Channeling The Walrus

By Cernig

The New York Times has a hacktacular piece today by Mark Mazzetti and David Sanger, which makes a pretense at sceptical journalism while heavily pushing the already discredited notion that a recent Israeli strike into Syria targetted a secret North Korean/Syrian nuke facility.

The NY Times piece manages to drop the name of John Bolton five times, citing previous Old Walrus-face conspiracy theory rants. Then it drops this 'graph in:

“One has to balance the skepticism that the Syrians can build an indigenous nuclear program with the very sobering assessment that North Korea is the world’s No. 1 proliferator and a country willing to sell whatever it possesses,” said a former senior Bush administration official who once had full access to the intelligence about both countries, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he was discussing intelligence assessments.

Which is pure 100% grade-A Bolton in both content and style. And truthfully, what other former Bush administration senior official would describe North Korea rather than Pakistan as the world's number one proliferator?

But surely not - even David "Judy Miller In Drag" Sanger wouldn't be such a hack as to quote Bolton both as a named source and an un-named one in the same article, would he?

Update Joe Klein describes the 'Syrian Nukes' push as "fodder for the neocons here hoping to foment World War IV" and " wouldn't be at all surprised if, in the end, this strike had nothing at all to do with nukes."

No, you shouldn't be surprised at all, Mr. Klein.