Joe Galloway told the truth. The New York Times apologized for lying about the wars in Iraq & Afghanistan. Will the Bush family or Obama or Trump or Biden ever apologize for waging 20 years of war based on lies?

 

“In 2002, Knight Ridder asked Galloway to return to reporting after a stint as an adviser to Secretary of State Colin Powell to bolster its Washington bureau’s skeptical coverage of the Bush administration’s case for ousting Hussein.

Galloway did that by contributing, often anonymously, to his colleagues’ stories and by writing a column that often was critical of Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and their aides who were bent on invading Iraq.

John Walcott, Galloway’s longtime editor and friend, recounted how an exasperated Rumsfeld finally asked Joe to meet with him alone in his office. When Joe arrived, he was greeted by Rumsfeld — and a group of other high-ranking Pentagon officials.

“Good,” Galloway reported when he returned to the Knight Ridder office. “I had ’em surrounded.”

Galloway then described how after Rumsfeld accused him of relying on retired officers and officials, he had told the group that most of his sources were on active duty, and that some of them “might even be in this room.”

Asked by his colleagues if that was true, Galloway replied, “No, but it was fun watching ’em sweat like whores in church.”

Galloway’s contributions to Knight Ridder’s critical coverage of the Bush administration’s case for invading Iraq was later portrayed in another movie, Rob Reiner’s “Shock and Awe,” in which fellow Texan Tommy Lee Jones played Galloway.

“The thing about Joe is that there wasn’t a dishonest bone in his body,” director Reiner told the AP by phone. “He spoke truth to power. … We will miss him, there’s very few people who hold his level of integrity.”

Clark Hoyt, former Washington editor for Knight Ridder, said it was a privilege to work with Galloway, who he called one of the great war correspondents of all time.

“He earned the trust and respect of those he was covering but never lost his ear for false notes, as shown by his contributions to Knight Ridder’s skeptical reporting on the run up to the Iraq war,” Hoyt said.

Walcott said he was an exemplar of what journalism should be. From the People’s Army of Vietnam to Rumsfeld, no one ever intimidated Galloway other than his wife Gracie, Walcott said.

“He never went to college, but he was one of, if not the, most gifted writers in our profession, in which his death will leave an enormous hole at a time when our country desperately needs more like him,” Walcott said. “He never sought fame nor tried to make himself the star of his stories. As sources, he valued sergeants more than brand name generals and political appointees.”

MORE AT:

Journalist Joe Galloway, chronicler of Vietnam War, dies

By MICHAEL BIESECKER  August 18, 2021

“The problematic articles varied in authorship and subject matter, but many shared a common feature. They depended at least in part on information from a circle of Iraqi informants, defectors and exiles bent on ''regime change'' in Iraq, people whose credibility has come under increasing public debate in recent weeks. (The most prominent of the anti-Saddam campaigners, Ahmad Chalabi, has been named as an occasional source in Times articles since at least 1991, and has introduced reporters to other exiles. He became a favorite of hard-liners within the Bush administration and a paid broker of information from Iraqi exiles, until his payments were cut off last week.) Complicating matters for journalists, the accounts of these exiles were often eagerly confirmed by United States officials convinced of the need to intervene in Iraq. Administration officials now acknowledge that they sometimes fell for misinformation from these exile sources. So did many news organizations -- in particular, this one.”

MORE AT:

FROM THE EDITORS; The Times and Iraq

May 26, 2004