(Note to literalists: the Watched column presently contains only a smattering of 'warblogs' because the facilitator of the template-change--Dr. Menlo--is not very familiar with them, and will be adding more as they are sent to him. Also, this blog may contain areas of allusion, satire, subtext, context and possibly even a dash of the surreal: wannabe lit-crits beware.)
Control
[Watch this space for: Pentagon and Petroleum, The Media is only as Liberal as the Corporations Who Own Them, Wash Down With, and Recalcify]
WARBLOGGER WATCH
Wednesday, May 28, 2003
"Hi, my name's Andy, and I cover scandals at the Times as comprehensively as I cover myself with testostogrease."
The Weapons of Mass Disappearance which threatened us so imminently that we had to wage a war against Saddam Hussein's Iraq are nowhere to be found. Handily, a chap "clad in nondescript clothes and a baseball cap" is then located by New York Times reporter/Pentagon flak Judith Miller. Cap-clad chap is said, via Army intermediaries, to vouch for everything the Bushites have said re: WMDs. No need to worry ourselves about Administration duplicity and the fraudulent sale of a criminal war to the public. Everything is fine.
More than a month passes. A spat erupts at the Times when a bureau chief charges Miller with poaching stories on his turf, namely a piece on the convicted swindler installed by the Bushites as head of post-war Iraq, Ahmad Chalabi. In accounting for her appropriation of the story, Miller makes a stunning disclosure: Chalabi "has provided most of the front page exclusives on WMD to" the Times. So the only person in the world with more to gain from the alleged existence of Saddam's vast stockpile of WMDs than My So-Called President is in fact the source for the most public affirmations of the actual existence of same.
The usual venues for Times-bashing, jam-packed to capacity with spectators to the Jayson Blair lynching and the Rick Bragg incident, are giving this one a by. It hasn't gotten so much as a mention in Andy Land, where Howie's canonical and Howell's worse than Hitler. posted by Anonymous8:01 AM
The Watchers
WBW: Keeping track of the war exhortations of the warbloggers.