why does the new york times continue to give a forum to william safire?

his hiring was widely believed to be the result of an affirmative action program for conservatives, to put a voice from the right on the op-ed page to counter right-wing charges of liberal bias.

even at the time i thought the choice an odd one. safire was a political hack, a nixon lackey, the author of spiro agnew's rants against the "nattering nabobs of negativism," and such like. there was really noone better?

alliterative political red-meat is not the same thing as astute commentary or good writing and safire has little in the way of either of those.

above all, he is a writer who lacks intellectual honesty. he is incapable of admitting that he is, or ever has been, wrong.

he defends to this day nixon and his association with him, agnew and his association with him.

after 9/11 he was nattering nabob number one in publicizing a czech intelligence report that one of the 9/11 operatives, i believe mohammad atta, had met with an iraqi diplomat in prague.

the reported meeting did, as it should have, generate much follow-up investigation by czech and u.s. intel officials.

when these investigations began to raise doubts that the meeting occurred, safire continued to make the assertion and started hinting at a coverup and conspiracy.

when the story was finally discredited safire persisted, raising the volume of his voice to compensate for its lack of substance and now bitterly complained of a coverup (and HE should know cover-up).

the safire m.o. is to build an argument on sketchy facts or half-truths and then to respond with attacks of incompetence or duplicity on anyone who disagrees with the argument or who questions the underlying facts.

today he's at it again, this time on the news that an artillery shell found in iraq may contain the nerve agent sarin. this column is safire at his shrill, conspiratorial, insinuating, ad hominem, denying, worst.

knowing the factual insufficiency of his argument he starts with the attack:

"you probably missed the news because it
didn't get much play..."

so right off the bat we're conditioned that something fishy is going on here. there is "news" and "it didn't get much play." the implication is that a REVELATION is forthcoming and that others in the media didn't give it the attention it deserved because of incompetency or worse.

in the same sentence he then begins to lay out his "case":

"...a small, crude weapon of mass destruction
may have been used by saddam's terrorists
in iraq this week."

well the FACT (which you may have missed because he doesn't give it much play) is that an artillery shell was ACCIDENTALLY DETONATED by AMERICAN SOLDIERS and that the powder inside was a BINARY compound that included small amounts of sarin.

lest the evil be missed the next paragraph makes it with the subtlety of a sledgehammer: sarin was first developed by the nazis and was used by japanese terrorists in the subway attack of a few years ago.


to label this ONE shell as a "weapon of mass destruction" is irresponsible and typical of safire's method. take a small fact and exaggerate it into a larger evil.

and those who point this out, those who say "one or two poison-gas bombs USED SO FAR does not a 'stockpile' make"? they are "our lionized apostles of defeat."

that is just outrageous. first, the ONE found so far was not "USED." WE, U.S. soldiers ACCIDENTALLY DETONATED IT!. and second those who disagree are subjected to an ad hominem attack.

"you never saw such a rush to dismiss this
as not news," noting that usatoday saw fit to bury the story on page ten as a "brushoff."

he then writes:

"u.n. weapons inspectors whose reputations
rest on denial of saddam's wmb pooh-poohed
the report. 'it doesn't strike me as a big
deal,' said david kay."

so anyone who disagrees that this is big news is dismissed as trying to save his reputation.

but there may be something more malicious in that paragraph. wasn't david kay the U.S. weapons inspector? wasn't he OUR, the U.S.'s, the bush administration's, weapons inspector?

if i'm wrong, if kay was a u.n. guy, then safire is still attacking those who disagree with him for being more concerned with their careers than the truth but if kay was, as i remember, a U.S. inspector then that entire sentence is so malicious and so misleading that it should never have made it past the editors of any respectable newspaper, much less those of the new york times.

more attacks: "even the defense department," "on the defensive, STRAINED not to appear alarmist, saying confirmation was needed for the field tests." so waiting until confirmatory tests are done before telling the world that a WEAPON OF MASS DESTRUCTION has been found is "straining," it's the result of a defenive, timid dod. rummy has been accused of a lot of things, timidity has never been one of them.

he then lists "the Four noes" of "the defeatists' platform, the first one of which is that no wmd were found in iraq. to that he says bizarrely that even at this late date it is a rush to judgement if "the absence of evidence is taken to be evidence of absense," and that "when the pendulum has swung" and today's "cut-and-runners" are shown to be wrong there will be books written about this and "these MAY WELL reveal the successful concealment of wmd, as well as prewar shipments...to syria..."

further, "in a sovereign and free iraq, when...scientists are fearful of being tried as prewar criminals their impetus will be to sing--and point to caches of anthrax and other mass killers."

what can you say about that? the guy is in denial, he is intellectually dishonest, his argument is now being based, not even on half-truths, but on speculation into the future. opinionist or not, he should have no right to write such rubbish in a respectable newspaper.

maybe the times is getting tired of his irrational act. in an unusual move, it issued an editorial to accompany safire's irresponsible screed. after giving a fairer treatment of the facts it refers to "the dwindling band of die-hards who remain convinced that mr. hussein squirreled away stockpiles of illicit weapons..."

members of that irresponsible, dwindling band should not be given a forum in the "gray lady."


-benjamin harris