Okrent followup re NYT failures on WMD

Armed with nothing but the paper, common sense and, evidently, a greater dose of skepticism than many reporters assigned to the beat, these readers have held your editors accountable and have in some measure at least - though people continue to die needlessly in Iraq - been vindicated.

IAN MORRIS
Chicago, May 31, 2004

I learned around the time of the Vietnam War to harshly critique the basis of "news" supporting a government position, and to actively seek out and value contradicting information.

Why did the Times editors not have a similar approach? Why did they not have the more accurate perspective held by most of the world outside the United States?

Why was the "front-page syndrome" not satisfied even more powerfully by news debunking an administration stand than by news supporting it? Could the editors have had a need to appease the administration, to grasp at any straws on the administration's side? Did they fear being attacked (verbally? financially?) by the right wing for being part of the "biased liberal media"?

The answers clearly have profound implications, and should be pursued.

ROBERT J. GLADSTONE
Carlisle, Mass., May 30, 2004

You say, "The failure was not individual, but institutional." I think the failure was, in fact, individual.

The "hunger for scoops," the "front-page syndrome," the "hit-and-run journalism" and, indeed, the "institution" may have encouraged mistakes. But The New York Times is staffed by people - people who know, or should know, what journalism is about.

"Institutional" failure sounds so very much like the notion that structural failures were at fault for the yellow-cake claims making their way into the president's speeches.

RUSTY STORBECK
Santa Fe, N.M., May 30, 2004

The criticism of The Times is overwrought, misinformed and, from where I'm sitting, hysterical. To me it seems to come from the same antiwar Bush-hating sources who are so furiously angry about everything else that has happened since 9/11. The Times doesn't need hysterical and willfully ignorant condemnation any more than anyone else on the planet does.

CATHERINE JOHNSON
Irvington, N.Y., May 31, 2004

We need to state some unpleasant truths if we are to develop a set of workable standards for these times. The fact is that we are engaged in a real war. Our foe has been quite clear in stating the intention to eliminate us.

Seeking out and presenting the opposing position may be good journalism in peacetime, but in wartime it is beyond inappropriate. It bestows the enemy position with a spurious claim to some sort of equivalence. History clearly teaches that normal rules must be adjusted in abnormal situations. How are you and The Times going to accommodate that reality?

THOMAS J. NELSON
Freeport, N.Y., May 30, 2004

You write in connection with The Times's coverage of so-called weapons of mass destruction that "the failure was not individual, but institutional."

There's a measure of truth in your words, but also evasion. The truth is that institutions are not greedy for bylines and seduced by their sources; individual reporters are. Individual Times reporters, Judith Miller prominently among them, failed in their jobs as much as, even more than, editors did. To excuse and thereby ignore their failures is to suggest that at The Times, just as in the Bush administration, the buck stops nowhere.

JOHN P. HEWITT
Tucson, May 30, 2004
The writer is an emeritus professor of sociology, University of Massachusetts at Amherst.

Judith Miller was embedded with our unit from early March to June of 2003, roughly four months in which she reported from the field while observing the unit's search for evidence of Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction.

We have been deeply disturbed by the mischaracterizations of the operation and of her reporting by most of the major media. But we were particularly disturbed by the recent New York Times editors' note apologizing for having been "taken in" by W.M.D. "misinformation" and citing one article that she wrote while embedded with our unit.

It is easy to conclude in retrospect, and out of context of the time and place in which the discovery was made, that, as the note asserted, perhaps the reporting was somehow influenced by a desire to rush to judgment or justify the war. We strongly disagree with that assertion and remain firmly supportive of the accuracy of her accounts of the events she described, as well as the other articles she wrote while embedded with our unit.

(Chief Warrant Officer) RICHARD L. GONZALES
Mobile Exploitation Team Alpha Officer in Charge
(Capt.) RYAN CUTCHIN

Mobile Exploitation Team Bravo O.I.C.
(Sgt. First Class) KENNETH VEACH (Ret.)
Mobile Exploitation Team Alpha N.C.O.I.C.
Fort Sill, Okla., June 2, 2004

I've followed all the stories and the "spin" to create a case for war from the beginning. This spin started with the "axis of evil" speech. As a university student, I sat through it and asked questions as cabinet members made their case for war.

In the 16 months leading up to my activation to fight in Iraq as a tank platoon commander, I felt that this spin was an effort to find a magic button of support with the citizenry. While sailing to Iraq, I even followed the stories culminating in Secretary of State Colin L. Powell's flimsy case for war presented to the United Nations.

So off I went, to lead my men on this quest. We fought and died holding up the soldiers' end of the democratic bargain. I lived with many of the young men fighting and dying who had such blind faith in our system of government. They felt it was just right to do what we were doing, even though many of them could not explain or justify why.

So on this Memorial Day weekend, as I sit and think about what I've done, the people who have been hurt, the future of this ongoing tragedy, I come to this conclusion: Shame on you.

JIM THOMPSON
Louisville, Ky., May 30, 2004