Sunday, July 01, 2007

WaPo waffles

By Libby

In case you were wondering how 41% of Americans still believe the long discredited claim about a Saddam and al-Qaeda connection, this could explain it. I ignored the op-ed in question when it first appeared the WaPo. I read the first couple of paragraphs and wrote it off as the editorial board's usual White House propping, but the Progressive Daily Beacon discovers an element in the backstory that makes the publication of this baseless tripe much more interesting. It seems the WaPo was much less than forthcoming about the author's identity.
Uncovering the identity of Christina Shelton, wasn't easy. The Post's recent piece said only that she was an "intelligence analyst at the Defense Intelligence Agency from 1984 to 2006." Which, perhaps, may be the understatement of the century.

...It seems rather odd that the Washington Post omitted the fact that this Christina Shelton was not only a member of the infamous Bush administration's pre-war Office of Special Plans (a small cadre of Bush-Cheney loyalists whose work has been entirely discredited as false, if not criminal), but, too, the paper failed to identify her as having played a key role in building the false case for going to war with Iraq.

I find it more predictable than odd but it does bring up a recurring question I've had for a long time. I often wonder if the WaPo editorial board has some kind of internal policy that would explain their schizophrenic coverage. Something like, for every hard-hitting piece of real journalism like the recent series on Dick Cheney, they have to then publish 50 pieces of adminstration serving pap from malfeasants like Shelton?

No comments: