This is a particularly excellent example of how you argue when you're cornered--ignore the obvious, change the subject, become purposefully obtuse, etc.
Are you talking about Okrent, or not? Okrent did address the bias in the NYT's coverage of the war run-up, of course. #reply-20185928 . Your obsession with Berger and Wilson is again duly noted, but I think most people would consider them at best minor players at the moment. As far as evidence goes, there was this from the Sunday paper, previously posted, also relevant on the "intellectual honesty" front. From nytimes.com
The Evidence
In the first hours after the Sept. 11 attacks and ever since, the White House has consistently insisted that Mr. Bush and his deputies had no credible evidence before the attacks to suggest that Al Qaeda was about to strike on American soil.
But the assertion has been questioned as a result of the commission's digging. After its most heated showdown with the Bush administration over access to classified information, the commission pressured the White House to declassify and make public a special intelligence briefing that had been presented to the president at his Texas ranch on Aug. 6, 2001, a month before the attacks.
The existence of the document - but not its detailed contents - had been known since 2002, when the White House confirmed news reports that Mr. Bush had received an intelligence report before Sept. 11 warning of the possibility that Al Qaeda might hijack American passenger planes.
In testimony this April to the Sept. 11 commission, before the report was made public, Ms. Rice insisted that it was "historical."
"It did not, in fact, warn of attacks inside the United States," she testified. "It was historical information based on old reporting. There was no new threat information.''
But there were gasps in the audience in the hearing room when she disclosed the name of the two-page briefing paper: "Bin Laden Determined to Attack in U.S."
The document was made public several days later. It contained passages referring to F.B.I. reports at the time of "suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks, including recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York." It noted that a caller to the United States Embassy in the United Arab Emirates that May had warned that "a group of bin Laden supporters was in the U.S.," planning attacks with explosives.
The commission's final report revealed that two C.I.A. analysts involved in preparing the brief had wanted to make clear to Mr. Bush that, far from being only a historical threat, the threat that Al Qaeda would strike on American soil was "both current and serious." |
