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Editor admits laxity on Iraq

By Sridhar Krishnaswami

WASHINGTON, AUG. 12. Editors at the influential newspaper The Washington Post have acknowledged that they underplayed stories that questioned the President, George W. Bush's claims of threat from Iraq's weapons of mass destruction in the months leading up to the war.

In a front page write-up, The Post's media critic, Howard Kurtz, has written that editors at the paper resisted stories that basically questioned if the President had the real evidence that Saddam Hussein was hiding weapons of mass destruction. "Days before the Iraq war began, veteran Washington Post writer Walter Pincus put together a story questioning whether the Bush administration had proof that Saddam Hussein was hiding weapons of mass destruction.

But he ran into resistance from the paper's editors and his piece ran only after assistant managing editor Bob Woodward ... `helped sell the story' Pincus recalled," writes Mr. Kurtz. That piece by Mr. Pincus made it but only on Page 17 of the main section.

In an interview, Mr. Woodward has said: "We did our job but we didn't do enough and I blame myself mightily for not pushing harder. We should have warned readers we had information that the basis for this was shakier. Those are exactly the kind of statements that should be published on the front page." As the United States gets deeper into the morass in Iraq there have been a number of views expressed on whether or not the media, including The Post, should have been tougher on the kind of information dished out by the Bush administration on Iraq.

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