More Little League Reporting From the Left-Wing Press

This is from a blog called Ace of Spades HQ. I just added a link. Yet again the MSM jumps the gun in order to try to discredit the administration.

WaPo Exclusive: Pentagon Inspector General's Report States Conclusively That Bush Admin Official Cooked Pre-War Intelligence!!!
Oh, Minor Correction: It Was A Report From Anti-War Democrat Carl Levin Which "Concluded" That. Whoops, Our Bad.
—Ace

Long headline, but for one of the most egregious "twisted intelligence" debacles of all time.

The correction, of course, does not quite capture the enormity of this error -- breathlessly labeling a partisan liberal Democrats' "conclusions" as if they were the indpendent, nonpartisan official conclusions of the Bush-run Pentagon. How could they really convey how massively they fucked up here? This is, in journalistic terms, simply catastrophic.

"Confirmation bias," they call it-- the press simply will run anti-Republican stories that ought to sound a little implausible or sketchy because, to them, they sound pretty darn reasonable. Such "facts" are "self-checking" -- they just prove themselves by how wonderfully they fit in with the liberal worldview.

Meanwhile, anything that shows the Democrats in a bad light is vetted, checked, confirmed, re-confirmed, and subject to a complete full-office rewrite to insure all appropriate mitigating "context" was included before ultimately being buried on page A37 beneath a short blurb on Icelandic geese migration.


Carl Levin Wouldn't Lie To You: Consider how astoundingly easily it was for Levin to get this false report on page one of the Washington Post. He just had to claim what he was reading was from the IG report. (Or be unclear about which report he was quoting.)

No need to see the actual document. Nope -- if Carl Levin tells you something, that itself is auto-confirming. Liberal Democrats don't lie to other liberal Democrats, and they never make errors. So really, who needs to see the actual document?

The standard "two sources" verification rule is apparently suspended if a liberal Democrat is your source.


Better Headline For the Washington Post:


Charges Carl Levin Has Been Making For Three Years Completely Vindicated By 2004 Report Authored By Carl Levin

So their front page story wasn't merely based upon a partisan document written by Carl Levin, misattributed to the Pentagon IG -- it was based on a 2004 partisan document written by Carl Levin.

I think this is where Dave from Garfield Ridge is supposed to step out from behind a wall and say, "It's old."

The first-to-market effect should be fun to watch-- the media just got a late Christmas present in a report confirming everything they believe (which is, of course, also everything Carl Levin believes).

One problem: None of it is true.

But they don't want to give back their Christmas present. Who would?

So it will be enjoyable to watch the media spin the actual report as "substantially" confirming Carl Levin's various charges even though, you know, it actually doesn't.

But they now have that idea in their little pointy immune-to-contrary-facts heads: Report proves Bush twisted intelligence. That idea is in there (as it always has been) and they'll be damned if stupid little facts get in the way of "The Truth."

BREAKING NEWS FROM THE WASHINGTON POST: DUKE LACROSSE PLAYERS FOUND GUILTY!!!!

Oh, wait -- they are "guilty" according to charges filed by DA Mike Nifong.

Sorry, minor mistake of attribution there. Could happen to anyone, really.

See, Mike Nifong was reading his indictment to us over the phone, and he sort of gave the impression that he was reading from the jury's verdict, and, see... well, who has time to check on these things.

It sounded pretty good when he was reading it to us.

Reporting is hard, man.


The Washington Post

Where Our Motto Has Always Been, "Oh well! That's why God gave pencils erasers!"

More here on National Review On-line:

Feb. 9 front-page article about the Pentagon inspector general's report regarding the office of former undersecretary of defense Douglas J. Feith incorrectly attributed quotations to that report. References to Feith's office producing "reporting of dubious quality or reliability" and that the office "was predisposed to finding a significant relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda" were from a report issued by Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) in Oct. 2004. Similarly, the quotes stating that Feith's office drew on "both reliable and unreliable reporting" to produce a link between al-Qaeda and Iraq "that was much stronger than that assessed by the IC [Intelligence Community] and more in accord with the policy views of senior officials in the Administration" were also from Levin's report. The article also stated that the intelligence provided by Feith's office supported the political views of senior administration officials, a conclusion that the inspector general's report did not draw.The two reports employ similar language to characterize the activities of Feith's office: Levin's report refers to an "alternative intelligence assessment process" developed in that office, while the inspector general's report states that the office "developed, produced, and then disseminated alternative intelligence assessments on the Iraq and al Qaida relationship, which included some conclusions that were inconsistent with the consensus of the Intelligence Community, to senior decision-makers." The inspector general's report further states that Feith's briefing to the White House in 2002 "undercuts the Intelligence Community" and "did draw conclusions that were not fully supported by the available intelligence."

Almost all the truly damning quotes came from the office of Democratic Sen. Carl Levin, not the DOD inspector general.

As I write this, Chris Matthews is peddling the phony WaPo scoop on Hardball, prattling on about how this report proves that Doug Feith "cooked the intel" to get us into war.

How did the WaPo screw this up so badly? (h/t James C.

This is the second Washington Post embarrasment in the last two weeks. William Arkin was exposed as being a left-wing military hater posing as a "military analyst" last week in a situation which the Post is yet to address.

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