Confabulation

No, not by Scooter Libby.  The offender this time is the NY Times, in a piece by Todd S. Purdum.  Inaccuracy abounds throughout the article; I'll try to hit the highlights as we go.

The capital stopped in its tracks on Friday to watch a trim, plain, soft-spoken prosecutor whose voice it had barely heard in two years call the most important aide to the most powerful vice president in American history a liar. Politely, calmly, but firmly - and over and over again.

Substitute "President" for "most powerful aide to the most powerful vice president in American history" and Mr. Purdum could have written this about Ken Starr for the Times.  The problem is that they never would have published it.

The prosecutor, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, brought no charges on the issue that prompted his investigation: whether someone in the government committed a crime by leaking the classified C.I.A. identity of the wife of one of the sharpest critics of the administration's rationale for war with Iraq. But he offered renewed evidence of that oldest of Washington axioms: the cover-up is always worse than the crime.

Crime?  What crime?  In this case the cover-up is worse than the truth, that no crime was committed, as we read later in the Times story (see below).  And to refer to Joe Wilson as "one of the sharpest critics" of the war rationale?  Loudest, maybe.  To be characterized as sharpest would require truthfulness, something Mr. Wilson is lacking.

It was as if Mr. Fitzgerald had suddenly morphed from the ominous star of a long-running silent movie into a sympathetic echo of Kevin Costner in "The Untouchables."

Nice imagery.  You can almost see Dick Cheney splitting the skull of a betrayer with a baseball bat.

Ms. Wilson's husband, Joseph C. Wilson IV, a former ambassador who cast doubt on the administration's prewar assertion that Iraq had tried to buy uranium from Niger, ...

Of course, without the malleable compliance of the Times in propagating his lies that doubt would not have existed.  It would have been appropriate for Mr. Purdum to note at this point that the prewar assertion was true.  A better phrasing of the assertion would have said "Saddam Hussein recently sought."

"This case is bigger than the leak of highly classified information," said Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic leader. "It is about how the Bush White House manufactured and manipulated intelligence in order to bolster its case for the war in Iraq, and to discredit anyone who dared to challenge the president."

If Mr. Purdum were interested at all in facts he would have fact-checked this ridiculous statement.  He could start with FactCheck.org.  It turns out that it is Mr. Reid who is lying.

The famous “16 words” in President Bush’s Jan. 28, 2003 State of the Union address turn out to have a basis in fact after all, according to two recently released investigations in the US and Britain.

Bush said then, “The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.” Some of his critics called that a lie, but the new evidence shows Bush had reason to say what he did.

• A British intelligence review released July 14 calls Bush’s 16 words “well founded.”
• A separate report by the US Senate Intelligence Committee said July 7 that the US also had similar information from “a number of intelligence reports,” a fact that was classified at the time Bush spoke.
• Ironically, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, who later called Bush’s 16 words a “lie”, supplied information that the Central Intelligence Agency took as confirmation that Iraq may indeed have been seeking uranium from Niger. 
• Both the US and British investigations make clear that some forged Italian documents, exposed as fakes soon after Bush spoke, were not the basis for the British intelligence Bush cited, or the CIA's conclusion that Iraq was trying to get uranium.

None of the new information suggests Iraq ever nailed down a deal to buy uranium, and the Senate report makes clear that  US intelligence analysts have come to doubt whether  Iraq was even trying to buy the stuff. In fact, both the White House and the CIA long ago conceded that the 16 words shouldn’t have been part of Bush’s speech.

But what he said – that Iraq sought uranium – is just what both British and US intelligence were telling him at the time. So Bush may indeed have been misinformed, but that's not the same as lying.

Back to the Times:

The Wilson affair is not Watergate, and Mr. Libby's alleged misdeed may seem small potatoes compared with the work of the Nixon-era White House "plumbers."

He should have appended, "But at the Times we're not going to treat it that way."

Mr. Fitzgerald used a homey baseball metaphor to explain why he had charged Mr. Libby with deception and obstruction, despite his inability to find evidence of an underlying crime in exposing Ms. Wilson's identity.

Finally, in the 17th paragraph, the truth is written.  Mr. Purdum, this could have been the lead.

Confabulation:

Confabulation is defined as the spontaneous production of false memories: either memories for events which never occurred, or memories of actual events which are displaced in space or time...

It is important to stress that confabulators are not lying: they are not deliberately trying to mislead. In fact, the patients are generally quite unaware that their memories are inaccurate, and they may argue strenuously that they have been telling the truth.

10/29/05 1505: Linked to Wizbang's COTTXXXV. And The Political Teen's Open Trackbacks.

10/29/05 1645: Paul Geary at The New Editor notices another preposterous line in a Times story (no link available).

"And as absorbing as this criminal investigation has been, the big point Americans need to keep in mind is this: There were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq."

No, the big point about this story, if they'd care to report it, is that the initial allegation, "outing" a "covert" CIA operative, was false, and simply a pretext to disrupt the Bush presidency.  Also false is the premise that Joe Wilson is the font of truth here.

10/29 05 1810: Definition added.

10/30/05 2245: It looks like Wolf Blitzer is also striken with confabulation.