Twisting the Times
Right-wingers last Friday rejoiced in what they considered to be a concession by the New York Times that Saddam Hussein had an advanced nuclear program as late as 2002. However, closer examination shows that the revelers ignored a case of sloppy editing in order to falsely claim that an article in the Times supported their views. ...
Right-wingers last Friday rejoiced in what they considered to be a concession by the New York Times that Saddam Hussein had an advanced nuclear program as late as 2002. However, closer examination shows that the revelers ignored a case of sloppy editing in order to falsely claim that an article in the Times supported their views.
So what were the right-wing pundits saying on Friday?
The New York Times confirms that in 2002 Saddam’s scientists were on the verge of building an atom bomb and that they were as little as a year away.” – Rush Limbaugh
“The legitimacy of this information [about Saddam’s nuclear ambitions] has now been verified by the New York Times.” – Little Green Footballs
“The New York Times reports that Saddam Hussein’s Iraq had a nuclear weapons program after all.” – James Taranto, author of the OpinionJournal.com‘s “Best of the Web Today“
And what was the text of article in the Times?
Among the dozens of documents in English were Iraqi reports written in the 1990s and in 2002 for United Nations inspectors in charge of making sure Iraq had abandoned its unconventional arms programs after the Persian Gulf war. Experts say that at the time, Mr. Hussein’s scientists were on the verge of building an atom bomb, as little as a year away.
Apologies to my friends on the right, but “at the time” means the aftermath of the first Gulf War. The writing may be awkward, but it takes a real stretch of the imagination to read those three words as a reference to 2002. The beauty part of this is that the same people who usually take pot shots at the Times for having a liberal bias and obfuscating the truth will contort the paper’s words in an effort worthy of Houdini just to get a little bit of vindication.
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