The Guardian Pulls a "Dowd" - Falsely Attributes War for Oil Claim to Wolfowitz w/ Misquote

6 June 2003

[BlueNgold]

Thank you!
Well organized and well referenced!

[hellinahandcart]

Courtesy of FreeTranslations:

"Look, the mainly difference -poô read a very simply small one -between Korea North and Iraq is that we had practically no economic options with Iraq because the rural buoys in a sea of oil. In case of of Korea North, the country scale itself in the economic border of collapse and that I believe he is an advantage important thing tip while the military chart with Korea North is very unlike that with Iraq. The problems in both cases have some resemblances but the solutions received be tailored to the circumstances that they are very peculiar."

[BlueNgold]

I am reminded of "All the President's Men" ... as I recall Woodward and Bernstein were forced by their editors to source, check, and verify through at least one other source everything they were planning on publishing if they intended to rely on an 'unnamed' primary source. When did the 2 source standard disappear?

[hellinahandcart]

Good letter. Nice game-show title. ;D

[alwaysconservative]

This discussion about translating and re-translating reminded me of a funny thing I saw. There was a TV show called "News Radio" where the owner of the station, Jimmy James, wrote a book. It didn't do too well in America, so he had it translated and released in Japan. It was a huge hit over there, and so they translated it back for a release in the US. What was originally called something like "Jimmy James: Corporate Lion Tamer" became something "Honorable Jimmy: Monkey-strong killer". He had to try to read it at a publicity function, and it was so garbled as to be unrecognizable. It was HILARIOUS!

[Stultis]

I had an excellent ghost writer!

[Aric2000]

DAMN, YOU ARE GOOD!!!

[Stultis]

Portuguese is fun.

Of course. It is the language of the Samba!

[Michael81Dus]

Well, during a trial, I would bring a motion to the court, saying that "the witness is right."
If Wolfowitz said that, and I do believe it, then the US will have big problems to find friends and allies the next time. The credibility is heavily damaged. And if I were Rumsfeld, I had a new deputy Secretary today...

[Sloth]

Excellent! This sort of distortion by journalists should be criminally prosecutable.

[tictoc]

So you claim that the Department of Defense is lying in its transcript of its own tape. More proof from you that you are a conservative in name only. Why are you still on FreeRepublic?

[hellinahandcart]

If Wolfowitz said that, and I do believe it, then the US will have big problems to find friends and allies the next time. The credibility is heavily damaged

It's been established that he did NOT "say it", but you choose to believe it anyway.

Citizen of the Savage Nation predicted this in #9:

This will now be accepted as fact by every German-speaking person in Europe. Protestations to the opposite will require tons of proof and still won't be believed. Such is how it is these days...

Sorry to learn this is true of you, Michael.

[tictoc]

Did you catch my exchange with Michael in this thread?

[hellinahandcart]

No, I missed that.

[sazerac]

Sorry, newbie here.

The link to The Guardian story no longer works. Does this mean they have retracted the story? And I can't find it at their website.

[Stultis]

The full text of the Guardian story was posted in another FreeRepublic thread. It's the first link in message #1.

[hellinahandcart]

The link to The Guardian story no longer works...And I can't find it at their website.

The link to The Guardian story no longer works...And I can't find it at their website.

This is yet another STUNNING example of why people need to stop posting friggin' EXCERPTS of everything. We only *have* to excerpt articles from LA Times/Washington Post organizations. Yet the new trend appears to be "post one paragraph and link the rest", even when we don't have to, even though it subjects people to extra time and a flood of pop-up windows, even though the linked websites can and do alter and pull stories at will (which leaves us with ten tons of useless articles in the archives).

This has happened more times than I can count. Websites change stuff ALL THE TIME and if posters only link to the articles, there's no record of the change or the original story. Why, they can pull an article and pretend it never existed at all.

This excerpting trend is due to one of two things, IMO-- ignorance of why we're forced to excerpt from certain sources, or sheer laziness (they don't want to format the whole thing). People should post the full text whenever it's possible, or not bother to post.

[Stultis]

areafiftyone did post the full article in the original thread that I linked at the top of this one. I was only excerpting from his message:

Wolfowitz: Iraq war was about oil (RUH ROH!!)

[Stultis]

Chron-Watch has this now:

"Liberal Press Misquoting Paul Wolfowitz on Iraq War"

[hellinahandcart]

I was not talking about YOU, dearie. The full original text existed already on the other thread, and as you made clear early on, this thread is a companion piece to the other one. They are to be read together, IMO.

But this morning, I've read at least twenty articles that were excerpted for no earthly reason. It drives me nuts. NUTS, I tell you.