>>> The Guardian of London—typically one of the world's best mainstream newspapers—has had some problems this week.

On 31 May 2003, the paper ran an article headlines "Straw, Powell Had Serious Doubts Over Their Iraqi Weapons Claims." Citing transcripts of unknown origin provided by an anonymous "diplomatic source," the article said that Britain's Home Secretary and the US's Secretary of State had a "secret meeting" in which they "expressed serious doubts about the quality of intelligence on Iraq's banned weapons programme." Certainly sounds plausible, given all the other revelations about bad intelligence, nonexistent reports, plagiarized reports, faked reports, and pressure on intelligence agencies to cook their findings. It's of a piece with US News and World Report's revelation that, several days before the alleged meeting mentioned above, Powell was rehearsing his WMD speech for the UN. He threw the papers into the air, saying, "I'm not reading this. This is bullshit."

But now the Guardian has retracted its story about Straw and Powell's meeting. The article is still on the site, but now it's preceded by this disclaimer:

In our front page lead on May 31 headlined "Straw, Powell had serious doubts over their Iraqi weapons claims," we said that the foreign secretary Jack Straw and his US counterpart Colin Powell had met at the Waldorf Hotel in New York shortly before Mr Powell addressed the United Nations on February 5. Mr Straw has now made it clear that no such meeting took place. The Guardian accepts that and apologises for suggesting it did.

Such a vague statement only muddies the waters. If the meeting never took place, that must mean the whole article is bunk. The two officials didn't express their suspicions to each other. The "Waldorf transcript" is as phony as the forged documents about Iraq importing uranium from Nigeria. The Guardian's diplomatic source either hoodwinked the paper or was himself duped.

But this retraction begs the question: Why has the Guardian become so sure that the meeting didn't take place? What ironclad proof did Straw present to utterly convince them that the 10-minute confab never happened?

And if the whole article is bogus, why leave it on the Web? After all, the same newspaper just removed another article that it says was wrong.

On 4 June, the Guardian ran "Wolfowitz: Iraq War Was About Oil." It claimed that during a Q&A session in Singapore, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz admitted that oil was the main reason for the Iraq attack:

Asked why a nuclear power such as North Korea was being treated differently from Iraq, where hardly any weapons of mass destruction had been found, the deputy defence minister said: "Let's look at it simply. The most important difference between North Korea and Iraq is that economically, we just had no choice in Iraq. The country swims on a sea of oil."

Now, I would love nothing more than for Wolfowitz of Arabia to admit the real reasons he and his ultrahawk cronies ordered the military to take over Iraq, but this seemed to good to be true. True, Wolfowitz did make a comment to Vanity Fair about choosing to promote the WMD excuse for "bureaucratic reasons," but admitting that it was all about black gold was beyond belief.

I went to the Defense Department's Website and read the transcript of the event, and sure enough, Wolfowitz really hadn't meant it that way:

Look, the primarily difference -- to put it a little too simply -- between North Korea and Iraq is that we had virtually no economic options with Iraq because the country floats on a sea of oil. In the case of North Korea, the country is teetering on the edge of economic collapse and that I believe is a major point of leverage whereas the military picture with North Korea is very different from that with Iraq. The problems in both cases have some similarities but the solutions have got to be tailored to the circumstances which are very different.

In other words, the US has economic leverage over North Korea because that country is just about down the tubes anyway. But the US can't sweat Iraq economically because they're independently wealthy due to all that oil.

The press misconstruing remarks is nothing new, and I just mentally filed it away as a media misfire. To my surprise, not only did the Guardian retract the story, they pulled it off the site. Here's the mea culpa they ran:

Paul Wolfowitz
A report which was posted on our website on June 4 under the heading "Wolfowitz: Iraq war was about oil" misconstrued remarks made by the US deputy defence secretary, Paul Wolfowitz, making it appear that he had said that oil was the main reason for going to war in Iraq. He did not say that. He said, according to the department of defence website, "The ... difference between North Korea and Iraq is that we had virtually no economic options with Iraq because the country floats on a sea of oil. In the case of North Korea, the country is teetering on the edge of economic collapse and that I believe is a major point of leverage whereas the military picture with North Korea is very different from that with Iraq." The sense was clearly that the US had no economic options by means of which to achieve its objectives, not that the economic value of the oil motivated the war. The report appeared only on the website and has now been removed.

I still don't understand why the paper completely removed an article based on an out-of-context quote but left an article that (they now claim) is based on a complete fabrication.

For the record, the pulled Wolfowitz article is below. There's more about it at the Digital Media Tree and Calpundit.

George Wright
Wednesday June 4, 2003

Oil was the main reason for military action against Iraq, a leading White House hawk has claimed, confirming the worst fears of those opposed to the US-led war. The US deputy defence secretary, Paul Wolfowitz - who has already undermined Tony Blair's position over weapons of mass destruction (WMD) by describing them as a "bureaucratic" excuse for war - has now gone further by claiming the real motive was that Iraq is "swimming" in oil.

The latest comments were made by Mr Wolfowitz in an address to delegates at an Asian security summit in Singapore at the weekend, and reported today by German newspapers Der Tagesspiegel and Die Welt.

Asked why a nuclear power such as North Korea was being treated differently from Iraq, where hardly any weapons of mass destruction had been found, the deputy defence minister said: "Let's look at it simply. The most important difference between North Korea and Iraq is that economically, we just had no choice in Iraq. The country swims on a sea of oil."

Mr Wolfowitz went on to tell journalists at the conference that the US was set on a path of negotiation to help defuse tensions between North Korea and its neighbours - in contrast to the more belligerent attitude the Bush administration displayed in its dealings with Iraq.

His latest comments follow his widely reported statement from an interview in Vanity Fair last month, in which he said that "for reasons that have a lot to do with the US government bureaucracy, we settled on the one issue that everyone could agree on: weapons of mass destruction."

Prior to that, his boss, defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld, had already undermined the British government's position by saying Saddam Hussein may have destroyed his banned weapons before the war.

Mr Wolfowitz's frank assessment of the importance of oil could not come at a worse time for the US and UK governments, which are both facing fierce criticism at home and abroad over allegations that they exaggerated the threat posed by Saddam Hussein in order to justify the war.

Amid growing calls from all parties for a public inquiry, the foreign affairs select committee announced last night it would investigate claims that the UK government misled the country over its evidence of Iraq's WMD.

The move is a major setback for Tony Blair, who had hoped to contain any inquiry within the intelligence and security committee, which meets in secret and reports to the prime minister.

In the US, the failure to find solid proof of chemical, biological and nuclear arms in Iraq has raised similar concerns over Mr Bush's justification for the war and prompted calls for congressional investigations.

Mr Wolfowitz is viewed as one of the most hawkish members of the Bush administration. The 57-year old expert in international relations was a strong advocate of military action against Afghanistan and Iraq.

Following the September 11 terror attacks on the World Trade Centre and Pentagon, Mr Wolfowitz pledged that the US would pursue terrorists and "end" states' harbouring or sponsoring of militants.

Prior to his appointment to the Bush cabinet in February 2001, Mr Wolfowitz was dean and professor of international relations at the Paul H Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), of the Johns Hopkins University.

copyright 2003 Guardian Newspapers Limited.

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