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Bill Safire didn't do his research. And misspeaks, numerous times:
. . .State Department intelligence also was dubious, reports the Senate, more so in October when an Italian journalist brought in a bunch of phony documents somebody was trying to sell him about a Niger uranium transaction. This outweighed the report of a top security official in the French Foreign Ministry, who told U.S. diplomats in November 2002 that "France believed the reporting was true that Iraq had made a procurement attempt for uranium from Niger."
Two months later, with no objection from C.I.A., the famous 16 words went into Bush's 2003 State of the Union.
But when word leaked about the fake documents — which were not the basis of the previous reporting by our allies — Wilson launched his publicity campaign, acting as if he had known earlier about the forgeries.
What did Safire get wrong here?
-- The Italian journalist was not a "he."
-- The forged Niger docs were indeed the chief basis for Italy's reporting to the US on the Niger uranium claims.
-- The French report was based on the forged Niger uranium docs.
-- Reports from the fake documents were the chief source of the previous reporting to the US by the Italians, and partly by the British as well, on the Niger uranium issue.
A few weeks ago, I noted how Safire had attacked the staff of the 9/11 commission for its report that there was no compelling evidence of Saddam-al Qaeda cooperation. Safire attacked the staff personally in the most obnoxious, rabid language.
Now that the commission is expected to reveal Iran gave safe passage to several of the 9/11 hijackers, can we expect Safire to praise the commission staff to high heaven?
What I'm trying to get at, is Safire's essential intellectual dishonesty. He attacks total strangers personally when their findings do not reinforce his ideology, his screed. He praises them effusively if they do jack up his ideology. It's not about the evidence, and it's not about the truth, and even though he's praising or attacking, it's not really about the ostensible subjects of his attacks or praise. They are just convenient vehicles for hammering out his pre-ordained views, on which objective facts have no apparent influence. The poverty of his research and fact checking shown above -- in a column about the truth or falsehood of 16 words no less -- demonstrates of how little interest or concern the truth really is to Safire. He just can't be bothered to get the most basic facts straight. How his editors let him get away with it is beyond me.
Update: Kriston Capps and Jonathan Schwarz had issues with this column too.