The New York Times yesterday published an op-ed by the characteristically bellicose John R. Bolton, headlined “To Stop Iran’s Bomb, Bomb Iran.” Bolton, now a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, was U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations during the George W. Bush administration.
In an unusual touch, a link added to the original online edition of Bolton’s op-ed directly undermines Bolton’s case for war:
… Iran will not negotiate away its nuclear program. Nor will sanctions block its building a broad and deep weapons infrastructure. The inconvenient truth is that only military action like Israel’s 1981 attack on Saddam Hussein’s Osirak reactor in Iraq … can accomplish what is required.
U.S. and Israeli politicians often claim that Israel’s bombing of Iraq in 1981 significantly set back an already-existing Iraqi nuclear weapons program. The truth is almost exactly the opposite. Harvard Physics Professor Richard Wilson, who visited the ruins of Osirak in 1982 and followed the issue closely, has said the available evidence “suggests that the bombing did not delay the Iraqi nuclear-weapons program but started it.” This evidence includes the design of the Osirak reactor, which made it unsuitable for weapons production, and statements by Iraqi nuclear scientists that Saddam Hussein ordered them to begin a serious nuclear weapons program in response to the Israeli attack.
This perspective rarely appears in mainstream U.S. media outlets. One time it did, however, was in a 2012 Washington Post op-ed titled “An Israeli attack against Iran would backfire — just like Israel’s 1981 strike on Iraq.”
And it was that Post op-ed to which The Times chose to link as backup for Bolton. In other words, anyone looking for additional facts about Bolton’s case was led to an explanation of how what Bolton was saying was factually wrong, and that following the advice of people like Bolton would be disastrous.
Sewell Chan, deputy editor of the Times op-ed section, said that the link was “mistakenly added by an editor, not the writer, during the fact-checking process.” The Times said it plans to replace the link with one sending readers to a Times news article.
Bolton helped force out José Bustani, director general of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, in 2002. According to Bustani and others, Bolton was infuriated that Bustani was making plans for his organization to determine whether Iraq still possessed chemical weapons, since it would undermine the Bush administration’s plans for war. Bolton also appears to have played a key role in the notorious U.S. claims that Iraq was seeking yellowcake uranium from Niger.
Bolton claimed in a 2002 speech that Cuba is making “at least a limited offensive biological warfare research and development effort.” When a government intelligence analyst had disputed stronger language in Bolton’s original draft of his speech, Bolton and his staff berated him and attempted to have him removed from his job.
For its part, The Times famously helped the Bush administration make its case for invading Iraq by providing a conduit for false pre-war claims by government officials. (In addition, The Times’s 2002 story about Bolton’s Cuba speech was written by Judith Miller, the same reporter responsible for much of The Times’s worst coverage of Iraq.)
Photo: AP
Thanks to the Manhattan Project, nuclear weapons are a fact of life. The good guys have them and the bad guys have them.
The idea of going to war to stop what is patently inevitable is a sign of our insanity. It is gun control on a global scale = futile and counterproductive.
Proganda preceding invasion/war
Bush lied about Iraq having chemical weapons, and then he lied when they were discovered:
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/10/14/world/middleeast/us-casualties-of-iraq-chemical-weapons.html
I don’t understand why the NY (Whore) Times continues to give space to the ultra Right Wing, both US and Israeli, without allowing intelligent commentary rather than war mongering bombast. Which is why I get most of my news from this site and the Guardian. And the Daily Show until Stewart leaves. I will not subscribe to the NY Times anymore; I won’t pay for the lies and elite opinions.
It’s a comment on where the N.Y. Times is at, that rogue employees have to resort to activities such as detailed in this article to ensure that the public interest is served. My thanks to the faceless hero responsible.
So, let’s pool our cash and maybe some other trinkets. And get Jon BBQ Bolten put on a rendition plane to Yemen… He’ll be more use there now as a target,..
I certainly wish John Bolton the best of success in quickly finding just the right reason to die for his country. That or any other reason. Please just get on with it, John.
Thanks, in advance.
This fascist (Bolton) is very dangerous and not intelligent at all; some have referred to his as “scholar” but I see him as a man with criminal mind. How difficult is it to see the fact that the sanctions were imposed on Iran because of the neocon and Israeli pressures? The fact that Iran’s nuclear program has been, for the most part, for peaceful means, despite US/CIA/Israeli attempts to present it otherwise, despite the criminal efforts and assassination of Iranian nuclear scientists and despite the flagrant failure of the Merlin Operation, is undisputed.
The sanctions did hurt Iran but they also hurt everyone else (US and EU in particular). The sanctions, however, could not prevent the tremendous progress Iran made in the field. Sanctions have never been a useful foreign policy tool; look at Japan. Iranians, like the Japanese, are resourceful people, under any regime.
The past 18 months are expressions of how the West realized these sanctions are hurting them and how Iranian recognized that isolation of their country needs to be broken and how Iran needs to project its importance both regionally and internationally.
This is not good for Israelis, Saudis and the many remnants and broken pieces of Ottoman Empire. In fact these are the countries that the World needs to be concerned and watch for; these are the violent countries who have invaded their neighbors for no good reason other than ethnic cleansing and oil.
Iran has and continue to defend itself despite all these sanctions and the protections afforded to her enemies by the West and Israel. Iran’s, at least for the past 250 years has never invaded any of its neighbors.
If the World has finally become smart and rational, they will conclude this agreement.
This Vietnam era ideologue expressly avoided Vietnam because he didn’t want to get killed for Ted Kennedy’s politics.
This bomb-thrower is a Republican insider, college pals with Clarence Thomas and instrumental in seeing Scalia confirmed.
Like most chickenhawks, he gets paid to hawk and blames his chicken-heartedness on political opponents.
For his subversion of democratic government and his vicious nationalist ideology of perpetual war, I’d call him the Republican Ernst Rahm … except Rahm actually fought in the war.
By giving him a forum, the NYTimes gives him a smidgen of credibility upon which he has absolutely no claim — he was wrong to support the Vietnam invasion, he was wrong to participate in the Iran-Contra skullduggery, he was wrong to fulminate for war in Iraq and he is wrong to think a Sunni-Shia religious war Middle East can be won — and not inevitably exacerbated — with a US military attack upon Iran.
Yet he’s not laughed off the national stage like a barking little Chihuahua running with a pack of wolves. His continued presence should remind everyone of the continuing fraud that defines America.
The gates of hell show swing wide for this despicable, sociopathic agent of the capitalist propaganda bureau, the American Enterprise Institute.
John “Bonkers” Bolton is still loose upon the land. “Bonkers” or the Ambassador as he likes to call himself is still advocating the Zionist- neocon party line. Jon Stewart while interviewing him once ask – Is there any country you don’t want to bomb? LOL!
This war criminal, along with about 20 others is still walking free, even after 4500 soldiers died and untold hundreds of thousands of Iraqis died because of the destabilization of their country by the US invasion in 2003. The big question should be, why is this raving maniac even allowed one sentence in any publication in the world? What is wrong with the Times that they haven’t learned their lesson?
There is a very good reason “this perspective rarely appears in mainstream media outlets”. It is untrue.
Do you expect anyone to believe that in the 34 years since Israel destroyed the Iraqi nuclear reactor one day before it went operational, no publication would endeavor to explore this serious allegation and give it visibility? This article is classic historic revisionism.
As the article says, the Washington Post published the op-ed titled ‘An Israeli attack against Iran would backfire — just like Israel’s 1981 strike on Iraq.’ Similar looks at the real history have appeared repeatedly in specialist arms control publications, as well as various corporate “mainstream” publications from time to time.
Beyond that, it’s hard to understand how anyone could have lived through the last fifteen years of U.S. history and still believe that they’re getting a full and accurate view of the world from the mainstream U.S. media.
Robert, your method of determining accuracy of allegations of wrongdoing and chicanery needs some revision itself.
My watershed moment occurred some years ago when I found that the cocaine aspect of the Iran-Contra scandal was not being reported, –at all, –in the U.S. –or in other free world countries. Now any reasonable person would think that a story of massive amounts of cocaine being imported into the U.S. by a right wing military group seeking to replace funding cut by Congress, that was broke by a big city daily, (The San Jose Mercury), would get massive coverage. But not so!! And the method used to bury it is a study that every person concerned with ensuring their freedom needs to undertake. …I urge you to take the plunge, Robert.
Bolton should get a job sweeping chimneys because he really blows a lot of smoke. Does Yale somehow have a true talent in its ability to spit up idiot graduates?
Just like Russia responded to Western aggressive maneuvering after WWII by aggressively developing weapons and invading other countries, so too suspicious Middle Eastern states are responding to aggressive Western maneuvering by developing their own weapons programs in retaliation to activities undertaken by Western powers (as a matter of self-defense).
The tenor of the wars we will face in the future is usually determined by the lunatics who create the circumstances that actually cause these wars to develop.
The irony of the entire situation is that if the Western powers were to leave well enough alone the world would likely become more stable and less weaponized, with less overall armed conflict. As the result of the seeds of paranoia it sows within the heads of state it encourages armed conflict and the needs for the very weapons that are continually proposed to counter the threats of those who promote these paranoid beliefs.
The activities of the military industrial complex create the conditions necessary to justify their own existence and the huge tax dollars we spend to support them.
Let’s just call him John (nee Bolton) Miller. He done bent over real good.
I don’t see how anyone with any smarts at all could ever take John Bolton seriously about anything. They guy has proven over and over again what an absolute idiot he is.
As you do with every post…
If there is a stronger argument anywhere for the benefits of abortion that John Bolton, I haven’t heard it yet.
The snarling neocon madman Bolton is a reliable bellwether of error. Whatever he says, the opposite is true.
What is amusing here is that the NYT accidently interrupted its anti Iran propaganda campaign with a link to the WaPo story that negated Bolton’s main point. Oops! Gotta remove that link! Someone might catch on!
The sad Newspeak of the Old Gray Lady continues, albeit with an occasional glimmer of truth peeking in due to some editor’s “mistake.”
Is this guy Bolton an example of American Exceptionalism? Why is he wrong so often then?
The more one sees of US politicians, the saner Putin seems! The US solutions to everything is more bombs and more drones, since those are signs ‘of strength’. Hopefully the generation of lunatics running the US congress will meet ‘their maker’ very soon, so the rest of us can see a world ruled by positive virtues. Bush had some ‘explanations’ why so many hate the US, but what is there NOT to hate about that misfit of a nation?
Why is this dangerous fool still around?
As usual, though, they didn’t print the correction.
In this world, truth rarely matters.The mainstream media artillery is there to brainwash and force feed 99.99% of the populace with this belligerent propaganda.
From “John Bolton’s call for war on Iran”
http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2015/03/27/pers-m27.html
In answer to your question, several points need to be made. First, the New York times is no longer the newspaper of record, nor is it the voice of American liberalism. Neo-liberalism, perhaps, but certainly not the liberalism we knew in the 1960s. Second, like the rest of the so-called “balanced” media, the NY Times takes the formulaic approach of presenting the most extreme views on a given topic, as though that somehow would either promote reasoned debate or the reaching of a sensible compromise.
I completely agree with your contention that the Times, the Obama administration and the likes of Mr. Bolton have much more in common regarding the role of the United Snakes in the world. And, in a sense, it is not unreasonable, what they stand for. Given that our country is best at making war and destroying the environment, doesn’t it make sense to have more wars and promote crony capitalism?
I agree that a sort of Neo-Liberalism has supplanted the older school Liberalism at the New York Times. The NYT is on the regular round of publications that I scan every day, and while they do pose both extremes, it is hard not to notice that things have a slant towards the current administration and the Democratic party in General while showing a more favorable tone towards the extreme left as well. As for John Bolton, it isn’t really necessary to slant things to make him look like a bit of an extremist nut-job… he does that more than adequately all by himself (no need for links further emphasizing that point).. “The Hill” is actually a better place IMO to see more true balance… to the degree it is really available.
The Democrats have so successfully fixated the older 60’s style liberals (perfectly embodied by Elizabeth Warren) in an endless obsession with hating conservatives/Republicans/Bush/Tea Party that those same liberals pay little attention to the fact that the interfering in the affairs of foreign countries has only increased under the Obama Administration… Almost as if after the failed Neo-Con Effort of the Bush administration, it was necessary for someone perceived as the Liberals man be put in office to keep them mollified at home as business went on as usual. When bush enacted the Patriot act, never in his wildest dreams could he have imagined the kind of mass surveillance and data collection now being realized under Obama.
The US has been working to topple governments who were not playing ball, in favor of those we thought would, for decades regardless of which party was in power. It matters not at all whether the government we are trying to overthrow is Democratic, Autocratic, or repressive. Acknowledge the US as the head of the Syndicate, or face the consequences. All about money and power as usual.
I agree. GW Bush would never have gotten away with the aggressive foreign policies of Obama without people raising significant objections. Obama is a wolf in sheep’s clothing. He ran on a platform of peace, middle class support, protection of constitutional rights, and transparency. He has governed with policies of militarism, corporate support (most notably the Trans Pacific Partnership negotiations), prosecution of whistle blowers, and enhanced population surveillance. All about money and power as usual.
Hey Jon Schwarz! Very happy to see you writing here at TI.
I swear I get three John Bolton promoted tweets a week. I can RT them if you like? :)
Thank you! I’m very happy to be here.
Please retweet, I hate to miss any of the Bolton oeuvre. My theory is that his mustache is some type of alien life form that landed on his face and has seized control of his mind.
A very efficacious method of preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons would be to drop Bolton out of an airplane over Iran. After free-fall, he would effectively contaminate the entire region, within about 100 mile radius of his impact point, making it extraordinarily inhospitable for any multi-cellular form of life, for it is estimated, the next 1500 years or so, effectively precluding nuclear development in the area.
I hate to say this, but the Iraq War rode out on the shameless assertion of the General Colin Powell in the UN, not on what creeps like Bolton assert. I wonder how Black people can say their miserable lives matter when one of their glorified kind did not think Iraqi lives matter in the least bit. Pity Ahmadinejad isn’t around to discover himself dangling from the end of a rope.
General Powell was deceived by the Cheney thugs. he is regretting it for the rest of his life!
You seriously believe that a Secretary of State can be deceived so easily? And such a naive person was once upon a time in control of the US Army?
Colin Powell was just following orders, just as he just followed orders in helping sweep US atrocities in Vietnam under the rug. For the latter, he put himself on the fast track toward four stars. There is plenty to blame him for, but what about those who gave those orders? Are they exempt from criticism or accountability because they happen to be white?
if comments are moderated how did this totally racist nonsense get through?
There is a world-wide dishonesty about racism which is why it is flourishing. One black person blatantly lies when he knows that his lies would be the basis of launching a war on another race, another nation. To call this racist a racist is being racist? This same black guy was marching on the street after a few black criminals were neutralized by good white cops just doing their duty. This is dishonesty.
“..after a few black criminals were neutralized by good white cops… “: By that do you mean strangled to death for selling loose cigarettes, or do you mean shot for walking in the street? What you meant to say, I’m sure was “after a few good blacks were neutralized by white cop criminals.” Isn’t that right?
You seem indignant when good, pious people of color are called black criminals. I don’t have any problem with that, since it’s your the privilege to interpret social behavior the way you want to.
BUT, where was your indignation when someone from the same colored community stood straight and lied about Iraqi WMD’s? Was that also not racism? Do you have any estimate of the number of people, including our own brave soldiers and further including soldiers from his own community, have died as a result of black lies? I think you are a hypocrite and blaming Bolton just because he is white, and not blaming Powell as he is too black to be bad. Be honest in dealing with racism and speak up every time – not selectively; otherwise, keep your trap shut.
“Be honest in dealing with racism and speak up every time – not selectively; otherwise, keep your trap shut.”
Kk. General: You are a racist ‘stain. As a white person, it is my duty to point this out as publicly as possible. I have a duty to my race — my people — to excoriate the human fecal matter among us. You are one such piece of under-composted matter. You are vile in every particular.
There! Took care of ma duty this evenin’! Y’all may thank me now.
What Fluffy said.
Gen Hercules is one of the weirder, often odious commenters here. Oh well, that’s the Internet for ya.
Thanks Mona for your compliments. Don’t pay any attention to nasty, fluffy, over-weight felines out to vilify everyone else.
And while I am addressing you, would you mind if I ask you to inquire of the Greenwald team if Washington Post is any different from New York Times, except perhaps for their ownership?
It’s beyond dispute your comment is racist. Here’s why: Any US state secretary would’ve done the exact same thing, yet you choose to focus on the guy’s race.
Exactly, when all Powell actually did was demonstrate that blacks are human just as much as whites and are prone to the same faults.
@dgrb “….. blacks are human just as much as whites”
We now have DNA evidence that shows that blacks are pure humans whereas whites and other lighter colored people have various degrees of Neanderthal genes as a result of philandering ancestors. That still does not mean we absolve General Powell of his misdeeds and heap all the blame on poor Bolton.
So in your mind, all white people then, by extension of your logic, have one set of values, and all blacks have a different, definable set of values. Hmmmm.
Howdy there jgreen7801…..
We can turn it around.
“The 5th Dimension Age of Aquarius 1969″
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kjxSCAalsBE
Check out this version:
“Hair – Let the Sunshine In”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fhNrqc6yvTU
Thought provoking isn’t it?
No, all I am saying is, if Powell is responsible then say so, don’t put the blame on a non-entity called Bolton. And when you complain about race then look at your own actions to begin with.
While channel flipping this evening, I landed on C-Span during a House Armed Services Committee hearing with the chiefs of staff of all branches of military. The general tenor of the hearing was one of nearly unanimous ass kissing by the Representatives and total unanimity by the generals that unless they were given more funding with LESS oversight our enemies will overtake our capabilities to conduct war. One general, Secretay of the Navyy I believe, let loose a slip of the tongue which went like this, “As we are fighting in several wars at the moment, there are other wars which we see coming in the near future.” His voice trailed off near the end and his expression was one of a big,”oops, I shouldn’t have said that.” One of the other generals saved his butt by immediately changing the subject. The reason I related all this is to show John Bolton is not an abberation in his hawkish machinations. It seems that the military industrial complex supported by stooges like Bolton and other buffoons have wars all lined up into the forseeable future. By the way, just so people don’t try to make it a partisan issue, Democrats and Republicans alike were left with very brown noses. To be fair, one representative brought up that the DOD needs a much belated audit before increasing their funding. Her comment went over like a Le(a)d Zeppelin which left the generals mumbling in their mics. It’s very sad to contemplate a whole generation knowing nothing but their country at war with someone. It’s up to the citizens to change that, ’cause THEY clearly have no intention of doing so. When newspapers cover for the likes of Bolton, they become THEY. Speak up, people.
War is serious business.
jgreen:
Don’t be naive. The generals have ideas and plans for how they think things should proceed based on the available intel and interests at any given time, but the President/Admin calls the shots.
To be fair, if you have hawkish morons in office like Bush Jr, it is far more likely that the MIC is going to exert more influence and have their way.
But we’re not talking about some pre-ordained war plans that are just waiting to be implemented regardless of the Admin and situation on the ground.
Even given the Iraq circus, this is a highly cynical and mistaken notion of how things normally operate.
Another reason Republicans and some Democrats should reconsider putting hawkish morons in office because they buy into the right’s bs security home and abroad rhetoric.
It’s true that the MIC always prepares war/strike plans based on available intel and interests at any given moment in the world. It’s true that they are powerful and have the means to try and push through plans when they are determined.
But it is still up to the President/admin to consider their advice and make the final call.
Which is why it is crucial to elect Presidents that aren’t hawkish, that aren’t in the corner with the MIC, that aren’t so willing to put tens of thousands of US military in harm’s way and provoke even more hatred from these regions in the world.
Obama is holding his ground and doing what he can to work on conflicts without jumping into military actions that he knows from Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam, and common sense really, can so easily and quickly spiral out of control and become a nightmare.
If you vote for hawkish moronic rep leaders like Bush, you are voting for the potential of these nightmares to come to light.
Sometimes full-scale war is necessary. But I don’t believe it was in the above examples, and I don’t think it is currently either.
That can change, but someone like Obama is going to understand when there are no other options on the table, and will reluctantly pull the trigger.
Whereas a rep hawk hot-head will shoot first and maybe ask a few questions later.
War is the “manna” of the 0.01% Central Banking Cartel “elite”….jgreen7801.
Have to fuel the “War on Terror” at all costs.
“Manufacturing Dissent”
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article41374.htm
Snip: [“Chossudovsky notes that progressive, left-wing, and anti-war groups have endorsed the “war on terror” and uncritically accept the official 9/11 story, which provides the basis for Washington’s wars.”]
[…..”As Professor Stephen Cohen has observed, dissent has disappeared from American foreign policy discussion. In place of dissent there is exhortation to more war. A good example is today’s (March 26, 2015) op-ed in the New York Times by neoconservative John R. Bolton, US ambassador to the UN during the George W. Bush regime. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/26/opinion/to-stop-irans-bomb-bomb-iran.html?_r=0
Bolton calls for bombing Iran. Anything short of a military attack on Iran, Bolton says, has “an air of unreality” and will guarantee that Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Turkey will also develop nuclear weapons in order to protect themselves from Iran. According to Bolton, the Israeli and American nuclear arsenals are not threatening, but Iran’s would be.
Of course, there is no evidence that Iran has a nuclear weapons program, but Bolton asserts it anyway. Moreover, Bolton manages to overlook that the agreement being worked out with Iran halts the Iranian enrichment program far below the level necessary for nuclear weapons. Bolton’s belief that Iran would be able to hide a weapons program if permitted to have nuclear energy is unsubstantiated. It is merely an implausible assertion.”]
As General Hercules points out. War is lucrative business.
Bolton is all for war. Of course he avoided going to Vietnam.
from 2007
Israel and top zionist leaders attack intelligence
http://petras.lahaine.org/?p=1721
from Feb 2012:
U.S. Agencies See No Move by Iran to Build a Bomb
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/25/world/middleeast/us-agencies-see-no-move-by-iran-to-build-a-bomb.html?_r=0
Not only US agencies. Around the time in 2012 that Bibi gave his famous UN speech showing Iran having 70% enriched U235 (they are currently producing 20% enriched material), his own intelligence service was telling him that there was no sign of an Iranian nuclear weapons program.
Let’s face it. The Iranian nuclear weapons program is like the Iraqi nuclear weapons program. Nobody in any intelligence agency, or in the IAEA, has evidence of an Iranian nuclear weapons program. But the facts are irrelevant to the political discussion, as they usually are. Israel, the neo-cons and the neo-libs want a war with Iran. The only question is, will we be able to stop them this time?
It’s the Saudis who want the war more desperately than others, something that we are very sensitive to. Muslims in other countries are starting to ignore Saudis which is bad for them. It is bad for us as well since we depend on Saudis to control the other Muslims, except some Sufi Muslims who seem to have a mind of their own. ISIS also want this war as it will divert attention from them. Iranians have already sent their major assets out of the country and have bunkered their immediate needs, so they are prepared. The initial troops build-up will be apparently to fight ISIS and Yemen, but they will be diverted to the Iran sector in due course. The nuclear deal is a diversion meant to fool the rest of the world of our intentions and we will conveniently dump it when necessary. The disagreement with Bibi is a staged drama to make this diversion appear more realistic than it is.
To answer your only question then, the answer is no. You will be aware the war has started only after it is actually on.
Maybe John ‘Revoltin’ Bolton should stick to the Weekly Standard. He’s assured there are about 6 people in the US who care about anything he has to say.
He was instrumental to boming before and is still thirsty for blood of millions more. I believe he needs psychological evaluation.
I believe after seeing recent disastrous consequences of boming and war, only people with severe psychological issues would offer such suggestion as Boton did. He needs help
The very existence of filth like Bolton demonstrates the need for revolutionary change in this country’s system of justice. Fair for Bolton would be arrest, interrogation, public trial and, after a blubbered confession, conviction by a peoples’ tribunal.
Journalist George Monbiot had called for a citizen’s arrest of Mr Bolton at Hay festival in 2008!
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2008/may/25/hayfestival2008.guardianhayfestival1
I for one, would have very gladly helped him!
Bolton knows the truth. He is a liar.
Strangely, newsdiff.org comes up empty on this one. (Or is that common?)
http://newsdiffs.org/article-history/www.nytimes.com/2015/03/26/opinion/to-stop-irans-bomb-bomb-iran.html
The change to the self-refuting link has been made.
I suppose we’ll figure out which editor made the substitution based on who gets fired. Messing up a perfectly good piece of propaganda meant to bankrupt the country with some inconvenient facts… that has to have consequences.
Sadly, Mr Bolton is “Obsessed” with Iran and its intention to make a Nuclear Weapon, for at least ten years if not longer ( I am not aware of his showing any concern for Israel’s nuclear weapons ).
Like any neocon, his philosophy is “to make peace”, one has to “start a war”. And if any one, including Republican administration shows any sign of wanting to negotiate, it is at the receiving end ( he can not just get rid of them! )……
http://tonykaron.com/2008/07/16/why-john-bolton-is-right-on-iran/
And of course, one should just leave NYT alone. It is really getting old!
The distinction between editorials and reporting is getting increasingly blurred social media and cable news.
It makes since that editor accidentally included the link, especially since it linked to another op-ed in another paper.
It would be a bad policy for the paper to add anything to and op-ed other than fact-based “objective” reporting. The paper has to take responsibility for the accuracy of their links in a way that they aren’t required to with the article itself.
Challenging of the opinions in the piece should be left to responses to the piece.
While some media companies offer personalized news feeds, not many seem to have progressed towards customized re-writing of a story to suit each individual user’s tastes and preferences. I assume the first step would be switching the hyperlinks, since that can be done easily without the computer power required for an artificial intelligence algorithm to re-write the complete article.
So congratulations to the NYT for taking the first step down the road towards the creation of personalized virtual universes.
NYT has a subtle sense of irony, Duce. I would have linked to the “Freedonia’s Going to War” sequence from “Duck Soup,” or maybe Gen. Jack D. Ripper’s monologues from “Dr. Strangelove.”
It’s interesting to consider, though, that Bolton must have advocated this all through his career. He’s going to make arguments now, for Operation Iranian Freedom, that even George W. and Dick Cheney didn’t buy? Just as well — this guy seems like the reincarnation of Luigi Cadorna.
“NYT has a subtle sense of irony”……………. and an even more refined capacity for clickbait. When the Times needs to boost its metrics, an op-ed by Bolton is even better than a stale, repetitive bit of moralizing from David Brooks, or some harrumphing, disjointed drivel from The Mustache.
The trouble is, Bolton was intimately involved in an evil war of choice in Iraq. He is one of the always-wrong-never-paid-for-it doyens of the neocon elite. I take real enjoyment his his manic silliness. However, he should be off somewhere out of the public eye, shelling peas in an orange jumpsuit……… not entertaining us during a slow news week in the spring of 2015.
Well, I for one, will gladly tip a glass, and raise a cheer, for that NYT editor who did the fact checking. Bully for you!, whomever you are.
John Bolton is increasing like the cartoon character which he resembles. He’s a walking advertisement that there is no real threat to America. Had he been as crazy as he is and working for a terrorist organization, he would long ago have been the subject of a couple million dollars worth of Mavericks. It’s hard to believe any real Muslim extremists would target strangers in Times square and leave John Bolton above ground to spread his message.
All mustache, no metal (– nor mettle, come to that).
Aww, don’t be so harsh, the moustache and glasses sort of reminded me of Geppetto from “Pinocchio,” you know, with all the cuckoo clocks, a few springs loose, that fellow?
More like Captain Kangaroo with that ‘stache. And another asshat that seems to get a lot of traction is the perennially insane Frank Gaffney. How anybody takes these mental midgets seriously is quite a bizarre puzzle.
They take them seriously because the fascists pulling the strings of the politicians and media OK their message. So they get to stand in front of thousands or millions on the tube and make their completely asinine statements. As long as these idiots are calling for more war and spending on weapons the politicos and their corporate partners are set for more profits and power.
A real justice system would lionize heroes like Snowden and imprison war-mongers like Bolton.