From The Scotsman:
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.
"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." PERHAPS....they will be bringing in some unemployed U.N. Inspectors...to help find the "transcript"??