support Mr. Wilson’s charge.”

FACT: more......

Read an editorial from WSJ, and you would swear they never saw their own front page. This flight from fact started with Reagan, and the Journal has yet to recover its grasp on Reality as most people define it.

The NewYorkTimes flirted with schizophrenia itself, but a lingering sense (of shame, responsibility, commonsense?) caused them to correct, for the most part, the errors committed during the Jason Blair/ Judith Miller period. They aren't back up to snuff, but they are mending.

And now the Washington Post seems to be gulping the Koolaid. It's a much bigger problem than bird flu ever will be--the disease of the 4th Estate.

Readers must react; in letters, in canceled subscriptions, in using other means of advertising, strip a worthless newspaper of all its reasons for existence.