Meet Your Liberal Media: The Lie That Dare Not Speak The Name Judith Miller Edition

The New York Times regrets misleading the country in support of George Bush's little war.  This editorial isn't the first mea culpa, and shouldn't be the last. But it still refuses to name the names of those responsible within its ranks.  Selected strands from the Times' hairshirt follow:

As we've noted in several editorials since the fall of Baghdad, we were wrong about the weapons. And we should have been more aggressive in helping our readers understand that there was always a possibility that no large stockpiles existed.

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At the time, we believed that Saddam Hussein was hiding large quantities of chemical and biological weapons because we assumed that he would have behaved differently if he wasn't.

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But we do fault ourselves for failing to deconstruct the W.M.D. issue with the kind of thoroughness we directed at the question of a link between Iraq and Al Qaeda, or even tax cuts in time of war. We did not listen carefully to the people who disagreed with us. Our certainty flowed from the fact that such an overwhelming majority of government officials, past and present, top intelligence officials and other experts were sure that the weapons were there. We had a groupthink of our own.

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If we had known that there were probably no unconventional weapons, we would have argued earlier and harder that invading Iraq made no sense.

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Congress would never have given President Bush a blank check for military action if it had known that there was no real evidence that Iraq was likely to provide aid to terrorists or was capable of inflicting grave damage on our country or our allies. Many politicians who voted to authorize the war still refuse to admit that they made a mistake. But they did. And even though this page came down against the invasion, we regret now that we didn't do more to challenge the president's assumptions.

Challenge them?  Shit, you reported them -- as fact. You weren't misled -- you led the misleading.

If the Times wants its credibility back, it will have to earn it. By actions, not words.