Last week the Washington Post associated Sarah Palin’s speech to an Alaskan Army brigade about to ship out to Iraq with the thought that al-Qaeda was behind Saddam’s regime. Yesterday they “clarified” not so much what was said but what the campaign says she meant:
A Sept. 12 Page One article quoted Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin as telling a brigade of Iraq-bound soldiers that they would “defend the innocent from the enemies who planned and carried out and rejoiced in the death of thousands of Americans.” The report linked Palin’s comments with the idea that Saddam Hussein was connected to the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks. Tracey Schmitt, a spokeswoman for the McCain-Palin campaign, said Palin was referring to al-Qaeda in Iraq, a terror group that formed after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 and claims to be allied with the global al-Qaeda organization.
But no correction. Just a “well, this is what we said, but the campaign disagrees, so we’ll let you decide on our editorial slant passed off as fact. Oh, and we’ll bury this ‘correction’ somewhere deep in the bowels of the paper so no one will get to see said ‘correction’ anyway. Mwa ha ha ha.”
Very on the up-and-up, that Washington Post coverage.
Commentary Magazine’s Jennifer Rubin says it well:
This certainly lacks the minimal requirements of candor the Post would demand of a poltician, certainly Palin herself. This is the issue: was the original story correct, namely does the Post have any factual support for the original contention that Palin was referring to Saddam and not Al Qaeda? If not, the Post should say so and issue a retraction, not a weasely “clarification.” And while its editors are at it, they might explain what they were doing at 1:00 a.m. trying to patch up a badly flawed story.
