Earlier today, TimesWatch made a run (with help from bloggers EU Rota and Cori Dauber) at a tendentious New York Times editorial claiming Bush "misled Americans" about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction and terrorist connections. Now the White House itself has gotten in on the act, dissecting Tuesday's lead editorial, "Decoding Mr. Bush's Denials," piece by piece.
To the paper's charge that foreign intelligence services did not suupport U.S. intelligence, the White House rebuts:
"But Even Foreign Governments That Opposed The Removal Of Saddam Hussein Judged That Iraq Had Weapons Of Mass Destruction."
The White House goes on to quote noted warmonger French Foreign Minister Dominique De Villepin on the evidence of Iraq's WMD.
Responding to the Times' claim that Congress was given incomplete intelligence, the White House points out that:
"But The Presidential Daily Brief (PDB) Was Judged Not To Have Different Intelligence Than The National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) Provided To Congress, Which Represented The Collective Opinion Of The Intelligence Community."
The White House backs up the assertion by quoting from the Robb-Silberman Commission.
In all, the White House dissects six separate misleading assertions made by the Times about the Iraq war and pre-war intelligence. Perhaps they should make WhiteHouse.gov a blog?
*For those unfamiliar with bloggy terminology, here's the definition of "To fisk," according to the authoritative Samizdata glossary: "To deconstruct an article on a point by point basis in a highly critical manner. Derived from the name of journalist Robert Fisk, a frequent target of such critical articles in the blogosphere."
For more examples of New York Times bias, visit TimesWatch.
