I had not read the NYT much or followed their daily machinations because, well, because I just did not trust them. The NYT does not report news, they manipulate news and it is done in a concious effort to take sides and persuade. Now I do not mind if a newspaper, through editorial policy, has a side and, in fact, prefer that to one that does not, one that says it is objective. No one, whether a newspaper or the people inhabiting it can be objective in the way suggested by a claim of being objective.

I still don't intentionally read the NYT, though it is forced upon me in my efforts to keep up with the news via the blogosphere. Yesterday, and now today, The NYT has again used an issue - misjudgments and screwups by the Bush Administration in connection with the battle in Iraq - to damage Bush and help the Kerry campaign win election. Yesterday's article was obvious and the initial response went directly to "What a crock" and never passed "This is bad news for Bush" in the real sense. By the end of the day, the story was a joke with several punch lines:
- It's a 60 Minutes semi-exclusive,
- IAEA's writes worrying intra-office memos,
- NYT, dateline 10/25/04: HDX missing; NBC, dateline 10/25/04: We knew that 16 months ago!
- 380 tons, alternately described as 760,000 lbs, of dangerous nuclear components that never existed have now vanished.

And today they compound the error by editorializing on the disaster which is Bush by weaving this 'new' news into asundry other 'news' of, as they say "President Bush's misbegotten invasion of Iraq" to show that not only that Bush not only handing terrorists weapons but also creating the terrorists to use them.

Why is it the NYT, suspsicious of every little thing aboveboard, can't deduce that a terrorist is affliated with Al Qaeda until he announces his allegiance? And doesn't the NYT have any reference material to work from? By only the second paragraph they write this:

The murder of dozens of Iraqi Army recruits over the weekend is being attributed to the forces of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who has been identified by the Bush administration as a leading terrorist and a supposed link between Iraq and Al Qaeda. That was not true before the war - as multiple investigations have shown. But the breakdown of order since the invasion has changed all that. This terrorist, who has claimed many attacks on occupation forces and the barbaric murder of hostages, recently swore allegiance to Osama bin Laden and renamed his group Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia.

Now here is a fact, instead of NYT blather:

Zarqawi is also on the HVT list, and I think that recent events should demonstrate just how prudent it was to put his name up there back in 2001.

The editorial can't get past the second paragraph before screwing up totally. Two days, two screw-ups. I get news and views from people like Dan Darling because I can trust him to honestly give me the straight scoop. So I would ask Daniel Okrent, if I was a mind to write him, why it is so easy to show the NYT wrong and why it is that a college student has a better grasp of facts and better resources than the NYT.