or	An April 9th New York Times featured article subtly but seriously distorts the facts presented in their own newspaper in 2003 by former ambassador Joseph Wilson on the Bush administration's false claims that Saddam Hussein attempted to buy yellow cake uranium from Niger to make nuclear weapons.

While recent grand jury revelations that Dick Cheney's chief of staff, I. "Scooter" Libby, leaked classified information to New York Times reporter Judith Miller on orders from President Bush himself have certainly been a bombshell, the Times has been doing its level best to revise history and their own sordid role in helping the president beat the war drums in the build up to the invasion of Iraq.

A Forgery is not an Exaggeration
In an April 9th, 2006, front page featured article by David Sanger and David Barstow titled "Iraq Findings Leaked by Cheney's Aide Were Disputed," the authors stated: The events took place at a time when the administration's failure to find illicit weapons in Iraq had raised serious questions about the credibility of prewar intelligence. The White House was finding itself under fire from critics, like former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, who were suggesting that the administration's claims about Iraq's efforts to acquire uranium, featured in Mr. Bush's State of the Union address in 2003, had been exaggerated.

A casual reading of this paragraph might easily miss its inherent revisionism, particularly if one is not familiar with what former ambassador Wilson actually told the Times in his op-ed piece published on July 6th of 2003. Referring to the alleged documentary evidence that Saddam had attempted to obtain yellow cake from Niger, Wilson said, ". . . news accounts have pointed out that the documents had glaring errors — they were signed, for example, by officials who were no longer in government — and were probably forged. And then there's the fact that Niger formally denied the charges."

As if to make sure that the reader absorbs their revisionist spin, the article again misrepresents Wilson's conclusions: "Mr. Wilson reported in that article that he had been sent to Niger by the C.I.A. to search for evidence of the transaction, and reported back that there was insufficient evidence that any serious effort had taken place."

"Insufficient Evidence" versus "a Forgery"
Now, if you hadn't read Wilson's original op-ed piece, you'd be left with the distinct and ultimately erroneous impression that Wilson had found some evidence of Saddam trying to obtain yellow cake, but thought that it was weak ("insufficient evidence that any serious effort had taken place"), and that the issue at hand is basically a matter of differing opinions on the strength of intelligence reports between Wilson and the Bush camp.

The same can be said for the article's insistance on stating that Wilson believed the intelligence reports "had been exaggerated." In point of fact, Wilson stated that he believed the Niger yellow cake documents in question were "probably forged." Which means there was no evidence that Saddam Hussein tried to obtain yellow cake uranium from Niger, and which is a lot different from saying that there was "insufficient evidence." What's more, it means that the Bush administration knowingly used information which they knew from their own intelligence sources to be false as a rational for invading Iraq, information that was already available to them for more than a year!

So Why the Spin?
So what might be the motivation for the Times' subtle but undeniable revisionism? Perhaps the simplest explanation is that by suggesting that the Bush adminstration was spinning and exaggerating intelligence it takes off the table the fact that they were lying through their teeth in order to find an excuse to attack Iraq. The former damages them politically for sure, but the latter is a crime and an impeachable offense.

The faut liberal New York Times of 2006 is not about to go against the corporate-funded Republican establishment that currently controls all branches of government, the same establishment they were only to happy to support via reporters like Judith Miller, who wrote a series of highly inflamatory New York Times articles based on bogus Bush administration leaks which falsely maintained that Saddam Hussein had millions of tons of weapons of mass destruction, and was ready to deliver them for use on American soil.