Michael Gordon, the military writer for The New York Times who contributed false stories about Iraqi WMD in the runup to the U.S. attack on Iraq in 2002, has written several articles in the past year about Iran's alleged training of Iraqi insurgents -- or supplying them with weapons to kill Americans.  He produced another major report on this subject for Monday's Times -- based solely on unnamed sources -- which is quite at odds with an account from McClatchy's Baghdad bureau.  

Gordon asserted that "Militants from the Lebanese group Hezbollah have been training Iraqi militia fighters at a camp near Tehran... An American official said the account of Hezbollah's role was provided by four Shiite militia members who were captured in Iraq late last year and questioned separately.  The United States has long charged that the Iranians were training Iraqi militia fighters in Iran, which Iran has consistently denied, and there have been previous reports about Hezbollah operatives in Iraq.

Work lasted into the late evening last night.  After a nap I got up and watched the second part of Frontline's Bush's War series on streaming video from the WGBH website.  [What a nice site that is.]

It was informative, seemed well supported, and is well made too.

So with that in mind, and with the official totals over 4,000 dead now and some 30,000 wounded just on the US side, I'd like to take a look at what I saw as shortcomings in the documentary.  Let's jump.

You might think my title is a reference to John McCain's claim that we should stay in Iraq for 100 years.  That would, after all be a reasonable assumption.  But no, the idea that we must stay in  Iraq for the indefinite future at a cost of thousands of lives and billions (trillions?) of tax dollars is not solely limited to Republicans, right wing crazies and Bush/Cheney dead enders.  It's also the rallying cry of prominent news reporters and self described Middle Eastern experts like Michael R. Gordon of the New York Times, who today in a column/report castigates Democrats for daring to talk about pulling our military forces out of Iraq:

(cont.)

Gee, what is going on with Mikie and the NY Times? It's time for the big push to bomb Iran, and Michael Gordon hasn't done an anti-Iran piece in over two months. Today, the AP (sort of a second line warmongering organization), taking its lead from the "Voice of America" propaganda network reports that the Army is accusing Iran of "being aware" of lethal IED shipped "from Iran" to "Afghanistan", where presumably they would be used to "kill American soldiers." I'm sure that Disney, Fox, and the other whources will be all lathered up, without bothering to wonder why the Shiite Imams would want to aid the Taliban. Why is the NY Times not running the story?
Does the NY Times/Bill Keller actually have some stones? has Michael Gordon been taken off the snakes on a exclusive US military plane? Is he now riding with the poor McClatchy reporters? without canapes?

A newly released Gallup poll reveals a national trust gap with regard to the media. Amongst its findings is that less than half of respondents (48%) report having either a great or a fair amount confidence in the accuracy or fairness of the news media. The only thing surprising about that number is that it isn't much lower.

What is truly surprising is the distribution of views along partisan party lines. Republican's trust threshold bottoms out at 33%. Democrats, however, have a curiously high satisfaction with the media at 66%.

What's up with that?

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This is really quite shameful: the New York Times has a piece up by Michael Gordon about how the "surge" is "working". Predictably, he quotes fellow traveler Michael O'Hanlon and writes glowingly of the many successes of the surge.

Before continuing, it's worth noting a bit about Michael Gordon's past misdeeds.  With Judy Miller, he co-authored some of the most atrocious pieces about WMD, pieces of which then-NYT ombudsman Dan Okrent wrote:

we have found a number of instances of coverage that was not as rigorous as it should have been. In some cases, information that was controversial then, and seems questionable now, was insufficiently qualified or allowed to stand unchallenged. Looking back, we wish we had been more aggressive in re-examining the claims as new evidence emerged — or failed to emerge.

NYT's preeminent expert on Iraq, who says he spent most of the summer there, said on MTP today that we are not arming Sunnis.

From the transcript:

To see how much the media frames the nation's debate, just look at a recent story from Iraq. The story gets perverted into warmongering and the "real story" gets lost. First, here is the article Kim Sengupta wrote for The Independent, 'Roadside bomb attacks in Iraq reach an all-time high':

Roadside bomb attacks on American troops in Iraq reached an all-time high last month, accounting for more than one third of all combat deaths.

The increase in the number of casualties caused by the explosive devices comes at the height of the "surge' of US forces which, the Pentagon claims, is broadly a success. Washington and London have blamed Iran for supplying the devices which have been used with lethal effect against American and British troops.

Although coalition forces have claimed a number of successes in discovering caches of the bombs, the number of attacks in July, stated as 99, shows the insurgency has had no problem in obtaining supplies.

The fact that roadside bombs have taken an "all-time high" number of U.S. casualties is the focus of the piece, which makes it pretty obvious it was written for a newspaper outside the United States.

It is of interest that the administration continues to rely on the same shills to trumpet its propaganda, instead of finding new voices that would be better trusted. Instead, we end up with a weird "boy who cried wolf" situation, as Michael Gordon of the NYTimes is once again the go to guy to deseminate the White House line on IraN:

Attacks on American-led forces using a lethal type of roadside bomb said to be supplied by Iran reached a new high in July, according to the American military. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, the No. 2 American commander in Iraq, says attacks by Shiite militias remain a long-term concern.

The devices, known as explosively formed penetrators, were used to carry out 99 attacks last month and accounted for a third of the combat deaths suffered by the American-led forces, according to American military officials.

"July was an all-time high," Lt. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, the No. 2 commander in Iraq, said in an interview, referring to strikes with such devices.

There's more:

Michael Gordon gets quoted (and challenged) a lot on this blog and others.  Mcjoan suggests in today's midday open thread that his latest article is not consistent with his voice in the past.  There's an explanation for this.  Michael Gordon does not exist.  No, it's not that he's someone else using Michael Gordon as a pen name.  Michael Gordon does not exist.  Michael Gordon is a voice-activated tape recorder.  More below...

Ever since 9/11, much of the media has engaged in a brand of journalism that more closely resembled stenography. It consisted mainly of uncritically regurgitating White House misrepresentations of foreign policy and terrorist threats. This failure on the part of the fourth estate resulted in such travesties as the war in Iraq, the Patriot Act, and the buttressing of an ever more imperious executive branch that brazenly ignored the Congress, the people, and the law. While some of the worst offenders later issued mea culpas, they obviously didn't learn very much.

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On May 11 Cheney warned Iran from the deck of an aircraft carrier in the Persian Gulf that the United States will not permit Iran to develope nuclear weapons. "With two carrier strike groups in the Gulf, we're sending clear messages to friends and adversaries alike."  

Cheney-Bush and their friends are orchestrating a continual stream of revelations about Iran's role in arming and training Iraqi militias. Joe Lieberman says the war has already begun. "Iran has initiated a deadly military confrontation with us, from bases in Iran, which we ignore at our peril, and at the peril of our allies throughout the Middle East."

In another parallel to the run-up to invading Iraq, a NYTimes reporter has a "source" for Iran's evil-doing who is weirdly similar to their "source" for the mobile bio-war labs in Iraq.

Judith Miller had "Curveball." Michael Gordon has "Hamid the Mute."

The news of Scooter Libby’s sentence commutation has diverted attention from three rather large aircraft carrier groups in the Persian Gulf and that so-called member of the “Axis of Evil” that, fortunately or unfortunately for it, sits atop one of the Earth’s largest supplies of oil.

Michael Gordon, late of the team of Judith Miller and Michael Gordon, who stenographed for the Administration in order to kick start the war in Iraq, is at it again.  This time he stenographs about Iran, saying that Iran, through Hezbollah, is helping insurgents kill our soldiers in Iraq.  (The article requires a subscription or I would post a link.)  Glen Greenwald calls him on it in Salon, Michael Gordon trains his stenographer weapons on Iran.  It seems it is déjà vu all over again.  Again.  And if this is not enough to tell us all that attacking Iran is a very bad idea, witness that Joe Lieberman is calling for war.  

The Michael Gordon/NYT Iran story, pilloried yesterday by Glenn and noted by me here has received a few updates, some qualifications, and a new byline and a new headline: U.S. Says Iran Helped Iraqis Kill Five G.I.’s, just to up the drama a bit.

Editor and Publisher's Greg Mitchell isn't buying it either:

As if he hadn’t done enough damage already, helping to promote the American invasion of Iraq with deeply flawed articles in The New York Times, Michael R. Gordon is now writing scare stories that offer ammunition for the growing chorus of neo-cons calling for a U.S. strike against Iran – his most recent effort appearing just this morning.

What’s most lamentable is that editors at The New York Times, who should have learned their lessons four years ago, are once again serving as enablers.... Perhaps even his editors were concerned or embarrassed. The same story suddenly gained a couple of qualifiers, though not nearly enough, later yesterday (first spotted by Salon blogger Glenn Greenwald), and then got enlarged somewhat today, and with the byline of Burns added to Gordon's.

The story even has a lead character reminiscent of "Curveball" and "Baseball Cap Guy" from Judy Miller's reporting on Iraq in 2003. Our new star informer is a Lebanese citizen named Ali Musa Daqdug aka "Hamid the Mute" who supposedly (this is all coming from Gen. Bergner) has a "24-year history in Hezbollah....The general said Mr. Daqdug had been sent by Hezbollah to Iran in 2005 with orders to work with the Quds Force, an elite unit of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, to train 'Iraqi extremists.'"
....
[I]n explaining that "Hamid the Mute" had suddenly started talking: "The official said the shift had been achieved without harming Mr. Daqduq. ‘We don’t torture,’ the official said. ‘We follow scrupulously the interrogation techniques in the Army’s new field manual, which forbids torture, and has the force of law.’"

Right. No torture in our army. I'm sure Hamid the Mute is an unimpeachable source.

I hope that Gordon's editors are concerned. They can't have forgotten Gordon's "aluminum tubes" and "mushroom clouds" contribution with his colleague Judy Miller in 2002. Any self-respecting foreign desk editor would have had Gordon pulled off of the beat in the wake of that fiasco. That he is still allowed onto the front page of the "paper of record" with his questionable and anonymous, and often single, sources should be a profound embarrassment.

The Iraq polls are increasingly grim for Bush, with 66 percent of people now saying get the hell out, with a full 40 percent of that total saying do it now. What's a highly unpopular administration to do when the nation has lost all confidence in the war?

Go back to the tried and true. Get NYT's reliable Iran war drum beater and reporter Michael Gordon to pen yet another article beating the drum on Iran. Yup, he's back, this time with some really extraordinary claims about Iran's involvement in the Iraq:

Iranian operatives helped plan a January raid in Karbala in which five American soldiers were killed, an American military spokesman in Iraq said today.... Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has used operatives from the Lebanese militia group Hezbollah as a "proxy" to train and arm Shiite militants in Iraq.... American military officials have long asserted that the Quds Force, an elite unit of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, has trained and equipped Shiite militants in Iraq. The Americans have also cited extensive intelligence indicating that Iran has supplied Shiite militants with the most lethal type of roadside bomb in Iraq, a bomb called the explosively formed penetrator, which is capable of piercing an armored vehicle.

And it goes on and on from there. We've been here before, several times. In fact, back in February, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Peter Pace was busy denying that we had any evidence whatsoever that the Iranian government was involved in arming Shiite extremists. Does this article do anything to further those claims with evidence? I'll let Glenn take over from here:

These are quite extraordinary claims the NYT is publishing, as they amount to an accusation that the Iranian Government, at its highest levels, is directing fatal attacks on American troops in Iraq, which constitutes, of course, an act of war. As Gordon himself points out: "In effect, American officials are charging that Iran has been engaged in a proxy war against American forces for years."

What is the basis for Gordon's story? What sources does he use to convey these incomparably serious charges? One source and one source only, the only one he seems to know -- military spokespeople, in this case Brig. Gen. Kevin J. Bergner.

Every paragraph in this article -- literally -- does one of two things: (1) uncritically recites the U.S. military's accusations against the Iranian government, and/or (2) offers assertions from Gordon himself designed to bolster those accusations (e.g., "There is also extensive intelligence that Iran has supplied Shiite militants with the most lethal type of roadside bomb in Iraq" and "In Washington, Bush Administration officials have generally held open the possibility that the Quds Force activities might have been carried out without the knowledge of Iran's senior leaders").

I defy anyone to scour Gordon's article and point to a single difference, large or small, between its content and what a Camp Victory Press Release on this topic would say. Such a comparison requires little imagination, since it has become a clear rhetorical objective of the U.S. military to begin pinning the blame for violent attacks in Iraq not just on Iran, but on the Iranian government.

Of course the objective of the U.S. military has been to pin the blame on the Iranian government. Not only does it further their case for war against Iran but it provides a momentary distraction from just how catastrophic this whole venture has been. And, yet again, Michael Gordon is the willing media stooge for their efforts. The NYT really should do something about him.

Bill Keller of the NY Times is appearing at Stanford tonight as part of a group discussion of the future of print media. I plan on making up a Judith Miller mask and sitting in the front row...

okay, my wife won't let me do that. But I do hope to get in a question from the peanut gallery.  I have a couple of questions in mind, depending on what else he has been asked; my questions deal with propaganda, body counts, sourcing, Michael Gordon, and possibly the new username of Armando.

But I wanted to solicit ideas from Kossacks; I don't consider myself to be a hard core reader of the Times, nor am I from the east coast.

Any suggestions?

I had noticed this today from Reuters:

"Iraqi army soldiers swept into the city of Diwaniya early this morning to disrupt militia activity and return security and stability of the volatile city back to the government of Iraq," the US military said in a statement. Bleichwehl said troops, facing scattered resistance, discovered a factory that produced "explosively formed penetrators" (EFPs), a particularly deadly type of explosive that can destroy a main battle tank and several weapons caches.

NOTE:the Reuters story was changed at some point during the day.MAIN REUTERS SITE.

I posted it at my blog, thinking that this was a pretty important item as it shoots a pretty big hole in one of Bush/Abrams' main propaganda stories about Iran.

Turns out there is even more to this story.

Apparently in response to reader comments and e-mails, Barney Calame takes Michael Gordon and the NYT editors to task for his decidedly pro-adminstration reporting on Iran.

Editing vigilance on intelligence and national security coverage means dealing with the anonymous sourcing that many deem essential to bringing vital issues to light in that murky area. So editors need to ensure that unnamed sources are in a position to know and that any biases are clear to the reporter. The Times’s most important requirement for anonymous sources — that an editor must know their identity — was followed for Mr. Gordon’s Feb. 10 story. Douglas Jehl, a deputy chief of the Washington bureau and his editor, told me he knew the name of each anonymous source in the article. The story also attempted a generalized explanation of why the officials were willing to talk. I do wish, however, that the article had found a way to comply with the paper’s policy of explaining why sources are allowed to remain unnamed.

On the whole, Calame's piece doesn't come down too hard on Gordon, but does call into question some of the choices his editors allowed.

Failing to reach out for dissenting views was a pre-war shortcoming, The Times has previously acknowledged. So even after Mr. Gordon had "nailed" key parts of the Feb. 10 article, according to Mr. Keller, editors specifically asked him "to talk to places in government that had been skeptical of W.M.D.," such as the State Department. Still, editors didn’t make sure all conflicting views were always clearly reported. For example, the article on Mr. Bush’s news conference pointed out that the position of the president — and the similar position taken earlier in the week by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff — differed from the suggestion at the Sunday Baghdad briefing that the weapons effort involved top levels of the Iranian government. That story also should have noted, however, that the president’s view on this point differed from the intelligence assessment given readers of the Feb. 10 article.

The column is significant in that Calame and the NYT are listening to readers (and possibly, as Greenwald posits, the blogs) in reviewing national security reporting. There is ample evidence in this column that Calame and editors at the NYT did learn a lesson from the Judy Miller/Michael Gordon reporting fiascos of 2002 and 2003.

I'm not sure that Gordon has indeed learned the lesson of skepticism, or that he lets skepticism outweigh his own political biases. As Greenwald points out, Gordon has already faced very public criticism for advancing his political views in his role as a reporter/commentator:

In fact, this is the second time in less than a month that Gordon has been expressly criticized in the pages of the NYT, having been chided in late January by his own editor when he "stepped over the line" and "went too far" by going on The Charlie Rose Show and expressly advocating President Bush's "surge" plan. Gordon clearly has a pro-war, pro-neoconservative agenda which engenders serial journalistic sins (and that is the case despite his having authored a book which, as many neoconservatives have done, criticizes the administration's handling of the war). There is a reason why Iran-obsessed warmonger Michael Ledeen -- Michael Ledeen -- recently called Gordon "one of our best journalists."

That Michael Gordon continues in the national security beat given his involvement in the Iraq WMD reporting is problematic, but as Big Tent Dem points out, he has the sources and the background knowledge to effectively cover the beat. But as BTD stresses, his editors need to keep him on a short leash, a much shorter leash than his editors have allowed. That the public editor of the NYT is stressing this is indeed good news. Even better, he's responding to readers' concerns. So keep those e-mails flowing, folks.