Here's what I thought you'd like to hear about today:

The New York Times Gets it Wrong - three examples

1. The War in Iraq
2. The NSA Eavesdropping and the FISA judges
3. The Leak

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The War in Iraq

Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit points to the Mudville Gazette, who found an "unforced error" in the Times last week.

NY Times headline, March 27: 30 Beheaded Bodies Found; Iraqi Death Squads Blamed

BAGHDAD, Iraq, March 26 -- The bodies of 30 beheaded men were found on a main highway near Baquba this evening, providing more evidence that the death squads in Iraq are becoming out of control.

But Blazing headlines notwithstanding, the odd thing about those headless bodies that provided more evidence that death squads in Iraq were out of control is that nobody ever claims to have actually seen them:

Interior Ministry officials said a driver discovered the bodies heaped in a pile next to a highway that links Baghdad to Baquba, a volatile city northeast of the capital that has been wracked by sectarian and insurgent violence.

Iraqi army troops were waiting tonight for American support before venturing into the insurgent-infested area to retrieve them.

"It's too dangerous for us to go in there alone," an Iraqi Army commander, Tassin Tawfik, said.

In short, some guy said he knew a guy that saw them. Which is how the story should have been reported - as a rumor. But it wasn't.

Mudville then refers to a recent briefing from Iraq that was on the Pentagon Channel Podcast, which I listen to regularly. They play the entire briefing from the officers who are doing the work in Iraq, including the questions from the clueless press. Listen to this excerpt where Pam Hess from UPI "uptalks" her question about the headless bodies that the New York Times reported so breathlessly. The briefer is Major General Thurman.

Play clip.

O.k. So, with no headless bodies, does that mean that the evidence that "death squads" no longer "becomming out of control" was somewhat premature? How did that army of "fact checkers" at the Times ever make such an error? Do you suppose they were simply trying to find any evidence that supported their readers preconceived notion that Iraq was going badly? If it was just a random error, we would expect an equal number of errors that went the other way, right? Perhaps a story about a city that expelled terrorists but they really didn't. Has anyone seen any NY Times good news in Iraq story that later proved false? Why is it only the anti-Bush stories that are shown to be false after the NY Times publishes them. Agenda or just giving their readers what they want to read? I tend to think it is the latter.

The NSA Eavesdropping and the FISA judges

Verdict: The New York Times Blew the Story

That's the headline in PowerlineBlog from March 29. Suppose that five former judges of the Federal Intelligence Surveillance Court were to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee, and gave their opinions of the NSA Evesdropping issue that has been in news so much lately, thanks to the leaks from the NY Times. Suppose the judges were to say that the President was within his rights and duties to order such eavesdropping. The Judges might say something like the following clip in response to Democrats trying to get them to condemn the program. Thanks to C-SPAN for the video.

Play clip.

Here's what Powerline Blog saw in two different papers the next day:

Yesterday, five former judges of the Federal Intelligence Surveillance Court testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee on the subject of the amendments to FISA that have been proposed by Senator Arlen Specter. Earlier today, we noted a remarkable contrast in the reporting on the hearing by the Washington Times and the New York Times. The Washington Times headlined its story, "FISA Judges Say Bush Within Law," and reported:

A panel of former Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court judges yesterday told members of the Senate Judiciary Committee that President Bush did not act illegally when he created by executive order a wiretapping program conducted by the National Security Agency (NSA).

The New York Times headlined its article, "Judges on Secretive Panel Speak Out on Spy Program," and wrote:

Five former judges on the nation's most secretive court, including one who resigned in apparent protest over President Bush's domestic eavesdropping, urged Congress on Tuesday to give the court a formal role in overseeing the surveillance program.

In a rare glimpse into the inner workings of the secretive court, known as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, several former judges who served on the panel also voiced skepticism at a Senate hearing about the president's constitutional authority to order wiretapping on Americans without a court order.

How could they possibly write that about what the judges said. It is directly opposite of what they said. The Times must have simply not been listening. Their preconceived notion of the program is so well set, their desire to deliver to their readers nothing that counters their audiences inclinations, that they simply make stuff up. Outragious.

Later in the same session, Powerline notices this exchange between the judges and Senator Dick "Our Troops are Nazi's" Durbin. They wrote:

As John noted last night, Lichtblau's story misleads readers regarding the judges' testimony. Here are a few more excerpts of testimony that belie the tenor of Lichtblau's description of the judges' "skepticism" regarding the president's constitutional authority to authorize the surveillance program originally disclosed this past December 16 by James Risen and Lichtblau himself in violation of the federal espionage laws:

And then refer to the following exchange in the hearing.

Play clip.

Powerline concludes:

In short, I don't think that the judges can fairly be described as having voiced skepticism regarding the president's constitutional authority to order the NSA surveillance program. Having reviewed the transcript of their testimony, however, I am voicing skepticism that Eric Lichtlbau and the New York Times are reporting on matters related to the NSA program in good faith.

The Leak

In Friday's Best of the Web on OpinionJournal.com, James Taranto notices the final of this podcast's three mis-reportings in the New York Times. He wrote:

If you'd told us earlier this week that the Valerie Plame kerfuffle was about to turn even sillier, we wouldn't have believed you. But it has. This story appears on the front page of today's New York Times:

President Bush authorized Vice President Dick Cheney in July 2003 to permit Mr. Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis Libby Jr., to leak key portions of a classified prewar intelligence estimate on Iraq, according to Mr. Libby's grand jury testimony.

The testimony, cited in a court filing by the government late Wednesday, provides the first indication that Mr. Bush, who has long assailed leaks of classified information as a national security threat, played a direct role in the disclosure of the intelligence report on Iraq at a moment that the White House was trying to defend itself against charges that it had inflated the case against Saddam Hussein.

Well, here is how the filing by special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald describes what happened (page 23):

Defendant [Libby] testified that the Vice President later advised him that the President had authorized defendant to disclose the relevant portions of the NIE [National Intelligence Estimate]. Defendant testified that he also spoke to David Addington, then Counsel to the Vice President, whom defendant considered to be an expert in national security law, and Mr. Addington opined that Presidential authorization to publicly disclose a document amounted to a declassification of the document.

In other words, this was an authorized disclosure of information, the opposite of a leak. Yet the Times, the Washington Post and even the New York Sun (albeit only in a headline) call it a "leak."

These reports have served as pornography for the Angry Left, which has constructed an elaborate fantasy world around the Plame kerfuffle. One reader shared with us his reverie about how this is actually a signal that Fitzgerald plans to indict Vice President Cheney.

In fact, it is nothing more than a battle over procedure.

So the President declassified and disseminated to take Joe Wilson down a notch in the public eye. I continue to believe that this is nothing more than the White House trying to assert truth to power, namely the power of the press. Remember that at the time Wilson was the champion of the New York Times, celebrated by many of their columnists.

Speaking of Wilson coming down a notch, consider the recent disclosure of his activities. Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit directs our attention to a post in the New Editor. It's juicy:

Joseph Wilson Reveals Himself

One of the posters at Daily Kos saw former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson III speak at Florida State University in March, quoting him fairly extensively at the Kiddie Blog.

After reading these quotes made at a public event, how can anyone continue to take this guy seriously?

Here are just a sampling of the quotes:

On "Neoconservatives":

The neocons need to be forced back into the dark holes from which they crawled. They are nothing but parasites who serve nobody and nothing but themselves who are using the Republican Party as a serving host.

On the Weekly Standard's Bill Kristol:

It still amazes me when I still see that drunk Bill Kristol on tv every week still spewing the same nonsense he was spewing 3 years ago.

On US Ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad:

Zalmay Khalilzad? I'd like to punch him right in the face. I've never seen met him and I'd prefer never to see his face but yeah. He has never been right about one thing in 20 years. He is simply another neoconservative that has gotten every single thing wrong.

On President of the World Bank Paul Wolfowitz and US Ambassador to the UN John Bolton:

Wolfowitz did his best to destroy the Department of Defense so I guess it's time for him to go destroy the World Bank and he's got a willing partner in John Bolton who has taken it upon himself to destroy the United Nations, an organization that, since its' inception, the U.S. has benefitted from as much or more so than it has given.

On On RNC Chair Ken Mehlman, Rep. David Dreier (R-CA):

You know when they first started trying to come up with a way to discredit me, which we now know started in March of 2003, they went through the old standbys. 'He's had 3 wives, he's a womanizer, he's done drugs.' But then they realized they couldnt' use those because I've never actually denied them. I mean I'm the first to admit that, unlike Ken Mehlman and David Dreier, I really like women.

On columnist Ann Coulter:

Ann Coulter and others came up with the crap that Joe coudlnt' get a job on his own, he needed his wife to find one for him because "he's a wussy man". Well, when I thought about it, I wasn't really all that surprised hearing it from Ann. After all, she is a rather manly woman.

On The Daily Show's Jon Stewart and columnist Robert Novak":

Jon Stewart definitely has the best fake news show in the country. In fact I'd say it's even better than the fake news at Fox News Channel. Valerie doesn't like me using this word that Jon uses because she says that it's a bit vulgar so I'm not going to tell you that Jon Stewart calls Bob Novak a "douchebag."

How clever this man Wilson is!

Of course this will have no effect on the cries of "Bush lied, people died" from the left, nor on the Wilson cheerleaders at the grey lady. After all, what's a little petty insult and homophobic charge among their lefty friends?

That's it for now podcatchers.