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Lay Off Chalabi: Iraq could do much worse (Christopher Hitchens, Slate, April 24, 2003).

Maureen Dowd writes, displaying either an immense insider knowledge of day-to-day Baghdad or else no knowledge at all, that the American forces assigned to protect Chalabi would have been enough on their own to prevent the desecration of the National Museum. Since Chalabi was in Nasiriyah, far to the south, when the looting occurred, and since up until now he has provided his own security detail (I'd want my own bodyguards, too, if I'd been on Saddam's assassination list for a decade), and since we don't know by whom the actual plunder of the museum was actually planned or executed (or at least I don't), Dowd might wish either to reconsider or to offer her expertise to Gen. Garner.

Nobody does disdain like Hitchens.

But, really, what is the Times' position on truth on the op-ed page? Op-ed's are not news, by definition, but are (merely?) opinion. Maureen Dowd is the toast of Manhattan. Still, shouldn't the New York Times expend some effort in keeping her just this side of the divide between right and wrong, at least where the facts can be easily checked? Posted by David Cohen at April 25, 2003 1:17 PM