behind the news

Hospital Report

September 10, 2004

Campaign Desk had an aneurysm today. The cause, medical experts found, was a story in the Los Angeles Times headlined “Cheney Says Iraq Harbored Al Qaeda — Hussein gave ‘sanctuary’ to Bin Laden’s terrorism group and others, vice president asserts.”

Ouch! It still hurts!

First of all, this isn’t news: Cheney has been saying that for years now. Second, as every credible investigation has shown, Saddam Hussein’s government did not give safe harbor or sanctuary to al Qaeda in any meaningful way. But reading this, and a similarly milquetoast story by Elisabeth Bumiller in the New York Times, you’d think that second point was still up for debate.

Why, Campaign Desk wonders, would editors at two of America’s most prominent newspapers let this pass? Maybe they’re part of that 50 percent of Americans who still labor under the same illusion as Cheney — final reports of the 9/11 Commission and the Senate Intelligence Committee notwithstanding. Somehow we doubt it. But we don’t doubt that this kind of lazy reporting and dozing-at-the-wheel editing is part of the reason that so many Americans do continue to think that Iraq had something to do with bin Laden’s plot.

To be sure, both papers do hint that Cheney’s word is not final, citing the 9/11 report’s failure to find a “collaborative relationship” between Hussein and al Qaeda. But Bumiller gives the veep’s aides the last word on the subject — namely, that “there is not necessarily a contradiction” between Cheney’s remarks and the 9/11 report. For its part, the Los Angeles Times quotes Cheney flack Anne Womak qualifying his statement after the fact, and concluding, finally, that “experts have differed.”

It’s not that the same Los Angeles Times story was no help at all, however, as the newspaper did seem to tacitly recognize that aneurisms can cause amnesia among readers. (There’s no other reason we can think of that, after a reference to al Qaeda, the West Coast’s biggest newspaper helpfully noted, “The terrorism group, led by Osama bin Laden, is considered responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and the Pentagon.” We’re grateful the Times jogged our memory with that little tidbit.)

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But our head still hurts. So, while you’re grabbing us an icepack, please also tell the editors of the Los Angeles Times that it’s okay to make a judgment based on the facts. And please point Elisabeth Bumiller to the June 17th edition of her own newspaper, when a rare banner headline — of the kind that the Times saves for historic events — read:

“Panel Finds No Qaeda-Iraq Tie”

–Corey Pein

Corey Pein was an assistant editor at CJR.