The Guardian Fully Retracts BOTH Powell/Straw Story AND Wolfowitz "It's All About Oil" Story

The Guardian ^ | June 5, 2003

[Dont Mention the War]

Corrections and clarifications

Thursday June 5, 2003

In our front page lead on May 31 headlined "Straw, Powell had serious doubts over their Iraqi weapons claims," we said that the foreign secretary Jack Straw and his US counterpart Colin Powell had met at the Waldorf Hotel in New York shortly before Mr Powell addressed the United Nations on February 5. Mr Straw has now made it clear that no such meeting took place. The Guardian accepts that and apologises for suggesting it did.

[Dont Mention the War]

From News24:

Although The Guardian earlier reported that US deputy defence secretary, Paul Wolfowitz had said that the Iraq war was all about oil, the newspaper has now removed the article from its web site, and will print a full correction in Friday's edition. According to the Guardian's ombudsman, the quote, "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," was taken out of context, and misconstrued.

[jrlc]

Maybe they can follow the lead of the NY Slime and all resign.

[Psycho_Bunny]

Wow....this is turning into a facinating News Day.

[Spiff]

Hey Guardian, you're NOT done retracting. You still have THIS intentional misquote and story to retract. On another note, your idiotic rag isn't even worthy to wrap fish or line the bottom of a bird cage.

[Dont Mention the War]

From The Scotsman:

Caught in a trap of its own making:

ALONE in a national newspaper industry congenitally reluctant to correct its mistakes, the Guardian has an exemplary record: its famous "corrections and clarifications" column has even been turned into a book.

All the more mysterious, therefore, that it has yet to correct or clarify its Saturday page-one splash which alleged that Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, and his US counterpart, Colin Powell, met in New York’s Waldorf Hotel just before a crucial UN session on Iraq on 5 February and moaned to each other about the poor quality of their intelligence on Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction.

Some sort of clarification, at the very least, is surely in order because no evidence has yet been produced to show that the alleged meeting between Mr Powell and Mr Straw ever took place, much less that they said what the Guardian alleges. The Foreign Secretary denies it; the Guardian now says it might have been a telephone conversation.

The paper claims there is a transcript of the conversation - but it has yet to produce it, admits it has not seen it, but hints mysteriously that a copy of the "Waldorf transcripts" is doing the rounds of "NATO capitals". Such circulation means that, if it does exist, it will no doubt emerge soon.

The story’s provenance is not helped by the joint byline: Richard Norton-Taylor is an experienced correspondent on intelligence matters, but his name comes after Dan Plesch, who is not even a journalist but a "defence expert" who was opposed to the Iraq war and whose commentaries at the start of hostilities have not stood the test of time.

There is no question, of course, that the failure, so far, to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq is a crisis of credibility for Tony Blair, the Prime Minister. I also suspect that WMD intelligence was flammed up in places to make the case for an unpopular war more powerful.

But the media lynch party currently pursuing the Prime Minister has its own agenda: anti-war papers and broadcasters given a bloody nose with the speedy and relatively simple fall of Baghdad are seeking revenge on a government which defied them by going to war and often proved their direst predictions wrong.

THE Guardian is not alone. The equally anti-war Financial Times now tells us, in grandiose terms, that it "always suspected" Iraq had no WMD. I doubt it does so now on the basis of its own search party returning to Southwark Bridge empty-handed - there is something absurd about papers making themselves sound omniscient on these matters. Curiously, the very anti-war Mirror has been less triumphalist about the Prime Minister’s WMD problems than you might expect - maybe new boss Sly Bailey now has editor Piers Morgan firmly under control.

Another dog that has failed to bark is the Daily Telegraph: it should be scrutinising the flood of WMD stories with forensic intensity, if only to justify its own pro-war stance. But it had little to say on the matter.

Yesterday’s editorial in the Times brought some much-needed balance to the current WMD feeding frenzy, arguing there should be no official inquiry (for which much of the media are now baying) until "a comprehensive search is completed". Fair enough: but that search will need a cut-off date, and if it produces nowt, Mr Blair will face a press in full cry against him like he never has before.

[finnman69]

BWAHAHAHAHA

Whatta news day...

Howell Raines gone

Garofalo's sitocm is canned

Martha Stewart indicted

and now this...

[BrooklynGOP]

Garofalo's sitocm is canned

What? When did this happen?

[hellinahandcart]

Yoooooooooooo-hoo....

[tsmith130]

I didn't even know she had one!

[Dog]

Stultis gets credit for this he/she nailed the Guardian!

HERE!

[Dog]

Take your bow!

[Stultis]

Although The Guardian earlier reported that US deputy defence secretary, Paul Wolfowitz had said that the Iraq war was all about oil, the newspaper has now removed the article from its web site, and will print a full correction in Friday's edition.

Here's a thread on this:

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

And the thread with the now yanked al-Guardian story:

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

[Howlin]

There is some weird stuff going on.

[BlueNgold]

This is amazing. The Guardian has retracted the story, yet CNN Headline news was running the story on their 'ticker line' at the bottom as recently as 1214 EST 05 June 2003. I don't have the time or contact info for them, perhaps some of you can Freep them as well.

[Stultis]

They're gonna have to find another jew to misquote quick or Monday's corrections column will be a let down.

[Dog]

I think we have the liberal side on its heels....:-)

[Billthedrill]

...anti-war papers and broadcasters given a bloody nose with the speedy and relatively simple fall of Baghdad are seeking revenge on a government which defied them by going to war and often proved their direst predictions wrong.

Sounds so very familiar...

[Stultis]

I think it was due to that call they got from the DOD, politely asking for their GPS coordinates.

[MJY1288]

Those Pigs will be flying by any minute now :-)

[VOA]

So, when do the journalists actually tell the truth?

Yesterday the LA Times described a former Iraqi chem/bio expert as "wiry".
The photo of the same guy (well, at least the same name as used in the article)
showed a guy with a decent sized gut hanging over his belt.

Maybe the text editors and photo editors don't look at each others work.