In June 2002, U.S. officials say intelligence had revealed that Zarqawi and members of al-Qaida had set up a weapons lab at Kirma, in northern Iraq, producing deadly ricin and cyanide. The Pentagon quickly drafted plans to attack the camp with cruise missiles and airstrikes and sent it to the White House, where, according to U.S. government sources, the plan was debated to death in the National Security Council.

The Pentagon drew up a second strike plan, and the White House again killed it. By then the administration had set its course for war with Iraq. “People were more obsessed with developing the coalition to overthrow Saddam than to execute the president’s policy of preemption against terrorists,” according to terrorism expert and former National Security Council member Roger Cressey.

In January 2003, the threat turned real. Police in London arrested six terror suspects and discovered a ricin lab connected to the camp in Iraq.

The Pentagon drew up still another attack plan, and for the third time, the National Security Council killed it.

Military officials insist their case for attacking Zarqawi’s operation was airtight, but the administration feared destroying the terrorist camp in Iraq could undercut its case for war against Saddam.

The United States did attack the camp at Kirma at the beginning of the war, but it was too late — Zarqawi and many of his followers were gone.

that Iraq terrorists "attacked us ... on September the 11th" This article has video.
Friday, July 13, 2007 2:21PM
* Frank Sesno's own "words": U.S. could "cut and run" from Iraq This article has video.
Friday, July 13, 2007 12:42PM
* CNN, NY Times, Wash. Post uncritically repeated Giuliani's claim that anti-Giuliani firefighter unions are partisan This article has video.
Thursday, July 12, 2007 8:05PM
* Blitzer interviewed Domenici, but failed to ask about attorney firings This article has video.
Thursday, July 12, 2007 7:25PM
* In Sicko "fact check," CNN's Gupta falsely claimed his source's "only affiliation is with Vanderbilt University" This article has video.
Wednesday, July 11, 2007 8:03PM
* CNN aired McCain's floor statement on Iraq, but no one else's This article has video.
Wednesday, July 11, 2007 7:43PM
* Media uncritically cite flawed USA Today/Gallup poll question on Iraq This article has video.
Wednesday, July 11, 2007 6:39PM
* Blitzer did not challenge Lieberman's assertion that U.S. forces in Iraq are fighting "Al Qaeda" This article has video.
Wednesday, July 11, 2007 6:00PM
* CNN's Dobbs said Clinton is "selling out our middle class" on H-1B visas, but ignored GOP candidates This article has video.
Tuesday, July 10, 2007 8:08PM
* Libby, Bush and the lapdog press
Tuesday, July 10, 2007 3:18PM
* NBC's Reid: "Washington" is "surprised" by Vitter-"D.C. Madam" connection because Vitter says he's a conservative This article has video.
Tuesday, July 10, 2007 2:32PM
* On CNN, Beck provided Taylor with forum to advance global warming misinformation This article has video.
Monday, July 9, 2007 7:10PM
* Media echoed, uncritically repeated Snow's equating of Libby commutation with Clinton pardons This article has video.
Monday, July 9, 2007 6:09PM
* Taranto repeated stale falsehood that there's "no evidence" Plame was a "covert agent" This article has video.
Sunday, July 8, 2007 12:52PM
* On CNN, Jeffrey falsely asserted Clinton has "high negatives in her own party" This article has video.
Friday, July 6, 2007 2:17PM
# Lou Dobbs Tonight guest claimed Libby "had nothing to do with" leaking Plame's identity This article has video.
Thursday, July 5, 2007 8:00PM
# CNN's Romans called George H.W. Bush "judicious with pardons," omitted Iran-Contra controversy This article has video.
Thursday, July 5, 2007 5:11PM
# CNN's Schneider on McCain: "The straight talker is back" This article has video.
Thursday, July 5, 2007 12:45PM
# On CNN, Brian Todd ignored polling to assert war on terror "is still a Republican strength" This article has video.
Monday, July 2, 2007 6:51PM
# CNN's Henry asserted that "the subpoena issue" is "about the Democrats" This article has video.
Monday, July 2, 2007 5:48PM

By MICHAEL R. GORDON and JIM RUTENBERG

BAGHDAD, July 12 — In rebuffing calls to bring troops home from Iraq, President Bush on Thursday employed a stark and ominous defense. “The same folks that are bombing innocent people in Iraq,” he said, “were the ones who attacked us in America on September the 11th, and that’s why what happens in Iraq matters to the security here at home.”

It is an argument Mr. Bush has been making with frequency in the past few months, as the challenges to the continuation of the war have grown. On Thursday alone, he referred at least 30 times to Al Qaeda or its presence in Iraq.

But his references to Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, and his assertions that it is the same group that attacked the United States in 2001, have greatly oversimplified the nature of the insurgency in Iraq and its relationship with the Qaeda leadership.

There is no question that the group is one of the most dangerous in Iraq. But Mr. Bush’s critics argue that he has overstated the Qaeda connection in an attempt to exploit the same kinds of post-Sept. 11 emotions that helped him win support for the invasion in the first place.

Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia did not exist before the Sept. 11 attacks. The Sunni group thrived as a magnet for recruiting and a force for violence largely because of the American invasion of Iraq in 2003, which brought an American occupying force of more than 100,000 troops to the heart of the Middle East, and led to a Shiite-dominated government in Baghdad.

The American military and American intelligence agencies characterize Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia as a ruthless, mostly foreign-led group that is responsible for a disproportionately large share of the suicide car bomb attacks that have stoked sectarian violence. Gen. David H. Petraeus, the senior American commander in Iraq, said in an interview that he considered the group to be “the principal short-term threat to Iraq.”

But while American intelligence agencies have pointed to links between leaders of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia and the top leadership of the broader Qaeda group, the militant group is in many respects an Iraqi phenomenon. They believe the membership of the group is overwhelmingly Iraqi. Its financing is derived largely indigenously from kidnappings and other criminal activities. And many of its most ardent foes are close at home, namely the Shiite militias and the Iranians who are deemed to support them.

“The president wants to play on Al Qaeda because he thinks Americans understand the threat Al Qaeda poses,” said Bruce Riedel, an expert at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy and a former C.I.A. official. “But I don’t think he demonstrates that fighting Al Qaeda in Iraq precludes Al Qaeda from attacking America here tomorrow. Al Qaeda, both in Iraq and globally, thrives on the American occupation.”

Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian who became the leader of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, came to Iraq in 2002 when Saddam Hussein was still in power, but there is no evidence that Mr. Hussein’s government provided support for Mr. Zarqawi and his followers. Mr. Zarqawi did have support from senior Qaeda leaders, American intelligence agencies believe, and his organization grew in the chaos of post-Hussein Iraq.

“There has been an intimate relationship between them from the beginning,” Mr. Riedel said of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia and the senior leaders of the broader Qaeda group.

But the precise relationship between the Al Qaeda of Osama bin Laden and other groups that claim inspiration or affiliation with it is murky and opaque. While the groups share a common ideology, the Iraq-based group has enjoyed considerable autonomy. Ayman al-Zawahri, Osama bin Laden’s top deputy, questioned Mr. Zarqawi’s strategy of organizing attacks against Shiites, according to captured materials. But Mr. Zarqawi clung to his strategy of mounting sectarian attacks in an effort to foment a civil war and make the American occupation untenable.

The precise size of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia is not known. Estimates are that it may have from a few thousand to 5,000 fighters and perhaps twice as many supporters. While the membership of the group is mostly Iraqi, the role that foreigners play is crucial.

Abu Ayyub al-Masri is an Egyptian militant who emerged as the successor of Mr. Zarqawi, who was killed near Baquba in an American airstrike last year. American military officials say that 60 to 80 foreign fighters come to Iraq each month to fight for the group, and that 80 to 90 percent of suicide attacks in Iraq have been conducted by foreign-born operatives of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia.

At first, Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia received financing from the broader Qaeda organization, American intelligence agencies have concluded. Now, however, the Iraq-based group sustains itself through kidnapping, smuggling and criminal activities and some foreign contributions.

With the Shiite militias having taken a lower profile since the troop increase began, and with Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia embarking on its own sort of countersurge, a main focus of the American military operation is to deprive the group of its strongholds in the areas surrounding Baghdad — and thus curtail its ability to carry out spectacular casualty-inducing attacks in the Iraqi capital.

The heated debate over Iraq has spilled over to Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia as well. Mr. Bush has played up the group, talking about it as if it is on a par with the perpetrators of the Sept. 11 attacks. War critics have often played down the significance of the group despite its gruesome record of suicide attacks and its widely suspected role in destroying a Shiite shrine in Samarra in February 2006 that set Iraq on the road to civil war.

Just last week, Mr. Zawahri called on Muslims to travel to Iraq, Afghanistan and Somalia to carry out their fight against the Americans and appealed for Muslims to support the Islamic State in Iraq, an umbrella group that Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia has established to attract broader Sunni support.

The broader issue is whether Iraq is a central front in the war against Al Qaeda, as Mr. Bush maintains, or a distraction that has diverted the United States from focusing on the Qaeda sanctuaries in Pakistan while providing Qaeda leaders with a cause for rallying support.

Military intelligence officials said that Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia’s leaders wanted to expand their attacks to other countries. They noted that Mr. Zarqawi claimed a role in a 2005 terrorist attack in Jordan. But Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism expert at Georgetown University, said that if American forces were to withdraw from Iraq, the vast majority of the group’s members would likely be more focused on battling Shiite militias in the struggle for dominance in Iraq than on trying to follow the Americans home.

“Al-Masri may have more grandiose expectations, but that does not mean he could turn Al Qaeda of Iraq into a transnational terrorist entity,” he said.

<H3>Michael R. Gordon reported from Baghdad</H3>, and Jim Rutenberg from Washington.

Following up on <a href="http://salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2007/07/08/nyt_iraq/index.html">yesterday's post</a>, I want to return to the topic of <a href="http://nytimes.com/2007/07/08/opinion/08pubed.html">Sunday's column</a> by NYT Public Editor, Clark Hoyt, because the more one thinks about it, the more extraordinary it is. It is really a watershed moment for revealing what our media is and what role it plays.

The profound (and confessed) journalistic failures of the NYT in the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq is, without question, one of the worst scandals in that paper's history -- perhaps its worst. At exactly the time when journalistic skepticism was needed most, as our country debated whether to invade another country which had not attacked us, the Times allowed itself to be completely manipulated by the government and/or eagerly participated in its propaganda campaign, obediently reciting the government's false claims on its front pages and selling this war to its then-trusting readers.

The Times itself has been forced to acknowledge these failures and solemnly insists that it has learned, and taken to heart, the important lessons about the need for skepticism when it comes to government claims about war. Back in February, when Michael Gordon's gullible, government-reliant reports about Iran's actions in Iraq <a href="http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2007/02/27/blogs_media/index.html?source=rss">prompted</a> a tidal wave of blogosphere-generated (<a href="http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=3042">and FAIR-generated</a>) reader complaints, then-Public Editor Byron Calame <a href="http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9804EEDF113EF936A15751C0A9619C8B63">spoke with</a> NYT Executive Editor Bill Keller about these complaints:

The situation [of the Times' reporting on Bush's claims about Iran] closely parallels the pre-war period when The Times prominently reported that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. Deeply shamed when they were not found, the paper publicly acknowledged that its coverage had been "insufficiently qualified or allowed to stand unchallenged."

Times editors clearly were mindful of the W.M.D. coverage as they pursued the Iranian weapons issue. "W.M.D. has informed everything we've done on Iran," Bill Keller, the executive editor, told me three days after the Baghdad briefing. "We don't have to tell the reporters to be as skeptical as possible. W.M.D. restored a level of skepticism."

But Hoyt's column yesterday demonstrates that exactly the opposite is true. The Times is still doing exactly what it did before the invasion of Iraq -- the activities that supposedly brought it such "shame" -- and in many cases, it is exactly the same people who are doing it.

Just consider what Hoyt's criticisms yesterday mean. These criticisms apply not only to one article, but rather, to a whole series of articles. The criticisms concern not some obscure topic or isolated special report, but rather, the single most important political and journalistic issue of this decade -- the war in Iraq and the American media's coverage of government claims about that war.

And most significantly of all, Hoyt's criticisms are grounded not in a technical violation of some petty rule or failure to adhere to some debatable journalistic custom, but rather, involve the worst journalistic sin of all: namely, a failure to treat government claims with skepticism and a willingness mindlessly to recite such claims without scrutiny. <h3>If a newspaper simply prints government claims without skepticism, what remote value does it have other than as a propaganda amplifier? None.</h3> And yet, as Hoyt's column potently demonstrates, that is exactly what the NYT is doing in Iraq -- yet again.

In light of all of this, what rational argument can be mounted in response to the claim that the NYT is simply not interested in practicing real journalism when it comes to the Bush administration's actions in Iraq, or worse, that at least some editorial factions at the Times support the war and want to prop up the administration's political case? What other explanation is possible in light of the clear, lengthy record of the newspaper?

Just consider the record of Michael Gordon -- who, I want to stress, is not personally the problem but merely the most vivid manifestation of the ills of American political journalism. Based exclusively upon what has appeared in the Times itself -- thus excluding all external criticisms of his reporting -- this is Gordon's record of shame over the last four years:

* A May 26, 2004 NYT <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/26/international/middleeast/26FTE_NOTE.html?pagewanted=1&ei=5070&en=4642eb05120749a9&ex=1184126400">Editors' Note</a> identifies several articles written or co-written by Gordon about the Bush administration's pro-war Iraq claims and says about that reporting "that it was not as rigorous as it should have been"; that the war-fueling case "was insufficiently qualified or allowed to stand unchallenged"; and the reporting was flawed because "Administration officials were allowed to hold forth at length" with virtually no challenge or dissent.

* On January 28, 2007, NYT Public Editor Byron Calame <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/28/opinion/28pubed.html?pagewanted=2&ei=5090&en=44c5c953236a6b02&ex=1327640400&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss">reports</a> that "Times editors have carefully made clear their disapproval of the expression of a personal opinion about Iraq on national television by the paper's chief military correspondent, Michael Gordon," in which Gordon expressed clear support for President Bush's "surge" plan. The Times Washington Bureau Chief, Philip Taubman, said that Gordon "stepped over the line" by admitting that he supported escalation in Iraq.

* On February 27, 2007, Calame gently though clearly <a href="http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9804EEDF113EF936A15751C0A9619C8B63&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=2">criticized</a> an article by Gordon written about the Bush administration's "saber-rattling about Iranian intervention in Iraq" (and other articles on the same topic) on the ground that (a) Gordon's article violated the paper's rules on the use of anonymous government sources; (b) the reported government claims about Iran "needed some qualification" about whether they were based on evidence or inference; (c) readers "deserved a clearer sense" of whether such a belief about the Iranian leadership's involvement in Iraqi insurgent attacks is shared by a consensus of intelligence officials (<a href="http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/02/14/bush.transcript/index.html">which, as even the President subsequently admitted, it was not</a>); and, most incriminatingly (given its obvious similarity to Gordon's pre-war failures), (d) "editors didn't make sure all conflicting views were always clearly reported" and the "story also should have noted . . . that the president's view on this point differed from the intelligence assessment given readers of [Gordon's] Feb. 10 article."

* Hoyt's column yesterday identifies a series of articles about Iraq, many written or co-written by Gordon, which "slipped into a routine of quoting the president and the military uncritically about Al Qaeda's role in Iraq," and further criticized the articles because "in using the language of the administration," these articles presented a misleading picture of Iraq.

Does anyone at the NYT really need help seeing the clear pattern here? What more does Gordon need to do in order to show how journalistically irresponsible he is, how either incapable or unwilling he is to treat Bush administration claims about the war with skepticism <h3>and do anything other than serve as an obedient vessel for pro-war government claims?</h3>

This is a disgraceful record that continuously exhibits the same journalistic sins and the same exceedingly transparent pro-war, pro-Bush bias, not just bias that Gordon harbors personally but bias which time and again permeates his "reporting." And again, this is the record as established by the Times itself. There are countless other instances where Gordon does this that do not make it into the pages of his newspaper, but which are nonetheless egregious.

And yet, the Editors of the NYT continue not only to make Gordon their featured star reporter when it comes both to Iraq and related stories about Iran, but also to approve of the same defective, corrupt journalistic methods that are his hallmark. The deficiencies in his reporting are not complex or hidden. They are all right there out in the open, easy to see. All one has to do is read Gordon's articles and it is immediately apparent that, time and again, they do nothing other than recite highly questionable and highly inflammatory claims from the military and the Bush administration, and he conveys them with no meaningful question, challenge, dissent, or qualification.

And he does this not once, but over and over. This is exactly what the NYT claims to be so ashamed of its having done prior to the war, and yet it so plainly continues to do it, four years later -- in the form of the same reporter and likely the same editors. After all, as Hoyt's column demonstrate, it is not just Gordon who is guilty of these failures. If bloggers can see it, and Hoyt sees it, isn't it safe to assume that the editors who approve of these articles see it, too? How can they not?

There is important and revealing symbolism in having these criticisms voiced in the NYT by Hoyt. As blogger and journalist Joe Gandleman, who worked briefly with Hoyt, <a href="http://themoderatevoice.com/politics/military/13938/is-the-new-mantra-al-qaeda-is-around-every-corner/">notes</a>, Hoyt has one of the most impressive resumes in modern journalism -- including his work at McClatchy, which exhibited the requisite skepticism of Bush's pre-war claims exactly at the time when the NYT, along with most of our establishment press, so notably -- and so destructively -- failed to do so.

And it bears emphasizing how obvious, basic and long-recognized are the dangers posed when journalists fail to subject government claims -- especially about war -- to real skepticism. In 1994 -- on the 30-year anniversary of the Gulf of Tonkin incident that spawned the escalation of the Vietnam war -- journalists Jeff Cohen and Norman Solomon <a href="http://fair.org/index.php?page=2261">documented</a> the role of the shoddy reporting by the American media, tragically led by the NYT, which enabled the government to perpetuate false claims about that incident:

Thirty years ago, it all seemed very clear.

"American Planes Hit North Vietnam After Second Attack on Our Destroyers; Move Taken to Halt New Aggression", announced a Washington Post headline on Aug. 5, 1964.

That same day, the front page of the New York Times reported: "President Johnson has ordered retaliatory action against gunboats and 'certain supporting facilities in North Vietnam' after renewed attacks against American destroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin."

But there was no "second attack" by North Vietnam -- no "renewed attacks against American destroyers." By reporting official claims as absolute truths, American journalism opened the floodgates for the bloody Vietnam War.

A pattern took hold: continuous government lies passed on by pliant mass media...leading to over 50,000 American deaths and millions of Vietnamese casualties. . . .

An exhaustive new book, The War Within: America's Battle Over Vietnam, begins with a dramatic account of the Tonkin Gulf incidents. In an interview, author Tom Wells told us that American media "described the air strikes that Johnson launched in response as merely `tit for tat' -- when in reality they reflected plans the administration had already drawn up for gradually increasing its overt military pressure against the North."

Why such inaccurate news coverage? Wells points to the media's "almost exclusive reliance on U.S. government officials as sources of information" -- as well as "reluctance to question official pronouncements on 'national security issues.'"

Just read Hoyt's column from yesterday, along with much (though <a href="http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/02/13/africa/web.0213weapons.php">not all</a>) of the reporting on Iraq over the last year by Gordon and the NYT, and see if there is a single material difference between what happened then, what happened in 2002-2003, and what is happening now. There is none.

It is hard to imagine a bigger or more important journalistic scandal than the one highlighted yesterday by the Times Public Editor -- namely, the NYT continues, systematically, to engage in precisely the same gullible, government-worshipping reporting about Iraq that it engaged in prior to the invasion, perpetuated by some of the same reporters and approved (presumably) by some of the same editors, despite how transparent and severe are the journalistic sins. Contrary to its solemn assurances, the Times obviously has learned nothing -- or, if it has learned anything, it is consciously disregarding those lessons.

Three years after Judy Miller's departure from that paper, the newspapers's own Public Editor has scathingly pointed out what is glaringly obvious in plain sight -- the defining practices of Judy Miller (blind, uncritical trust in the government's and military's sources) continue to shape and dominate much of the paper's coverage about Iraq and issues related to Iran. Judy Miller, like Michael Gordon, was but a symbol, an extreme expression, of a rotted journalistic system still in place at the Times and most other establishment media outlets in this country.

That her co-writer and editors responsible for those profound failures continue not only to work at the Times, but to remain in charge of its war coverage using exactly the same methods that brought such shame to that paper, is as compelling evidence of the state of American journalism as one can imagine. "Judy Miller" is not just a disgraced journalist, but is also a method of journalism that extends far beyond her.