SALON

Thursday, Jun 5, 2003 4:18 PM UTC

Joe Conason’s Journal

Will the Times right itself? Plus: Defending (believe it or not) Paul Wolfowitz.

By

Topics:

Raines drops
Walking into my favorite saloon the night before last, I ran into an old friend (and superb reporter) who works on the New York Times metro desk. Everyone at the paper believes Raines and Boyd have to go, he said disconsolately. Now that hope has been fulfilled, presumably to the great relief of the staff of the world’s most important newspaper. I wish both paper and staff well, but I have to wonder whether Joseph Lelyveld, appointed as the interim executive editor, will be any great improvement. As editorial page editor, Raines bore a great responsibility for the Times’ errors and excesses during the Clinton era, from Whitewater to Wen Ho Lee, yet Lelyveld carries just as much baggage with the same labels. Sometimes he seems thoughtful about that troubled era; other times, far less so.

The right has gleefully torched Raines without ever acknowledging that he served as its most reliable “liberal” ally throughout the scandal years, up to the moment of impeachment. Presumably he’ll explain it all in his memoirs.

Wolfowitz’s nonconfession
Did Paul Wolfowitz actually confess that the Iraq war was all about oil? No, he didn’t — despite the excited circulation by his critics of a damning “quotation” from him on the Internet and elsewhere. (Within the past 24 hours, dozens of messages about this story have arrived in my mailbox.) The bogus report emanated from yesterday’s Guardian, which in turn cited stories from the German press about remarks made by the deputy defense secretary last weekend at a security conference in Singapore.

Evidently, the translation from English to German and back into English seriously distorted his answer to a question from a German journalist. The reporter asked Wolfowitz to explain the Bush administration’s different approaches to North Korea, which probably has nuclear weapons, and Iraq, which certainly didn’t.

According to the Guardian article he replied: “Let’s look at it simply. The most important difference between North Korea and Iraq is that economically, we just had no choice in Iraq. The country swims on a sea of oil.” A damning admission, except that isn’t what he said. Here’s the accurate quote, according to the Defense Department transcript of the Singapore press conference (scroll down about halfway):

“Look, the primarily difference — to put it a little too simply — between North Korea and Iraq is that we had virtually no economic options with Iraq because the country floats on a sea of oil. In the case of North Korea, the country is teetering on the edge of economic collapse and that, I believe, is a major point of leverage, whereas the military picture with North Korea is very different from that with Iraq. The problems in both cases have some similarities but the solutions have got to be tailored to the circumstances, which are very different.”

(The link to the Guardian story no longer works, but the original story can still be read here.)

I have no doubt that the editors of the Guardian will correct the Wolfowitz story shortly, if they haven’t done so already by the time you read this. Speaking of Guardian corrections, I must also report that the venerable London daily posted the following correction today concerning an article I recently linked:

“In our front page lead on May 31 headlined ‘Straw, Powell had serious doubts over their Iraqi weapons claims,’ we said that the foreign secretary Jack Straw and his US counterpart Colin Powell had met at the Waldorf Hotel in New York shortly before Mr. Powell addressed the United Nations on February 5. Mr. Straw has now made it clear that no such meeting took place. The Guardian accepts that and apologises for suggesting it did.”

None of this means that Powell, Straw or the Pentagon told the whole truth about Iraq’s alleged arsenal, of course — or that oil didn’t play an important part in the broader strategic calculations of the Pentagon hawks.
[10:12 a.m. PDT, June 5, 2003]

For your regular Joe, bookmark this link. To send an e-mail, click here.

Next Article

Related Stories

More Related Stories

Featured Slide Shows

The week in 10 pics

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11
  • Lisa Montgomery embraces her nephew Thursday after a tornado tore apart her home in Cleburne, Texas. The twister killed six people and destroyed entire swaths of the North Texas town.
    Credit: AP/LM Otero

  • Jack McMahon, the defense attorney for abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, speaks outside the Criminal Justice Center in Philadelphia Tuesday. His client was convicted of killing three babies in his clinic, and will serve multiple life sentences.
    Credit: AP/Matt Rourke

  • A photo taken Monday captures Vice President Joe Biden's response to a Milwaukee second-grader's innovative proposal to end America's epidemic of gun violence. This guy!
    Credit: AP/Jenny Aicher

  • Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., flanked by a grouper-eyed Michele Bachmann, addresses the IRS' admission that it targeted Tea Party groups in advance of the 2012 election. In an op-ed for CNN Thursday, the Kentucky senator slammed the president for his faux outrage.
    Credit: AP/Molly Riley

  • Ousted IRS chief Steven Miller is sworn in on Capitol Hill Friday. Miller testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on the extra scrutiny the agency gave conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
    Credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite

  • Attorney General Eric Holder pauses as he testifies on Capitol Hill before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday. Holder is under fire, among other things, for the Justice Department's gathering of phone records at the Associated Press.
    Credit: AP/Carolyn Kaster

  • O.J. Simpson sits during an evidentiary hearing at Clark County District Court in Las Vegas, Nev., Thursday. Simpson, who is currently serving a nine-to-33-year sentence in state prison for armed robbery and kidnapping, is using a writ of habeas corpus to seek a new trial.
    Credit: AP/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Jeff Scheid

  • Major Tom to ground control: On Sunday astronaut Chris Hadfield recorded the first music video from space, a cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity."
    Credit: AP/NASA/Chris Hadfield

  • When it rains it pours. President Barack Obama speaks during a news conference Thursday with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, inexplicably inspiring an #umbrellagate Twitter meme.
    Credit: AP/Jacquelyn Martin

  • A smoke plume rises high above a road block at the intersection of County A and Ross Road east of Solon Springs, Wis., Tuesday. No injuries were reported, but the the wildfire caused evacuations across northwestern Wisconsin.
    Credit: AP/The Duluth News-Tribune/Clint Austin

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11

Related Videos

Comments

 0 Comments

Comment Preview

Your name will appear as username

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href=""> <b> <em> <strong> <i> <blockquote>

follow salon

Most Read

Popular on Reddit

links from salon.com

From Around the Web

Presented by Scribol
listener_new_rect The Listener: Chekhov's story mirrors Russia's own