The Times and the Truther

Mickey Kaus:

Amazingly, many New York Times print readers still don't know why Van Jones resigned! Here's how the paper's John Broder describes his situation:

The adviser, Van Jones, a controversial and charismatic community organizer and "green jobs" advocate from the San Francisco Bay Area, signed a petition in 2004 questioning whether the Bush administration had allowed the terrorist attacks of September 2001 to provide a pretext for war in the Middle East. [E.A.]

Reading that, would you realize the petition was a Truther petition? You might think Jones simply made the standard argument that Bush shouldn't have used 9/11 to help gin up the Iraq War--as opposed to suggesting that Bush "may indeed have deliberately allowed 9/11 to happen, perhaps as a pretext for war," which is what the petition actually said [E.A.] ...

...

I was also struck by the way the Times tried to downplay Jones office as being a minor one. That is probably administration spin, but it is not what they were saying when they hired him. This is not a story that was driven by Republicans who piled on after conservative media figures brought the evidence to public attention. Glen Beck is credited with doing much of the work, but Jim Hoft of Gateway Pundit broke some of the most devastating material. Since they were quoting Jones, it is hard to understand what part of their material was "lies" as he suggested in his resignation statement.