The Oregonian follows the New York Times with an even more pathetic excuse.
The Oregonian published at least five articles or parts of articles cited by The New York Times as problematic. For example, a Dec. 20, 2001, article quoted an Iraqi defector who said he personally worked on renovations of facilities for biological, chemical and nuclear weapons. But Knight Ridder News Service recently reported that when U.S. officials took the defector to show them the sites, they found no evidence of them being used for weapons development. The New York Times had not followed up on those claims, and The Oregonian did not publish the Knight Ridder report.
The Oregonian, however, also published many stories that raised questions about the quality of intelligence, dating to months before the war. For example, the newspaper ran a disputed story from The New York Times on Sept. 8, 2002, that reported on aluminum tubes that the administration pointed to as components for the manufacture of nuclear weapons fuel. But in ensuing weeks and months, The Oregonian published at least nine stories that disputed that the aluminum tubes were to be used for the nuclear program.
Is that really supposed to be an apology? Nine stories, wow. How many were run in favor of the lies that led us in to this mess? I'd love to see all those articles that questioned the aluminum tube evidence. I imagine they went something like this:
Saddam Saddam evil evil tubes nuclear tubes tubes tubes nuclear evil biological prominent defector tubes evilit is possible that these tubes could have nothing to do with nuclear weapons tubes evil tubes regime change tubes reconstituted evil tubes
Not gonna cut it guys, not until you get of your knees and remember what journalism is all about and who it's supposed to serve.