Another letdown from the WaPo editorial board

March 7, 2007

I’ve come to expect the Washington Post’s editorial board to be misguided when it comes to the war in Iraq. It was wrong before the invasion, it’s been wrong ever since. I’m no longer disappointed because I no longer have high expectations.

But today’s editorial on Scooter Libby’s guilty verdict is just embarrassing. Media Matters released a great piece yesterday afternoon with “media myths and falsehoods to watch for.” It’s almost as if the WaPo editorial board read it, and thought, “Hey, we agree with those myths and falsehoods!”

The fall of this skilled and long-respected public servant is particularly sobering because it arose from a Washington scandal remarkable for its lack of substance. It was propelled not by actual wrongdoing but by inflated and frequently false claims…

Obstruction of justice doesn’t qualify as “wrongdoing”? Besides this is an old canard — had it not been for Libby’s criminal conduct, Fitzgerald and his team may have been able to learn more about how the White House illegally exposed the identity of an undercover CIA agent.

The trial has provided convincing evidence that there was no conspiracy to punish Mr. Wilson by leaking Ms. Plame’s identity — and no evidence that she was, in fact, covert.

I don’t know which trial the Washington Post editorial board was watching, but Libby’s trial highlighted the opposite. As MM noted, “In his October 2005 press conference announcing Libby’s indictment, Fitzgerald alleged that, in 2003, ‘multiple people in the White House’ engaged in a ‘concerted action’ to ‘discredit, punish, or seek revenge against’ former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV.” And for the umpteenth time, Plame was under non-official cover — Michael Isikoff reported that, at the time of the leak, Plame was the chief of operations for the CIA’s Joint Task Force on Iraq, which “mount[ed] espionage operations to gather information on the WMD programs Iraq might have.”

It would have been sensible for Mr. Fitzgerald to end his investigation after learning about Mr. Armitage.

Except, as Faiz explained, “Armitage told the truth; Libby refused to. Indeed, it was ‘sensible’ for Fitzgerald to pursue Libby and question why the Vice President’s chief of staff could not tell him the truth, while Armitage could.”

Kevin Drum summarized the problem nicely:

Shorter Washington Post editorial board: We see nothing particularly wrong with half a dozen different Bush aides recklessly outing the name of a CIA NOC in order to distract the public from the fact that they had lied about Saddam Hussein’s nuclear program before the war. Doesn’t everyone do that kind of stuff?

Really, guys, if you’re just going to transcribe White House talking points, why not ditch the pretense and outsource the whole editorial page to Tony Snow? It might save everyone some effort in the future.

The liberal media strikes again.

The Washington post is the type of media operation that would make Vladimir Putin proud.

  • Not the Washington Post of 35 years ago, that’s for sure. Had these bozos been there asleep at the switch as they are here, Nixon would probably have been elected President For Life, like they probably wish Bush had been.

    What a collection of shitheadedness.

  • Actually, Castor, I was thinking of it as “…brought to you by the Washington Posterior….”

  • Given the wide and easy availability of the facts in this case, there really is no excuse for the Post to get it so wrong. Can’t wait for Debbie Howell’s justification for that editorial – she’s no doubt being buried in negative e-mail and phone calls, but will still manage to defend the editor’s right to get it all wrong.

    It really is embarrassing.

  • Also – what’s the over/under on how many times someone on Fox (I’m looking at you Bill-o) says something like, “Even the liberal Washington Post…”?

  • 22 pages of comments to that editorial, and only about 4 that I saw (admittedly skipping through) that were favorable toward the editorial. If I was the WaPo editorial board, I wouldn’t want to touch that comments page with my worst enemy’s 11-foot pole. They have been seriously (i>whacked!

    I have to say, the one winger who continues to believe Joe Wilson is a “blowhard” and that WMDs are still real since “The British have never backed off their claim” regarding Niger gets my vote for Biggest Fucking Moron On The Planet.

  • At this point the only way the WaPo editorial board could “let us down” would be if they quit providing such entertaining fiction.

    Someone get a plunger, the MSM just can’t seem to go down the drain quick enough.

  • Having read the article, it sounds more like the squawking protests of chickens in the farmer’s truck as they’re being driven to a meat processing plant.

    What I got from this pissy editorial is this:
    “How DARE you treat one of US anointed like a mere common criminal?”

    These guys (journos, ideologues, elected ones, appointed ones and the top bureaucrats) see themselves as one big eeelight club and the rest of us just mere nobodies. Witness the reaction from the same group of turds when Stephen Colbert bitchslapped the entire Washington establishment at the WHCD. They collectively sniffed it wasn’t fun or funny unlike that Bush impersonator while many of us nobodies cheered ole Stephen on.

    The fact that Fitzgerald strode into the club, threw around not so polite subeonas and frog marched Scooter off while humiliating the egos of many of the self important in the process in their eyes is an unforgiveable sin which they must protest.

    Having read thru some of the commentary, I think WaPo just found themselves in the same position as when one of their own tried to slam Stephen Colbert and was roasted from within (by readers) and without (the blogosphere and Stephen’s legions of fans.)

  • You know, ror that little 500-word memoir of the movie business on a probably-meaningless topic that was in the LA Times “West” magazine this past Sunday (you can click through to it in yesterday’s “Mini Reports”), I talked to three editors/assistant editors and a fact checker and had to modify my piece to not include the fact that it outgrossed “Rainman” on a per-screening average in one of the four suburban mini-malls it opened in (which it did) because Variety didn’t have the figures in their data base to support that, and had to remove “Roger Corman’s top-grossing movie ever” because there were no records of this (other than Roger would have said the same thing if they had called and asked), and the piece had to be held to “high journalistic standards.”

    The Editor of the magazine (a good guy and a real journalist) and I had a good laugh over the fact that my little piece was getting more scrutiny than all of the “reporting” on the lead-up to the Iraq war at all newspapers in America, combined.

    And that is indeed a fact.

  • Damnit, I hit the wrong punctuation key.

    Should say”
    “How DARE you treat one of US anointed like a mere common criminal!”

  • The republican propaganda machine operates two ways,both of which involve lies which are repeated vehemantly and indefinetly as if they were true. First, paint ones opponent with a dirty brush. One way is through outright slander such as labeling as traitors those who oppose the ‘war’ in Iraq. Imagine if you told all your neighbors that the man in the corner house was a child molester and repeted the accusation daily. Eventually they would believe or suspect that it was true and he would be forced to move. Another way is to demonize the name of a person or group by refering to it as if it is distasteful or dirty in some way. This was done with Hillary Clinton. Another example is Bush senior’s refusal to say the word ‘liberal’ but instead saying ‘L-word’ as if ‘liberal’ were obscene. The second method is much like the first but involves concepts or events: ‘We are winning in Iraq’ ‘Taxes are bad for the economy’ ‘Gays are evil’ ‘Terroists hate our freedom’ ‘Scooter Libby is a maligned patriot’ ‘War is peace’, and so on. The key to successful propaganda is to repeat such nonsense over and over as if it were the truth. Heinrich Himmler knew this.

  • While the WaPo editorials are truly excreable, let’s remember that their reporting staff are generally a quality group of people (Dana Milbank, for instance, or Dana Priest).

    Those reporters can’t help it if the editorial board doesn’t read their own paper.

  • As I remember Fitzgerald’s reasoning Libby tried to obstruct the investigation by ‘throwing sand into the gears’. It makes perfect sense to me. This (WMD) wasn’t a little lie. A hundred thousand or so people have died as a direct consequence of it. The trial has pretty well outed the liars. I believe that this was what justice demanded.

    The WaPo editorial used some really convoluted logic to point out that evidence not germane to the perjury charges (Plame’s covert status) was not presented and therefore didn’t exist. My recollection is that this evidence was proposed in pre-trial and rejected by the judge (correctly) as not pertinent.

    CREATIVE PARANOIA: A year or two ago TPM did some investigative background on the yellowcake evidence: origin of the documents, path through Italian Intelligence and the players involved. I remember that both US and Brit intelligence folk thought that the evidence was quite likely fabricated and planted. Who would profit from such a thing?
    I offer the theory that Dick Cheney had the evidence fabricated and planted. Viewing all subsequent events from this theory the behavior of the VP, including the extreme over reaction and aggressive response, makes considerably more sense.

  • A “skilled” public servant? When his entire defense is that his memory sucked?

    Maybe it’s just me, but people with “skills” — not to mention those privy to highly classified national security info — can remember talking to half a dozen people about one subject that his boss was obsessed with for weeks.

    And I’m really, really, REALLY sick and tired of people acting as though perjury is no big deal. Wasn’t a president impeached for the exact same thing?

    And I’m really, really, really, REALLY sick and tired people saying (or typing) that this whole thing wasn’t political retribution.

    It must be nice to live in a world where reality doesn’t matter.

  • WaPo on Kool-Ade. What pitiful display.

    Katherine Graham is spinning — with disgust — in her grave.

  • Tom Cleaver,

    I have to say, the one winger who continues to believe Joe Wilson is a “blowhard” and that WMDs are still real since “The British have never backed off their claim” regarding Niger gets my vote for Biggest Fucking Moron On The Planet.

    What is W doing posting comments on the WaPo editorial page?

  • This editorial should come as no surprise since the WaPo editorial board have been cheerleaders and enablers for the mess Bush created in Iraq from day one.

  • I hope people notice that the Post’s fabulous Dan Froomkin puts the Hiatt editorial in its prope place:

    “Washington’s media elites have been against this case from the beginning, seeing Fitzgerald and Wilson as unwelcome interlopers threatening the cozy relationship between the city’s top political journalists and their sources. . . . So perhaps today’s Washington Post editorial shouldn’t come as a surprise. And yet it does. . . . The Post’s editorial grudgingly acknowledges that “Mr. Libby’s conviction should send a message to this and future administrations about the dangers of attempting to block official investigations.” But, making assertions that aren’t supported by facts that have been reported by its own news operation and others, the editorial concludes that the guilty verdict is, of all things, a vindication of the White House and an indictment of the prosecutor.”

    You can send him a kudos at
    http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/blog/2007/03/07/BL2007030701183_5.html

  • They’re just going to miss Scooter’s lyrical style (“the aspens are blooming”) while his ass is in the pen. It’s simply not a DC dinner party without The Scoot…

    This is what happens when the people who make decisions and the people who report those decisions are all part of the same crowd. Even in the late ’90s when I lived in DC, I couldn’t stand the Post for its obsequiousness toward whoever was in power. Just as David Broder disdained the Clintons for “coming in and trashing the place,” these self-appointed stewards of the government are taking the same view toward Fitzpatrick. A little lying about war and facilitating the deaths of thousands is fine so long as it’s a member of the Club doing it.

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