by Sherwood Ross

Global Research, June 2, 2009

Two years before the 9/11 attacks on America, George W. Bush told a Houston journalist if elected president, “I’m going to invade Iraq.”

Bush made the comments about starting an aggressive war to veteran Houston Chronicle reporter Mickey Herskowitz, then working with Bush on his book “A Charge To Keep,” later brought out by publisher William Morrow.

This disclosure was uncovered by Russ Baker, an award-winning investigative reporter when he interviewed Herskowitz for his own book, “Family of Secrets” (Bloomsbury Press) about the Bush dynasty. However, Baker says, when he approached The Washington Post and The Los Angeles Times with the potentially devastating story to President Bush prior to the 2004 presidential election, they declined to publish it.

A matter of Rape-Speak: The New York Times on Serbia

By Peter Duveen

PETER'S NEW YORK, Sept. 6, 2008--The manner in which the New York Times serves as an instrument of the foreign policy establishment is truly remarkable. Times reporters receive training (is brainwashing a better term?) in sessions sponsored by the New York Times Foundation and the Council on Foreign Relations. These training sessions, of a sort that are regrettably common in the journalistic profession, instruct reporters on how they are to view and report on foreign affairs and other issues. As a result, Times reporters have inherited the mantle of those who have crafted foreign policy for a string of U.S. presidential administrations These reporters serve as sort of busy bees to get the program out there to the public.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/20/opinion/20wed2.html?_r=1&th&emc=th&oref=slogin

August 20, 2008
Editorial
Too Little Information

An F.B.I. briefing on Monday was supposed to bolster the agency’s conclusion that a lone, disturbed bioterrorism scientist was responsible for the 2001 anthrax attacks that killed five people, sickened 17 others and terrified the country. It fell short of its goal.

The F.B.I. spent years pointing a finger at a different suspect. It is not enough for the agency to brush off continuing skepticism. “There’s always going to be a spore on a grassy knoll,” Vahid Majidi, the chief of the agency’s weapons of mass destruction division told reporters.

A group of independent experts needs to look hard at the F.B.I.’s technical analysis and detective work that combined to convince investigators that the mailed anthrax must have come from Dr. Bruce Ivins, a scientist at the Army’s bioterrorism lab in Fort Detrick in Maryland.

Scrolling down to "T" on the NYT's 2007 list of popular Buzzwords reveals that they decided to included "Truther" in it:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/23/weekinreview/23buzzwords.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

I don't know if this can be seen as a compliment though considering some of the other words listed like:

"vegansexual n.

A person who eats no meat, uses no animal-derived goods and prefers not to have sex with non-vegans."

The list seems to have been complied by a guy called Grant Barrett who is apparently a "co-host of the public radio show “A Way With Words” and a lexicographer."

A delicious piece of propaganda from the NY Times today. Apparently, Philip Zelikow, the executive director of the 9/11 Commission, is really the good cop to Cheney's bad cop. The premise for the article is that Zelikow has been expressing the views of Condoleezza Rice recently, and those views contradict certain White House positions on torture and intelligence.

For example, one of his memos "described the potential for Iraq to become a 'catastrophic failure.' Another, among several that have come to light in recent weeks, was an early call for changes in a detention policy that many in the State Department believed was doing tremendous harm to the United States.

Others have proposed new diplomatic initiatives toward North Korea and the Middle East, and one went as far as to call for a reconsideration of the phrase 'war on terror' because it alienated many Muslims — an idea that quickly fizzled after opposition from the White House."

In terms of 9/11, this depiction of Zelikow attempts to distance him from his role as White House insider and cover-up artist; at one point, the Times speculates over Zelikow being "an in-house contrarian." The idea that Zelikow opposes current detention polices, or objects to the term "war on terror," is ludicrous. This is the man who crafted the 9/11 Commission Report and its recommendations for further centralization of intelligence gathering at the level of the executive branch.

An update on the Amerithrax story.

Times Is Ordered to Reveal Columnist’s Sources

By NEIL A. LEWIS
Published: October 24, 2006

WASHINGTON, Oct. 23 — A federal magistrate judge has ordered The New York Times to disclose the identities of three confidential sources used by one of its columnists, Nicholas Kristof, for columns he wrote about the investigation of the deadly anthrax mailings of 2001.

The order, issued Friday by Magistrate Judge Liam O’Grady, requires the newspaper to disclose the identities of the three sources to lawyers for Dr. Steven J. Hatfill, who has brought a defamation suit against The Times. The order was disclosed Monday.

Catherine Mathis, a spokeswoman for The Times, said the newspaper would appeal the ruling.

Dr. Hatfill, a germ warfare specialist who formerly worked in the Army laboratories at Fort Detrick, Md., has asserted that a series of columns by Mr. Kristof about the slow pace of the anthrax investigation defamed him because they suggested he was responsible for the attacks.

Five people died in the attacks. Although the federal authorities identified Dr. Hatfill as a “person of interest” in the case, they have not charged him with any crimes.