You can refer to my previous post about why am writing this series of posts here.

There was a huge internet ballyhoo recently upon the discovery of years of emails from the Climate Research Unit of the University of East Anglia that appeared to show scientists engaging in all manner of decidedly unscientific behavior when studying and publishing results that purport to show a planet slowly (or rapidly) being brought to a boiling point by the wanton production of Carbon Dioxide from modern industrial society.

For those who are skeptical of the entire AGW (if you don’t know already AGW is shorthand for Anthropogenic (or man-made) Global Warming  as opposed to Global Warming caused by natural events) theory and I count myself as one of the the news hardly came as a surprise. However the reaction of those who support the AGW theory was in a word disappointing.

The typical reaction to date has consisted of the tried and true “taken out of context” canard that is now the reflex response of every politician whose words have gone beyond the heavily managed and mangled utterances their spin doctors and handlers allow them to make in public.

However I have seen very few AGW defenders explain exactly what the context was. Just to say something was taken out of context and then moving on is not a defense but an avoidance.

Which brings me to my second point. The other defense being mounted on the pro-AGW side is that this is a minor thing and doesn’t bear discussion because in the grand scheme of things so much other data exists proving the theory that the CRU results can be thrown out altogether but the science behind AGW is still solid.

That may be true but it is hardly the way to handle the matter. Any good public relations professional will tell you that the best way to handle a PR problem is to confront it head on and to be open and honest as possible (Tiger Woods take note – you need new PR advisors).

Good PR people will also tell you that while public relations nightmares seem to be incredibly damaging initially with some work they can be turned into opportunities to bring more people around to your point of view. Having said this I am now going to give the AGW proponents some advice on how to turn Climategate to their advantage and in turn help their cause  (if indeed it is worth helping)

The first thing AGW defenders have to do is stop ignoring or downplaying this. The main criticism that has been leveled at AWG proponents by skeptics over the years has been that the science is flawed or at the very least somewhat suspect. The CRU emails play right into this theory and pretending that this is not big deal is the worst thing to do.

If the AGW theory loses all credibility with the public because of the perception that the data was not only flawed but deliberately manipulated then this becomes not only a problem for climate scientists but for all scientists. Unless the CRU controversy is dealt wit properly the ramifications could go beyond climate change research and into full blown and hysterical skepticism of all branches of science – and that is not a helpful situation.

Those who want to defend the science behind the AGW theory should be the ones at the forefront of the criticism of the CRU in East Anglia. If you really believe your science is solid you should be the most outraged over all of this. Why? Because if you are a climate scientist and have been diligently and honestly working on this for years independently of the CRU folks then you have suddenly been tarred with the same brush and guilt by association is as difficult to escape from as being just plain guilty.,

So what to do? There is an old saying in Judo that goes :”When an opponent appears welcome him, when he leaves send him on his way”. The saying illustrates one of the key principles of Judo (and Aikido) which is to defeat an opponent using his own momentum. It is true in martial arts and often it is true in life.

So how to use the opponents momentum in this case?  Simple all climate researchers who wish to divorce themselves from the stink coming out of East Anglia must adopt the weapon of many successful technology companies: Open source your data.

That’s right make your data and findings widely available on the net  to anyone. Allow the critics to examine it pick it apart critique it and try to destroy it.

If the data is solid it will hold up. If it isn’t then any scientist should welcome the discovery of errors, after all what what scientist with any ounce of integrity would want to build his or her career on bad data and false findings?

One of the features of my business is that I have to collect, track and manage a lot of information over the course of the work I do. I am rarely asked by my clients to share the actual information but on occasions when a project is not going well they do ask to see my work. I gladly share it with them and welcome any critique no matter how hard they might be on me. Why? Because I am 100% confident in my work and I am 100% confident in what my data tells me because I know I haven’t fudged anything. 

So if you are a climate scientist and you are 100% confident in your work and your findings why would you want to hide behind the plaintive and mealy mouthed defenses that we hear mounted by those who are now on the defensive because of the hacked CRU emails?

These defenses are wishy-washy and only hurt your cause and along with the other critiques of AGW skeptics like calling them deniers, dismissing them because they haven’t had peer reviewed work or smearing them by suggesting they are in the pay of oil companies make you look like you aren’t confident in your own work.

If you are confident in your own work and someone criticizes or questions it you should be happy to address these criticisms because you can only make your case stronger by how you respond to such criticisms.  And if you respond well you will only gain supporters.

I am perfectly willing to accept the AGW theory if it stands up to rigorous scientific scrutiny but when those who expound the theory react like school children when anyone dares ask a question it doesn’t really give me confidence that they themselves believe in their own work.

So here’s the challenge: open source your data. Embrace criticism in the name of science.

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Surely the Grey Lady isn’t about to fall sway to the flailers?‘Feel Good’ vs. ‘Do Good’ on Climate - New York Times

via Newsbusters

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Kate has become involved in a new site (which appears to be a Wiki) that calls itself MediaMythBusters. They list several recent media myths (largely related to military conflicts and terrorism) but here’s one that some people probably forget:

NBC’s Fake Exploding Gas Tanks

For its Dateline NBC segment on G.M. pickups, the network hired a trial lawyers’ advocacy group to crash the trucks. Testers overfilled one truck’s gas tank, used a nonstandard gas cap that popped off on impact, and strapped remote-controlled model-rocket engines to the truck’s frame to guarantee a fire.

Oh and let’s not forget the Duke Lacrosse Scandal

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Does any one edit news stories anymore?

The one-time presidential candidate is one of the organizers of the Live Earth concerts taking place around the world on July 7. The concerts are designed to raise awareness of global warming.

Because somewhere on the planet someone isn’t aware of this. And that person is exactly the type who gets all their information from mega-concerts.

Source
Al Gores son busted for drugs in hybrid car

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I was a subscriber of this magazine for 10 years. I let my subscription lapse two 3 years ago and then renewed it earlier this year. I was rather unpleasantly surprised to see that the magazine seemed to have taken a turn leftward. While it always strove for a dispassionate objective voice it was always couched in a free-market capitalist/democratic angle.

There was always some bemusement directed towards America but then again it is a British magazine and that isn’t surprising.

Now however it seems to have become almost shrill in its view towards the world’s largest democracy. Consider their latest ranking of the world’s most peaceful nations. The US is ranked between IRAN AND YEMEN? Israel comes in just above IRAQ?

James Taranto of Opinion Journal has an appropriate response:

The most “peaceful” country, according to this survey, is Norway. OK, we guess Norway is pretty peaceful, but we seem to remember 60-odd years ago it was occupied by Germany, which comes in at a respectable No. 12.

Another example of the survey’s absurd bias: Israel places No. 119, ahead of only Sudan and Iraq. But of course most Israelis would like nothing more than to live in peace, as would their leaders. They are forced into frequent wars because they are surrounded by enemy states, almost all of which The Economist reckons as more “peaceful”–including Iran, which comes 22 places above Israel despite its pursuit of nuclear weapons and its president’s vow to “wipe Israel off the map.” Syria, at No. 77, actually places well ahead of the U.S., despite its support for terrorists in Iraq, Lebanon and Israel. The Palestinian Arabs aren’t even mentioned in the survey, which covers only nations.

Via Instapundit

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Word today that the past year was the warmest since before Moses (or someone) walked the earth makes for great news headlines and the like but some news outlets are pointing to the fact that not everyone in the scientific community agrees on many facets of global warming.

Like Roger Pielke Sr., climate professor emeritus, at Colorado State University:

Pielke, 59, says his doubts about the climate record began during his stint as Colorado’s climatologist when he realized how inaccurate the state’s thermometer network was.

Multiply that by tens of thousands of thermometers around the world and the temperature record is suspect, he contends.

Another major problem is computer modeling. I have long contended that basing climate predictions and even worse public policy on models is somewhat dicey. Computer models for example predicted continually that rogue waves didn’t exist despite sailors and fishermen insisting otherwise - guess which one was proved right?

And in almost any discussion of global warming the talk eventually will turn to computer models and how they are all predicting great catastrophes should the temperature climb even a half a degree. Yet the computer models are proving somewhat troublesome for global warming advocates:

When the NCAR model tries to show Denver’s weather patterns, for example, summer thunderstorms keep coming about noon.

“We all know they come in the late afternoon, so that’s a problem in the model,” said Trenberth, who was born in New Zealand and trained at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Mass.

Get that? “A problem with the model” wouldn’t any scientist worth his or her salt be somewhat skeptical about reliance on models?? Unless they are driven by an agenda beyond science?

Technorati Tags: global warming, climate change, skeptics,

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As much as I like Tammy Bruce her quick post on the recent walkout of BC border guards Tammy Bruce: Canadian Border “Guards” Flee Posts After Security Scare omits a critical piece of information that allows her and (so far a few) her commentors to make some glib statements about how guards are supposed to guard the border and maybe they need to put a wall up here etc etc.

Let me do a quick reset for you: Canadian Border Guards are unarmed. They have been protesting this for a long time now and are hoping that the current Conservative government will allow them to carry guns. Normally this wasn’t a big deal but since 9/11 they have been more sensitive to putting them selves in harms way without means of defending themselves.

They currently walk off if they are warned about a potential danger because they feel they have no way of protecting themselves or of being able to a successfully aprehend armed criminals or terrorists who wish to cross the border.

The current Conservative government made some indications during the last election that they would arm border guards. I believe this latest walk off to be a gentle reminder.

Here’s hoping that they get their guns soon.

For the record here’s the quote from the article that makes the situation very clear:

Canada’s border guards are currently unarmed – the Conservative government has promised a 10-year program to change that — and have the right to walk off the job if conditions are dangerous. The guards exercised that right.

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Interesting tid-bit on how news is gathered in Iraq:

But the foreign media have become a destructive factor, extrapolating daily crises from minor incidents. Part of this is ignorance. Some of it is willful. None of it is helpful.

The result is that we’re being told what Iraqi stringers know they can sell and what distant editors crave, not what’s actually happening.

Read more here

Via Neale News

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The Canadian Press has a story about Howard Stern’s debut on satellite radio yesterday that contains a few basic factual errors. The story has also been picked up by the Toronto Star (not known for employing anything remotely resembling fact checking) and that is where I am quoting it from:

The talk show, which airs on the Howard 100 channel, had no shortage of profanity and political incorrectness. There were also commercials despite Sirius being a subscription-based service. (emphasis mine)

This has become a bit of a regular shot at Stern from media types and anti-satellite radio types. Here is the fact: neither XM or Sirius promise 100% commercial free radio. They promise 100% commercial free music stations. The talk show hosts need commercials so they can get up and go to the bathroom and the like. So can we please stop with that b.s.?

Error #2:

The self-proclaimed King of all Media was dropped by CHOM-FM in Montreal in 1998 and in 2001 by Q-107 in Toronto after thousands of complaints to the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council — the industry’s voluntary watchdog agency.

Again wrong. Stern was hugely popular in Toronto. On the day he was dropped Q-107 received something like 11oo emails in the first hour demanding he be restored. The real reason he was dropped was that his old boss (John P Hayes) who fired him from NBC in the 80’s took over as president of the company that owns Q-107. Howard was gone almost immediately afterwards despite being #1 in the coveted male 25-54 demographic and despite just having signed a contract with Q for another two years.

Technorati Tags: stern, sirius, satellite radio, xm, Canada, media

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In what might be the biggest sign of all that the Tories are going to form the next government the Liberal party’s former co-dependants and enablers: the media, have begun to turn against them.

Last night after the debate Duffy angrily denounced Liberal strategist John Duffy over a Liberal attack ad that didn’t make it to TV but was for a brief period of time on the Liberal website.

The discovery by journalists over the past week that they have something called a backbone has been somewhat stunning. The Liberals for the past 13 years have been largely given a free pass by the media who have parroted every slander generated by the Liberal attack machine towards the Conservatives as if it were gospel truth.

Now that the reins of power and Governor General appointments look to be shifting to other hands they have quickly begun to distance themselves from their former buddies and are making life pretty uncomfortable these days for Martin and company.

The exchange between Duffy and Duffy can be found here. What is interesting is that Duffy reveals angrily that the other Duffy tried to intimidate him off air into not talking about the ad. That the Liberals would try such a tactic is probably surprising to Canadians however apparently it is not new. Warren Kineslla the former Liberal party operative said on his blog recently that whenever he appears on TV the Liberal campaign managers go into a frenzy, bombarding the producers and whomever else is involved with emails (or something - I will go and find the post and dig up the quote).

But now it seems that tactic is no longer working and it is clear that the latest polling numbers are the reason.

Via: Neale News

Technorati Tags: Canada, election, Duffy, Harper, media bias, journalism, Liberal, Conservative

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Did I just hear the CBC’s Neil Mcdonald say that the Conservative tax plan is better for low income Canadians? Did he debunk the Harper will revoke the tax cuts story of last week and say that the Conservative tax plan in total delivers more tax relief to Canadians?

Is the prospect of a Harper govt scaring the CBC into something resembling a balanced approach?

Or should I get my well examined for waterborne hallucinogens?

CBC, Canadian Election, Canada, Election, taxes, Conservative, bias

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Remember last election when the Tories had a slim lead? All of a sudden these articles started appearing saying how Harper was already planning his coronation and had solicited the advice of (GASP!) former Mulroney advisors!!!

We all know what happened next….

Anyhoo fast forward to this election and what do we hear ?

Although he’s taken pains to insist the outcome of the election is up in the air, Stephen Harper has already drawn up a “small list” of advisers who could help him keep a fractious minority Parliament together.

Former prime minister Brian Mulroney is also rumoured to be on the list of advisers but Harper refused to confirm that. (emphasis mine).

Yep the last refuge of the “Harper is scary meme”.. BRIAN MULRONEY!!

Technorati Tags: election, Canada, Stephen Harper, Brian Mulroney, Conservative, media, bias

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Hey how often do you hear of a Union actually praising a Conservative politician or policy? Not very often at all. Well the Customs Excise Union Douanes Accise, representing 10,500 members is very happy with Stephen Harper these days:

We are very pleased with Mr. Harper’s proposals as they relate to border security….

Contrary to what some have said, gun violence in Toronto and in any other Canadian city is not an American problem, it is a Canadian problem and one of the key places to tackle this problem begins at our border, where it is critically necessary to empower the people Canadians depend on to prevent gun smuggling and to stop armed and dangerous persons from entering Canada.

CEUDA agrees with statements by Peter McKay that it is “bordering on criminal negligence” on the part of CBSA to have a mere 162 armed and dangerous flags in the Customs lookout database compared to the more than 33,700 similar flags that exist in the police lookout database.

This is from a press release from the union issued today. The press release has been posted in full on the website of Soo Today an online news site focusing on the Sault Ste. Marie area.

The only change they appear to have made is the headline: Customs union gets all kissy-face with Stephen Harper

A little snarky doncha’ think?

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The American Thinker has posted it’s “Top 5 Stories the MSM Hated this year. Being the American Thinker it has an American Focus but it is a very interesting read nonetheless.

Most of the stories are well known but this one slipped my attention:

5. The Michael Steele garbage-dump scavenger hunt

At the time, Steele said he would press the matter, but the story got absolutely no traction in the mainstream news and was quickly forgotten. The story was AWOL in the New York Times.

What would be the Canadian media equivalent I wonder?

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How many times will journalists spew out this type of drivel with a straight face:

Say what you will about the so-called mainstream media, but no industry agonizes more about how to improve its product, police its own members and better serve its communities. Newspapers are filled with carpal-tunneled wretches, overworked and underpaid, who suffer near-pathological allegiance to getting it right.

That a Jayson Blair of The New York Times or a Jack Kelley of USA Today surfaces now and then as a plagiarist or a fabricator ultimately is testament to the high standards tens of thousands of others strive to uphold each day without recognition. Blair and Kelley are infamous, but they’re also gone.

Thus spake Kathleen Parker in a syndicated piece entitled: For civilization’s sake, let’s ignore the worst of blogs and by worst she doesn’t mean those interminable knitting blogs or the ones where people just talk about their kids and cats continuously. Or even those blogs that have great postings like: “sorry I haven’t posted in a while”.

No she is talking about something more sinister:

Schadenfreude — pleasure in others’ misfortunes — has become the new barbarity on an island called Blog. When someone trips, whether Dan Rather or Eason Jordan or Judith Miller, bloggers are the bloodthirsty masses slavering for a public flogging. Incivility is their weapon and humanity their victim.

We can’t silence them, but for civilization’s sake — and the integrity of information by which we all live or die — we can and should ignore them.

Wow. I mean, wow. The absolute seething hatred that mainstream media types have for blogs is just too funny. Well I can understand it. Fear does that to people. And lets face it the media is scared shitless of blogs right now. Although you… sorry I just lost my train of thought because Family Guy is on…. wait it’s coming back to me. Something about getting a dose of your own medicine. Ring a bell.

Anyway speaking of ignore. Perhaps Kathleen might want to investigate the New York Times stock price?

Oh and circling back to the original quote check out some of these gems from other journobots:

David Shaw of the LA Times famously contrasted bloggers’ supposedly slipshod practices with the amazing accuracy of newspapers like The Times:

When I or virtually any other mainstream journalist writes something, it goes through several filters before the reader sees it. At least four experienced Times editors will have examined this column, for example. They will have checked it for accuracy, fairness, grammar, taste and libel, among other things.

Closer to home remember Christopher Hutsul’s temper tantrum about a certain hockey blogger:

This isn’t to say professional journalists are infallible. We make mistakes, and are susceptible to bias and influence. The difference is that our colleagues, our editors, and the public at large know where we live. In the newsroom, accountability infuses the decisions we make.

I think Sun Tzu said something once about respecting your enemy. Well I don’t know if he said it but it’s in his book, somewhere, I think. I never read the whole thing because it was so friggin boring. Not as boring as Von Clausewitz‘ “On War” though, geez what a snooze inducer. It actually made “The Wealth of Nations” seem like light reading.

So anyway message to journobots: respect your enemy. Or grow up . Either one works for me.

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So how are you spending the first day of 2006? Well I have spent a good chunk of my morning devouring this posting over at Patterico’s Pontification’s. I haven’t read his blog before and was pointed to this particular entry by Powerline. However you have to give this guy immense credit for his tireless documentation of the shoddy and biased reporting at the LA Times.

Just putting together his year in review post must have taken hours but it is well worth the read and begs the question: Why don’t we have a similar blogger performing a similar service? The Bolshevik Rag Toronto Star would be an excellent target and since I am way to lazy to do it I nominate Bob Tarantino. Because he is already halfway there already.

Now I need all of you to go and bug Bob every day so that he takes up the challenge

I don’t necessarily mind if newspapers or their journalists have a liberal or conservative view of the world, but when it completely trumps the reporting of facts and even worse the refusal to correct errors it is a sad day for the professional media. Practitioners of journalism especially at the professional level really should be taking a hard look at themselves in the mirror. Actually they should read Poatterico’s post and then look at themselves in the mirror.

Here’s a New Year’s resolution that any reporter or reporting outlet should make this year: “I will report the facts of a story and let the readers make their own conclusions. Selectively reporting facts just to “shape” a story or create a story arc that fits into my own worldview is not journalism.” Print that out and paste it on the top of your monitor it will mean less accusations of bias for the coming year and better reporting overall from you. Not a bad deal huh?

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Following on the New York Times theme check out the e-mail exchange between Powerline and Eric Lichtblau of the New York Times:

Lichtblau to me:

Here’s my problem with your coverage: as a legal matter, there isn’t any debate. The authorities are all on one side; they agree that warrantless surveillance for national security purposes is legal. I think your articles misleadingly suggest that there is real uncertainty on this point, when there isn’t.

Read the whole thing here.

via Hugh Hewitt

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Newsbusters has a slew of quotes culled from one paper: The New York Times.

“And in the shadow of the bleak and often horrific news emerging from Iraq nearly every day, historians and political experts are finding at least a wan hope in those imperfect historical analogies. Even in the absence of a sudden and dramatic shift on the battlefield toward a definitive victory, there may still be a slight opening, as narrow as the eye of a needle, for the United States to slip through and leave Iraq in the near future in a way that will not be remembered as a national embarrassment.”
– From reporter James Glanz’s November 27 story for the Week in Review section.

Read ‘em all people.

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Media Research Center has compiled a rather lengthy list of some of the most egregious examples of left wing bias and shoddy reporting over the past 12 months. Here’s a few examples but you really should scoot on over there and read them all:

Chris Matthews: “What does it smell like over there [in Baghdad]? Do you sense fireworks?”
NBC’s Campbell Brown: “You do, Chris….On the street, you get the sense that something big is about to happen, something big and fairly ugly.”
— Exchange on MSNBC’s Hardball January 28, just before Iraq’s first free elections.

I think that this quote is significant there’s a hint of a Freudian slip (I think that is the correct term here) something “ugly” happened all right - a smooth violence free election, which for all the people who thrive on negativity is a pretty ugly result.

This one is a real doozy:

Matt Lauer in Baghdad: “Talk to me…about morale here. We’ve heard so much about the insurgent attacks, so much about the uncertainty as to when you folks are going to get to go home. How would you describe morale?”
Chief Warrant Officer Randy Kirgiss: “In my unit morale is pretty good. Every day we go out and do our missions and people are ready to execute their missions. They’re excited to be here.”
Lauer: “How much does that uncertainty of [not] knowing how long you’re going to be here impact morale?”|
Specialist Steven Chitterer: “Morale is always high. Soldiers know they have a mission. They like taking on new objectives and taking on the new challenges….”
Lauer: “Don’t get me wrong here, I think you are probably telling me the truth, but a lot of people at home are wondering how that could be possible with the conditions you’re facing and with the attacks you’re facing. What would you say to those people who are doubtful that morale can be that high?”
Captain Sherman Powell: “Sir, if I got my news from the newspapers also, I’d be pretty depressed as well.”

But the winner without a doubt is this one:

Reporter Brian Ross: “Mary Mapes was the woman behind the scenes, the producer who researched, wrote and put together Dan Rather’s 60 Minutes report on President Bush’s National Guard service, a report which Rather and CBS would later apologize for airing….”
Ross to Mapes: “Do you still think that story was true?”
Ex-CBS producer Mary Mapes: “The story? Absolutely.”
Ross: “This seems remarkable to me that you would sit here now and say you still find that story to be up to your standards.”
Mapes: “I’m perfectly willing to believe those documents are forgeries if there’s proof that I haven’t seen.”
Ross: “But isn’t it the other way around? Don’t you have to prove they’re authentic?”
Mapes: “Well, I think that’s what critics of the story would say. I know more now than I did then and I think, I think they have not been proved to be false, yet.”
Ross: “Have they proved to be authentic though? Isn’t that really what journalists do?”
Mapes: “No, I don’t think that’s the standard.”

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At least that is what Ramsey Clarke says. Clarke is the subject of a very sympathetic profile in the New York Times today under the curious headline Defending Hussein, Clark Seeks to Set Historical Record Straight which implies that what we have heard about Hussein up till now is false and Clark will be uncovering the truth. A more appropriate headline from an objective unbiased news organ might have been “Clark feels a fair trial critical” but we are talking about the New York Times here.

The piece which presents Clark as some sort of lovable contrarian makes no mention of his involvement in International Answer the hardcore socialist movement that pulls the strings of the “peace” protests in the US and around the world and all but gushes over Clarks “friends”:

“It is a remarkable roll call, the men who have had him at their side at times of confrontation with America and its government: Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi of Libya, Slobodan Milosevic of the former Yugoslavia, Charles Taylor of Liberia; and, at home, fringe figures like the Branch Davidian leader David Koresh, the right-wing gadfly Lyndon LaRouche, and Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, who is serving a life term in an American jail for his role in the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993.”

Yes, yes truly remarkable! You know that John Burns (the author of the article) is really reaching when Lyndon Larouche is termed a “gadfly”. I guess right wing nut job would have colored the Times’ readership of Clark.

But the best part comes near the end where Clark outlines his defense for Hussein:

At his trial, Mr. Hussein is charged with crimes against humanity in the killing of 148 men and teenage boys from the Shiite town of Dujail, north of Baghdad, after an assassination attempt against Mr. Hussein there in 1982. But Mr. Clark suggested that Mr. Hussein’s secret police had reason to act harshly against Shiite assassins who, he said, almost certainly had political links to Shiite-ruled Iran, then in the early stages of an eight-year war with Iraq. He compared the actions of Mr. Hussein’s secret police with the muscular behavior of an American president’s security detail.

“Just look at how our Secret Service works,” he said. “I’ve been knocked down several times when they see some kind of threat.” In any case, he said, he could not see how Mr. Hussein could be blamed for the killings. “He was the president of the country, he was in a war, he was a pretty busy guy,” he said. “I can see this as a case of some of his juniors overreacting

There you have it. This was all a time management issue. And hey killing 150 people? No different than getting nudged by a burly CIA man. Why this Saddam fellow was just caught up in an unfortunate circumstance where some “junior” accidentally had his gun go off 150 times ( presumably the misfortune repeated itself every time he reloaded).

Of course like any great journalist Burns asked Clark if he was ready to extend the same standard of expectations to President Bush whom we know is a very busy guy as well and surely is not responsible for every mistake made by some eager juniors who in moments of weakness make Iraqi detainees wear underwear on their heads?

Well we’ll never know the answer because that part didn’t seem to make it into print.

I guess it was cut by some junior editor who was a little over zealous.

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