Letters to the Editor
GlennGreenwald
Published Letters: 2123 Editor's Choice: 18
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czapniks
[Read the article: The right-wing brain in action]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]You both missed my rather small point. I don't disagree that many on the right consider Muslims or Arabs "untermenschen," and I completely agree it's absurd for Ledeen to characterize attacking Iraq as an example of his non-racism. I was simply pointing out that in the particular quote Glenn cited, he was not characterizing Arabs as untermenschen, as Glenn implied. That's all.
Nobody missed your point. Your point is just wrong. I did not think, say or "imply" that Ledeen was calling Arabs "untermenschen." He plainly was not doing that in that post. Instead, he was claiming that war opponents believe Arabs are "untermenschen."
That was the whole point of my post. My post did not in way mistake Ledeen's meaning. That's what El Cid explained and why he suggested that you read the post more carefully. The whole premise of the post is that "Ledeen accuses war opponents of viewing Arabs as 'untermenschen'" and the whole rest of the post proceeds from that premise.
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czapniks:
[Read the article: The right-wing brain in action]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I've reread your post - you are right; I was wrong, having read it incorrectly.
Thanks - really appreciate it - we all misread things sometimes.
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Joe Buck:
[Read the article: The unresolved story of ABC News' false Saddam-anthrax reports]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I didn't say journalists do out lying sources (although I'm sure some have) - I said that the code of journalistic ethics typically holds that sources who feed knowing lies to journalists shouldn't have their anonymity protected.
Here is one explanation of that principle - I don't have a lot of time find more, but I will later -
http://majikthise.typepad.com/majikthise_/2006/06/why_journalists.html
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Paul:
[Read the article: The unresolved story of ABC News' false Saddam-anthrax reports]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]First off, it needs to be said that there's nothing the least bit unusual about this story, IMHO. Unless there's a powerful interested party--which Saddam Hussein obviously was not--a series of blatantly false reports will never be retracted or apologized for in any way. Simply not going to happen.
Who was the "powerful interested party" that led to the New York Times publishing its mea culpa Editors Note admitting that much of its journalism on Iraq's WMD claims was shoddy and overly gullible?
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Science Guy:
[Read the article: The unresolved story of ABC News' false Saddam-anthrax reports]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]All good points . . .
However, I think that the issue of Brian Ross' sources might be a little more complicated than you present. I think it is possible, and perhaps even likely, that the sources themselves had been lied to. In other words, the sources themselves may not have fabricated the story but were (knowingly or not) passing along a falsehood. In this case, the source of the falsehood should be identified, but that source might not be known to Ross.
That's possible, but I don't think they would have published this story (and certainly shouldn't have) if at least one of their sources didn't have first-hand knowledge of the tests. One of the things I noted in the post from last week is that there is a report where Ross said -- "Former UN weapons inspectors have told ABC News they've been told the anthrax spores found in the letter to Senator Daschle are almost identical in appearance to those they recovered in Iraq in 1994" -- which lends support to your point.
But in other reports, they definitively stated that the bentonite was found and that multiple "highly placed" sources (a term inapplicable to "former UN weapons inspectors") told them that.
One other thing, just for the sake of accuracy. You dismiss the claim of the diagnostic value of the presence of bentonite in the anthrax spores by noting the widespread availability of bentonite. However, my reading of the reporting is that bentonite is supposedly diagnostic not because it is rare or available only in Iraq, but because its use in weaponizing antrhrax was unusual (and perhaps unique to Iraq).
Yes and no, but a fair enough criticism. Part of the sensationalistic tone of ABC's report came from their depiction of bentonite as "troubling chemical additive" -- as though it's something inherently dangerous and rare. It is NOT a "chemical additive" at all, and there is nothing "troubling" about it.
Though you're right that there's a distinction between (a) how common bentonite is and (b) its use in biological weapons, the fact that it's so commonplace means that it's absurd to think (and certainly to state definitively on a news program) that finding bentonite in anthrax points to Iraq, precisely because anyone could use it for that. As a WSJ article reported in October, 2001:
"The presence of bentonite could be a stronger indication that a state- sponsored weapons program such as Iraq's was involved in the development of the anthrax, said one US official, adding that if bentonite is confirmed, 'it raises it to a whole new level of sophistication.'" But "he noted that a technically proficient individual also could have learned about using bentonite as an additive in scientific literature. The US also has experimented with anthrax and bentonite, though the stocks were destroyed in the 1960s."
Before you run around with a lead story on ABC News fingering Iraq for the anthrax attacks, way more basis than the bentonite claim -- EVEN IF it were true that bentonite were found -- would be needed. Even a finding of bentonite was nowhere near compelling evidence that Saddam was behind those attacks, let alone a "smoking gun" -- the term used by Jennings to describe how it would be depicted.