Elayne Riggs noticed this article from the New York Time which begins:

Hezbollah militants in southern Lebanon have amassed thousands of surface-to-surface rockets, including missiles with the range to strike cities in northern Israel, according to senior Israeli and Western officials.

However, the very next sentence reads: “As the Bush administration moves to confront Iraq, some officials are concerned that Hezbollah could step up its attacks on Israel.” Something amiss here.

Still, officials worry that the buildup of so many rockets could tempt Hezbollah to expand its operations. Adding to this worry is the fear that Iran or Syria might encourage Hezbollah to stir up tensions along Israel’s northern frontier to divert attention from Iraq and complicate the Bush administration’s plans to topple Saddam Hussein.

Elayne notes that page 2 talks about “Secretary of State Colin Powell.” So she does what every good reader of Orwell does, she takes a screen shot (shown left). Which is a good thing, because the original has been updated:

This article originally appeared in The New York Times on Sept. 27, 2002.

Let’s consider the fact that maybe the NYT was sincere in running (recycling? plagiarizing?) an old piece from before Iraq. But what is the context? Does it inform us of anything new? It contains no new commentary, no new analysis, and no information beyond what we already know: Hezbollah has missiles (really? that’s what that noise is…).

So there is no rational reason for re-running the story. Everyone tries to submit the same work twice, but at least they could run over it once and check for glaring errors. Have things become so bad were we cannot even cheat with intelligence?

Link (from Ann Bartow)

Please excuse the mess while I sort things out.

I plan to keep the old one as a more static and academic/professional site, but you will always be able to find here from there and vice versa.

Shout back if anyone can here me.

Steven