I cross-posted this one at Rathergate.com and at RedState.org, the latter of which was the hottest spot for Alito news and commentary on the web today. Needless to say, this one was buried.

Here’s this:

According to Editor & Publisher, the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel “finally apologized to readers for accepting “cooked” evidence about WMD in Iraq that helped lead to war in 2003.”

The editorial page editor of the paper, O. Ricardo Pimentel, published his column Sunday, apologizing to his readers for believing the evidence presented by the Bush Administration and especially then-Secretary of State Colin Powell about Saddam Hussein and weapons of mass destruction [WMD].

read on…

On Feb. 6 of that year [2003], we wrote, “Powell’s 90-minute presentation to the U.N. Security Council, buttressed with surveillance photographs and recorded phone conversations, should remove all doubt that Iraq’s Saddam Hussein has developed and hides weapons of mass destruction, in violation of U.N. resolutions. Neither is there any doubt now that the United Nations will lose all its credibility if it allows Iraq’s flagrant provocations to go unanswered.”

He apologizes and calls for Bush, Powell, and others to be held accountable:

We take responsibility for being duped on the matter of WMD - and still arguing against war - but at what point will those doing the duping be held accountable for taking us to war? Two thousand U.S. dead - and up to 30,000 Iraqi dead - and still counting.

The staff of Editor & Publisher, which celebrates the Milwaukee paper’s repugnant act of moral posturing, adds that the LA Times is also in on the game:

Tim Rutten, media writer for the Los Angeles Times, urged major newspapers to own up to their role in easily accepting the WMD argument from the Bush administration. He noted that his own newspaper was among this large group.

“The American people need to know how that progression occurred because that knowledge is key to the responsible exercise of citizenship in the upcoming midterm elections and beyond,” Rutten wrote. “The New York Times clearly wasn’t the only journalistic institution that failed, and the duty to set the public record straight about how this mistake was made is a shared one. There will be shame enough for all if the media as a whole fail to accept this obligation.” [emphasis mine]

There it is. Newspapers are apologizing for “believing Bush” because the editors want to elect Democrats. (In the Milwaukee paper’s Pimentel’s parlance, the GOP must be “held accountable,” which is a direction to VOTE DEMOCRAT!)

The premise these folks want you to accept is that President Bush and Colin Powell knew that there were no WMD in Iraq but lied to the American people (and newspapers) to allow for an invasion anyway. But President Bush, we’re told, was informed that the evidence of Iraq’s WMD was a “slam dunk,” that the President believed it. Powell’s February 5, 2003 presentation was convincing. So either the lunatic fringe is right – “BUSH LIED, MAN!” – or these papers are behaving irresponsibly.

Perhaps the world should have been more skeptical of what it heard from the various intelligence agencies and their sources. And of what we read in the editorial pages of newspapers.

The papers are accomplishing nothing by apologizing but attacking the Bush Administration in an attempt to influence “the upcoming midterm elections and beyond.” (Are they using forged documents faxed from a Kinkos in Abilene?)