Before we started bombing the shit out of Iraq, the New York Times was one of the many mass-media outlets loudly trumpeting to its audience that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. Scary news reports like this helped convince the American people that going to war with Iraq was a right and necessary thing -- according to a Harris Poll, in June of 2003, 69% of American adults believed that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, and 35% believed that we had found clear evidence of these weapons.
Now, not only is the publisher of the Times apologizing for the stories, he's admitting that they were falsified or embellished, and that the Times knew it after a certain point and delayed doing anything about it.
"New York Times Publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. said Friday that the newspaper was far too slow in correcting its reports indicating Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, but the blame did not lie entirely with Judith Miller, the author of many of the stories.
Sulzberger acknowledged the criticism of Miller, who in the wake of her release from jail has been described on the pages of the Times as untruthful to her editors and difficult to control.
In his address, Sulzberger said the failure not to quickly correct the Iraqi weapons reports rested also with the Times' many editors.
"It was an institutional failure. We didn't own up to it quickly enough," he said. "The story is not over.""