Judith Miller got all the notoriety, but William Safire was even more dishonest. From 2001 until the invasion of Iraq in March 2003, William Safire printed a series of columns in the New York Times that must hold the Guiness Book of World Records title for warmongering. As longtime reader, wanderindiana pointed out in 2005, “in the period from 3/31/2002 to 3/31/2003, there are 8 Safire-written New York Times pieces that specifically mention Mohamed Atta.” My favorite is from his May 9, 2002 piece, “Mr. Atta Goes to Prague.”
A misdirection play is under way in the C.I.A.’s all-out attempt to discredit an account of a suspicious meeting in Prague a year ago. Mohamed Atta, destined to be the leading Sept. 11 suicide hijacker, was reported last fall by Czech intelligence to have met at least once with Saddam Hussein’s espionage chief in the Iraqi Embassy — Ahmed al-Ani, a spymaster whom the Czechs were keeping under tight surveillance.
If the report proves accurate, a connection would exist between Al Qaeda’s murder of 3,000 Americans and Iraq’s Saddam. That would clearly be a casus belli, calling for our immediate military response, separate from the need to stop a demonstrated mass killer from acquiring nuclear and germ weapons. Accordingly, high C.I.A. and Justice officials — worried about exposure of the agency’s inability to conduct covert operations — desperately want Atta’s Saddam connection to be disbelieved.
They are telling favored journalists: Shoot this troublesome story down.
Safire was still humping that corpse in January 2003, long after the president himself had been forced to deny it had any validity. Safire knew better, but he wanted us to invade Iraq in the worst way and he was willing to become Cheney’s stenographer to help see that it happened. The New York Times gave him a quiet retirement in 2005, while letting him continue on in his “On Language” column for the Magazine.
The New York Times’s eulogy makes no mention of the disgrace Safire brought upon their editorial page, nor of his contribution to getting hundreds of thousands of people needlessly killed.
Safire will always be remembered for these sins.
but he was just a writer, a scribbler of words, and not an elected representative of the people. Some of those, like Bush, Cheney, Biden and Clinton were, with respect to Iraq, a thousand times worse because they actually had the power to kill people, and used it.
Biden? Clinton? I assume you mean their votes authorizing force?
When they die, people will mention that vote. In the meantime, the topic of the day is Safire. And Safire was a dishonest warmonger. And he helped shape public opinion for war using a kitchen sink of lies supplied by Scooter Libby.
I thought the topic of the day was contributions to getting hundreds of thousands of people needlessly killed.
“dishonest”? — stop it Boo- the bastard was a effing liar! and he knew just what he was doing. if i was a believer in the afterlife, tht piece of shit would be entering the bowels of an eternal hell right now.
Just because others are guilty, does not mean nobody else can be guilty.
nalbar
Was Safire Press Scretary for Tricky Dick? .. or just a confidant?
.
In 1965 Safire volunteered as an unpaid speechwriter for Nixon and was assigned to help Patrick Buchanan with Nixon’s syndicated newspaper column. In 1968 he wrote the victory speech following Nixon’s election and in 1969, after selling his company for a reported $335,000 cash, he joined the White House staff.
The Men Who Spied on Nixon
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."Limbaugh, Savage, Hannity, O’Reilly and Beck?
Safire was poison. May he burn in hell.
Have never been able to understand the positive press with our mainstream media. Part of that neo-conservative cabal which has such a tremendous influence on the uninformed!!!
Warmonger!!!
Safire was representative of a press that was best characterized by Vince Foster’s statement about the Wall Street Journal in his
resignation lettersuicide note:In addition, Safire was sanctimonious about the niceties of using the English language.
I thought some of his language stuff was quite interesting. Never did figure out how a person could be delightful at times in one topic while being amazingly wrong and bad in life-or-death ones. I guess he was a true descendent of Buckley.
Believing in reincarnation, I think Safire is going to have a ton of lives in the shit holes of the world to make up for the misdeeds in his recent life. He could justify anything if a republican president desired it regardless of how many human beings died. His payback time has started and his suffering will be immense.
A well deserved dirt nap.
I for one am glad Safire is dead, and he died in pain.
fuck him.
Your assessment is right on target. He did more harm than good. I hope he rots in Hell.