Deja-vu All Over Again

I seem to remember seeing stories like this in late 2002/early 2003, in -- let me see -- oh, yeah: the New York Times. Judith Miller, I think it was.

Militants from the Lebanese group Hezbollah have been training Iraqi militia fighters at a camp near Tehran, according to American interrogation reports that the United States has supplied to the Iraqi government.

An American official said the account of Hezbollah’s role was provided by four Shiite militia members who were captured in Iraq late last year and questioned separately.

I see some problems here. Relying on American interrogation reports has become tantamount to saying "we're making it up." Anyone who's awake is going to translate "questioned" as "tortured," leading to the conclusion that the information is worthless.

Glenn Greenwald sees a couple more problems here:

As usual with Gordon's articles, nothing is done here other than uncritically repeating Bush administration claims under the cover of anonymity. Virtually every paragraph in this article is nothing more a mindless recitation of uncorroborated assertions which he copies from Bush officials and then weaves into a news narrative, with the phrase "American officials say" tacked on at the end or the phrase "according to officials" unobtrusively interspersed in the middle.

Fine, so Miller was quoting Ahmad Chalabi. Big difference.

Even the Iraqi government doesn't want to touch this.

Possibly the most incisive take-down is from Abu Muqawama, quoted by Greenwald:

This is the official U.S. case. Michael Gordon is a good reporter, but he is highly reliant on high-level official (anonymous) sources for stories like this. As one of Dr. iRack's trusted friends points out, Gordon "is in essence repeating a narrative that was given to him." In other words, none of this is "independent" of the information that MNF-I is likely to provide--it is the information that MNF-I is likely to provide. The danger in stories like this is the risk of creating an echo chamber that produces the illusion of outside corroboration for administration claims when they do no such thing. Instead, stories like this should be viewed as narrative "shaping" operations. Moreover, it is worth remembering that Michael Gordon has a track record here of uncritically parroting administration positions. After all, this is the same Gordon who penned many stories with his colleague Judy Miller on Iraqi WMD based on anonymous official sources--stories that were then cited as corroborating evidence by senior U.S. officials who, it turned out, were the conduits for the information in the first place.

Hmm -- Michael Gordon/Judith Miller. I knew it rang a bell.

The British historian A. L. Rouse came up with the best version of the "learning from history" bon mot, which ran, in my best recollection, "People can learn so much from the lessons of history -- but they seldom do."

Well, we can, even if it seems to be beyond NYT.