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Oh, you meant those antiquities

Remember those museum looting stories? They might have been a tad bit premature:

Almost all of the priceless items feared stolen from the Baghdad Museum when it was ransacked by looters have been found safe in a secret vault, the U.S.-led administration for Iraq said on Saturday.

A relative handful of items are still missing -- 3,000, compared with the 170,000 that were initially reported stolen -- but most, particularly some of the more valuable ones, were located.

Another trove of priceless jewelry, the Treasure of Nimrud, was found in a flooded Central Bank vault on Thursday.

The Nimrud artefacts, hundreds of gold and gem-studded pieces from the ancient kingdom of Assyria, were retrieved by U.S. investigators after the vaults below the gutted shell of the looted bank building were drained.

The treasures, discovered between 1988 and 1990 in ancient royal tombs below an Assyrian palace dating from the ninth century BC, had been feared lost. But U.S. investigators learned they had been placed in a central bank vault in the early 1990s, possibly to protect them during the 1991 Gulf War.

"They were never lost," acting Central Bank Governor Faleh Salman said. "We knew all along they were there. It just took a bit of time to get at them because of the flooding."

Good news, of course, for archeologists and historians. But more important, yet another lesson in why not to trust media frenzies. Not only were the items not stolen, but some of them had been hidden away a decade ago. Some suggested that this might have been the case, but they were drowned out by the voices attacking the U.S. Was the media deliberately lying? Probably not. They were just reckless. It fit their plotline -- mean ol' heartless Bush administration not caring about anything other than oil, letting other tragedies occur in pursuit of Bush's goals. So they didn't bother to stop and consider other possibilities.

We're seeing another example of the media piling on right now, with the lack of discoveries of weapons of mass destruction being cited as proof that Bush lied. Maybe they're right, or maybe we'll find out in a few months that they were hidden right before the regime fell, and some Iraqi will say, "We knew all along they were there."
posted by David Nieporent at 6/07/2003 08:44:00 PM |

 

Freudian slip

The Guardian has admitted that the article I (and every other blogger) jumped all over was wrong, and has actually taken the step of removing the article from their site. (Doesn't that seem awfully sneaky, by the way? While I certainly endorse the practice of printing corrections, should a paper really hide its errors by rewriting history to pretend they never published the error in the first place?) At least one blogger has suggested that the error may have occurred because the reporter was working with the German translation of the speech rather than the actual transcript of the speech. That seems slightly plausible, given how quick they were to admit that they were wrong. So let's assume it was an honest, unintentional error.

But step back a minute, and try to figure out exactly what they were thinking. First, a reporter had to read the speech and interpret it that way. Then, an editor had to approve the story. And neither one thought anything was strange about this story, as written? Wouldn't someone reporting such a bombshell pause for a minute and consider whether there was something wrong with it? And if they did, and concluded that it was reasonable? What does that say about them?

In order to believe that this story was reasonable, they would, fundamentally, have to believe that it was true: the U.S. war was about oil. Okay, well, a lot of people believe that, although I'm not sure they have a clear grasp of what "about oil" would mean. But they would also have to believe either that (a) the Bush administration had suddenly, inexplicably, decided to admit this inconvenient truth, or that (b) it was such a self-evident truth that Wolfowitz just couldn't help but admit it, even though he was trying to keep it a secret.

If that doesn't sound that strange to you, insert different facts. Would you think it remarkable if Jacques Chirac "admitted" that he opposed the war because he doesn't like Jews? Or if Gerhard Schroeder "admitted" he did so because he was on Saddam Hussein's payroll? If you heard either of those things secondhand, even if you believed it, wouldn't you say to yourself, "Hey, wait, that can't be right. He wouldn't say that. Maybe I'd better doublecheck that"? Of course you would. For neither the reporter nor his editor to do so? Can't you just picture them sitting there, reading it, nodding, and saying, smugly, "Well, of course. I already knew that. No point in going to the original source. That's obvious." For one guy to do it, well, someone can be biased. But for two people (or more, for that matter)? What kind of groupthink is there over at the Guardian?
posted by David Nieporent at 6/06/2003 06:22:00 AM |

 

Lies, damn lies, and journalism?

Opponents of the Iraq war, and of George Bush, have been very vocal lately in claiming that the failure (so far) to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq proves that "Bush lied." But for people worried about honesty, they don't seem to have any trouble distorting the truth for their own agenda. First we had Maureen Dowd falsely claiming that Bush said that Al Qaeda wasn't a problem anymore. Then we had Paul Krugman, among many others, claiming that Paul Wolfowitz said that weapons of mass destruction were just an excuse for war.

Now we have a fellow named George Wright in Britain's Guardian repeating that lie, and extending it, claiming that Wolfowitz admitted that the U.S. was really motivated by oil:

Oil was the main reason for military action against Iraq, a leading White House hawk has claimed, confirming the worst fears of those opposed to the US-led war.

The US deputy defence secretary, Paul Wolfowitz - who has already undermined Tony Blair's position over weapons of mass destruction (WMD) by describing them as a "bureaucratic" excuse for war - has now gone further by claiming the real motive was that Iraq is "swimming" in oil.

The only problem? Well, there are two. The first is that if you read the quote, it doesn't say what the Guardian claims it says:

Asked why a nuclear power such as North Korea was being treated differently from Iraq, where hardly any weapons of mass destruction had been found, the deputy defence minister said: "Let's look at it simply. The most important difference between North Korea and Iraq is that economically, we just had no choice in Iraq. The country swims on a sea of oil."

Saying that oil was a difference between the two countries is not saying that oil is reason for war. For instance, if someone asked why Iraq and North Korea were different, and Wolfowitz identified the desert terrain of Iraq as being more suited to America's military forces than North Korea's terrain, would that be an admission that sand was the reason for war? Of course not. There's a difference between a particular element creating a condition for war and a particular element being a reason for the war.

The second problem, though, is more fundamental. Wolfowitz didn't say what the Guardian claims he said. From the actual transcript:

Look, the primarily difference -- to put it a little too simply -- between North Korea and Iraq is that we had virtually no economic options with Iraq because the country floats on a sea of oil.  In the case of North Korea, the country is teetering on the edge of economic collapse and that I believe is a major point of leverage whereas the military picture with North Korea is very different from that with Iraq.  The problems in both cases have some similarities but the solutions have got to be tailored to the circumstances which are very different.

Last I checked, words in quotes are not supposed to be paraphrases of what a person says. And when you do choose to paraphrase something, you're not supposed to change the meaning. This Guardian article fails both tests.

As the Guardian frames it, Wolfowitz is apparently claiming that Iraq's oil is important to us economically; as Wolfowitz actually said it, he's claiming that Iraq's oil was important to Iraq economically, giving us no options in pressuring them financially, unlike the near-bankrupt North Korea. They manage to reverse the meaning of Wolfowitz's words entirely.

I just don't understand it. Do reporters just assume that nobody will ever check up on them? I suppose it's not an unreasonable assumption -- just an outdated one. Before the age of the internet, it was very difficult to do so. Reporters apparently simply haven't adapted to the fact that the real transcript of a press conference can be available to us before their own versions of it are. (I guess the only way to file the story sooner than the truth can come out is to use Jayson Blair's approach -- skip the time-consuming reporting process and go right to the writing.) But even though it's wonderful to see that the public can learn the truth in spite of media attempts at spin, it's depressing to realize how many stories we'll never know the truth about, simply because they slipped under the radar or happened before the blogosphere arrived to point out their lies.
posted by David Nieporent at 6/04/2003 10:07:00 PM |

 

Trust me, I know what I'm doing

I happened to run across this post from last week, in which Dwight Meredith points out what he considers to be a major inconsistency in George Bush's attitudes towards juries:

George W. Bush has a perverse view of juries. Some people think that juries make essentially random decisions and have no trust in the accuracy of jury verdicts. Others, myself included, think that juries generally find the truth. George W. Bush is firmly in both camps.

While Governor of Texas, Mr. Bush showed an abiding faith in the unerring accuracy of jury decisions in death penalty cases.

[...]

Mr. Bush has much less confidence in the accuracy of the verdicts of civil juries. Mr. Bush has proposed that politicians and not jurors decide the amount of non-economic damages due to the most seriously injured victims of negligence.

On the surface, this does seem a little puzzling; why -- other than ideological politics -- would Bush be so eager to challenge one type of jury verdict but not the other? However, there's no necessary contradiction between these two positions which Mr. Meredith attributes to Bush. Civil and criminal trials, of course, have different burdens of proof. As such, it should theoretically be much harder for a jury to incorrectly convict an innocent person than for a jury to incorrectly find a non-responsible party to be liable.

That doesn't negate the validity of Meredith's observation that criminal defendants are more likely to have poor representation than high-profile civil defendants are. However, that observation is relevant only to the extent that the problem in each situation is one of jury error due to imperfect information. But that isn't the case; the issues presented aren't the same. With regard to criminal trials, the question we must confront is the accuracy of the verdict. With regard to civil trials, the issues Bush is raising (correctly or otherwise) are (A) the costs of frivolous suits regardless of the outcome and (B) overly generous damage awards. The latter is not a question of "accuracy"; indeed, the whole point is that there is no "correct" amount of punitive or non-economic compensatory damages (i.e., pain-and-suffering). 

A civil jury that awards millions to a woman for spilling coffee on herself (and spare me the ATLA propaganda about this case; I've read it, and it isn't convincing) is not making an inaccurate decision due to imperfect information; it is making a dumb decision based on emotion. Of course, one could argue that the same problem could present itself with regard to criminal juries, but (a) Dwight Meredith isn't making that argument, and (b) as I noted above, the differing standard of proof in criminal cases would (hopefully) make that less likely. Moreover, the situation is different precisely because there is a right answer in a criminal case. We ask the jury whether they're convinced that the defendant committed the crime; that's a question of historical fact. Whether the parents of an injured child suffered $15,000 worth of non-economic damage or $15,000,000 worth is inherently arbitrary, leaving far more leeway for the jury, providing more opportunity for a bad decision.

So, in fact, this "perverse" inconsistency that Dwight Meredith sees in Bush's views exists only if you accept his premise that the primary problem with jury verdicts is imperfect information correlating with the skill of the lawyers. Presumably Bush is not working from that premise.
posted by David Nieporent at 6/04/2003 05:30:00 AM |

 

Context, shmontext

Donald Luskin can occasionally be a little strident in his attacks on Paul Krugman, but he effectively demolishes Krugman's recent partisan screed (yeah, I know, that doesn't narrow it down. I mean this one, from Friday.) Krugman's main theme lately -- okay, his only theme lately -- is that the Bush administration is dishonest. But Krugman (or "former Enron advisor Paul Krugman," as some like to call him) feels so desperate to establish this, that he resorts to dishonesty of his own. In this case, Krugman strings together a series of damning quotes proving that the Bush administration was lying about Iraq -- and the results are compelling. I know Bush lies -- he's a politician, after all -- but reading the editorial made me think the charges were extremely serious, this time around. The only problem is that Krugman pulled them all out of context, as Luskin points out. One example:

And, inevitably, the tangled yarn finally leads to a clipping from Krugman's favorite source for war news -- the BBC.

"This week a senior British intelligence official told the BBC that under pressure from Downing Street, a dossier on Iraqi weapons had been 'transformed' to make it 'sexier' — uncorroborated material from a suspect source was added to make the threat appear imminent."

But it turns out that Krugman's version of the BBC story is what's uncorroborated -- by the actual content of the BBC story, that is. Hogberg found John H. Hinderaker of the Power Line blog has tracked down the BBC story, "Iraq Weapons Dossier 'Rewritten'". Hinderaker writes,

"Even the BBC's own anonymous source concedes that 'Most things in the dossier were double source.' In fact, there is only one fact stated in the dossier that the BBC's anonymous official questions: the statement that Iraq's weapons of mass destruction could be 'ready for use within 45 minutes.' This statement was based on information from only one source, who was not considered reliable by the BBC's informant.

"That's it. Everything else in the British dossier is conceded to be correct: '[T]he official said he was convinced that Iraq had programme to produce weapons of mass destruction, and felt it was 30% likely there was a biological weapons programme. He said some evidence had been 'downplayed' by chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix."

Why does Krugman go on like this, clipping his clippings and linking them together and searching endlessly for the key to the secret code that will reveal the truth about the Bushie plot to hijack America?

Indeed, Luskin actually goes too easy on Krugman here. When you read the BBC piece, it makes it clear that the BBC's source is not, in any way, questioning the case against Saddam:

But the official said he was convinced that Iraq had programme to produce weapons of mass destruction, and felt it was 30% likely there was a biological weapons programme.

He said some evidence had been "downplayed" by chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix.

So why would Krugman cite a BBC article supporting Bush's arguments in claiming that the BBC reported that Bush's arguments were false? Did he not read the BBC piece before quoting it? Or did he just hope nobody else would check up on him? And how long is the New York Times going to let Krugman and Maureen Dowd continue to embarrass themselves like this?
posted by David Nieporent at 6/03/2003 03:35:00 PM |

 

Burying the lede

I am as critical as the next blogger about abuses of police power, but when Partha writes about post-9/11 immigration enforcement that "what was done was not legal", he's simply exhibiting the knee-jerk reaction the New York Times wants him to. He skips the eighth word in the very first sentence of the article. Hundreds of illegal immigrants were rounded up. It is not, of course, "un-American and un-Constitutional" to detain and then deport illegal immigrants.

The article begins by pointing out that many of the people arrested had no connection to terrorism, and then goes into great detail about their treatment, but underplays considerably the fact that the people who were detained were, in fact, criminals. Indeed, as the article notes, "most of the 762 immigrants have now been deported." Although the Times does include one sentence suggesting actual legal problems --

But the inspector general's report found that some lawyers in the department raised concerns about the legality of the tactics, only to be overridden by senior officials.

- it fails to elaborate on this in any way, or provide any evidence to back up the suggestion that laws were broken or rights were violated.

This is part of a pattern of New York Times stories portraying illegal immigrants as victims, rather than criminals. It's apparently true that (a) most of those arrested were not dangerous, and (b) most of these people would never have been arrested had it not been for the post-9/11 crackdown. As such, it would be reasonable to question whether post-9/11 immigration enforcement has been efficient or even effective. But that in no way is synonymous with the idea that these people were wrongly arrested. If the Times wishes to take the last as its editorial position, if they wish to argue that the nation's immigration laws shouldn't be enforced, they should do so overtly, rather than using the news section to repeatedly insinuate that the government violated the rights of criminals by arresting them. And if the Times has evidence that laws were actually broken, it should say so.
posted by David Nieporent at 6/03/2003 11:21:00 AM |

 

If it was good enough for the Million Man March...

Always read the fine print. The New Jersey Education Association wants the state to raise taxes on a certain group:

The solution: what the NJEA and nearly 100 other groups calling themselves the Fairness Alliance have dubbed the "millionaire's tax." The tax is designed to infuse about $1 billion into the state budget for education, health care and the arts by raising income taxes on those earning more than a half-million dollars a year.

I guess "People who don't make anywhere close to a million tax" didn't sound quite as promising in focus group testing.
posted by David Nieporent at 6/01/2003 02:37:00 PM |