The next day, reports started saying that the report said the DOD was wrong to carry out those efforts. I guess your own groupthink is acceptable. I was going to question it, but I noticed that the second-day articles seemed to quote Senator Levin rather than the report in guiding the headlines. That was odd, I thought. Typical, mind you--but odd. But I was tired of trying to win small victories over individual reports by pointing out problems. I'll stick generally to commenting on the war itself and foreign affairs.
But I am glad other bloggers have this interest. So Instapundit's link to this was informative:
A Feb. 9 front-page article about the Pentagon inspector general's report regarding the office of former undersecretary of defense Douglas J. Feith incorrectly attributed quotations to that report. References to Feith's office producing "reporting of dubious quality or reliability" and that the office "was predisposed to finding a significant relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda" were from a report issued by Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) in Oct. 2004. Similarly, the quotes stating that Feith's office drew on "both reliable and unreliable reporting" to produce a link between al-Qaeda and Iraq "that was much stronger than that assessed by the IC [Intelligence Community] and more in accord with the policy views of senior officials in the Administration" were also from Levin's report.
The reporters confused a war critic's comments about the report for the actual report?
One of these days we'll establish formal programs for training reporters--I've suggested calling them "journalism schools"--and we will avoid these embarassing mistakes of basic reporting.
I mean, it's almost as if our reporters currently think their own beliefs should dominate their reporting!
