‘We never thought about using weapons of mass destruction,’ former Iraqi ruler told CIA
Mr Nixon also criticised the conduct of George W Bush, under whose leadership America invaded Iraq, saying the former president heard “only what he wanted to hear” on the topic.
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The Death of ‘He Said, She Said’ Journalism
What made it extraordinary was the way the Times covered it.
.. Traditionally, when a political candidate assembles facts so as to aggrandize himself and belittle his opponent, “objective” journalists like those at the Times respond with a “he said, she said” story.
.. “Bush and Cheney Talk Strongly of Qaeda Links With Hussein,” noted a Timesheadline on June 18, 2004. Why were Bush and Cheney raising the subject? Because the day before, the 9/11 Commission had reported that Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda did not have a “collaborative relationship.” Nonetheless, the Times reported Bush’s claims and Kerry’s response as equally valid. Bush himself had helped create the Commission to provide an authoritative, nonpartisan account of the events leading up to 9/11. Yet the Times refused to grant its view any more weight than Bush’s own. It refused to render any judgment about what was true.
.. But the Times, once a champion practitioner of the “he said, she said” campaign story, discarded it with astonishing bluntness. The Times responded to Trump’s press conference by running a “News Analysis,” a genre that gives reporters more freedom to explain a story’s significance.
.. Its headline read, “Trump Gives Up a Lie But Refuses to Repent.” Not “falsehood,” which leaves open the possibility that Trump was merely mistaken, but “lie,” which suggests, accurately, that Trump had every reason to know that what he was saying about Obama’s citizenship was false.
.. A certain etiquette has long governed the relationship between presidential candidates and the elite media. Candidates stretch the truth, but try not to be too blatant about it. Candidates appeal to bigotry, but subtly. In turn, journalists respond with a delicacy of their own. They quote partisans rather than saying things in their own words. They use euphemisms like “polarizing” and “incendiary,” instead of “racist” and “demagogic.”
.. He has so brazenly lied, so nakedly appealed to bigotry, and so frontally challenged the rule of law that he has made the elite media’s decorum absurd. He’s turned highbrow journalists into referees in a World Wrestling Entertainment match.
.. Since Trump has largely stopped giving interviews to anyone except campaign sycophants and celebrity lightweights, the debates may serve as his last encounter with actual journalists. Those journalists—Lester Holt, Martha Raddatz, Anderson Cooper and Chris Wallace—must be prepared to confront Trump in ways they’ve never confronted a candidate before. The more audaciously he lies, the more audaciously they must tell the truth.
Donald Trump’s most enduring — and unbefitting — trait
I’ve been covering Donald Trump off and on for more than 25 years, and what has always struck me is his lack of impulse control. It was his biggest problem when I first started dealing with him in the 1980s, and it’s his biggest problem now.
.. He ended up presiding over six — count ’em, six — bankruptcies because he kept making business decisions with his gut rather than with his brain.
.. Whether we’re talking about the Bay of Pigs (when John F. Kennedy resisted the hawkish instincts of his advisers who wanted to escalate) or the bugging of Democratic headquarters (which Richard Nixon could not resist) or the invasion of Iraq (need I say more?), presidents are bombarded with chances to overreact, and their overreactions can have catastrophic consequences for our country and the world.
.. Lack of impulse control has enormously benefited his presidential campaign. It distinguished him among the
17 initial Republican candidates, allowed him to dominate cable TV news and got him massive coverage in other media as well... “The Apprentice” was a pivotal event for Trump. It made him into a truly national figure, and he says the show paid him more than $200 million during its run.
.. The crazier Trump acted on “The Apprentice,” the more he carried on and humiliated people and declared “you’re fired,” the better TV it was. So whatever instincts he might have had to develop self-control were vitiated by “The Apprentice.”
.. But there’s a downside — a huge one — to his behavior, and it’s starting to become apparent now. He’s incredibly reckless. He seems to sometimes license his name to questionable enterprises, without doing much (if any) research into them. He makes enemies he doesn’t have to make because he baits people and institutions that don’t bow down to him, and he reacts badly when organizations such as The Post (which he has banned from his campaign events) challenge him by asking perfectly reasonable questions.
.. I wonder how many middle and lower-middle types had no idea about what Trump U was up to until recently and didn’t know how Trump has stiffed all sorts of contractors over the years, resulting in lots of blue-collar workers losing their jobs. I wonder whether this knowledge will erode the faith of some Trump fans.
.. Section 469 forbids taxpayers from using these losses to offset other income unless more than half their business activities (at least 750 hours a year) involve developing or managing real estate. Not licensing their name to golf courses or making speeches or being on TV reality shows.
We ought to see if Trump has used Section 469 to shelter income in past years. And especially last year, when he was running for president.
.. Hussein amazingly managed to remain in power despite losing the 1991 Gulf War to the United States and its allies, who threw him out of Kuwait and inflicted immense losses on his military. It looked like Hussein was absolutely finished. But he emerged from the Gulf War in control of Iraq, managed to slaughter his internal opponents and ended up presiding over a country that had the world’s fourth-largest army.