Damned If you Do, Damned If You Don't

In his most recent news conference, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld slammed the NYTimes for attacking the military's controversial use of White Phosphorus in the US siege of the Iraqi city of Fallujah.

Rumsfeld dismissed hte eidtorial since, as he sees it, the NY Times has been against the war in Iraq "from the beginning." Considering the Ny Times' own critique of its Iraq war coverage, Rumsfeld's criticisms seems misplaced.

Indeed, as anyone familiar with the Judy Miller case will know, this reporter's articles about Saddam Hussein's purported cache of WMD played a major role in the administration's declared rationale for the war.

And as we now know, Miller was in contact with key administration officials in collecting data for her articles. Indeed, her use of information from Ahmed Chalabi, the discredited source of much intelligence on these weapons, contributed to her recent retirement from the newspaper.

So, Donald Rumsfeld seems, at the least, grossly misinformed about how much the NY Times has helped his own cause in going to war with Iraq. At the most, the NY Times editors might be thinking that the old saw about "you're damned if you do and you're damned if you don't" has never been truer.