"Saddam did have links with al-Qa'ida"

in murdochs The Australian, the run an edited extract of an article critical of Murdocks coverage up to and including the war (link) particularly the editorial page - and they run two other furiously defiant/defensive pieces on the same page 'debunking' the article - by the foreign editor (link) and the opinion page editor (link).

theres the usual character assassination of course in the 'debunking' articles - but i loved this quote from the foreign editor: "We now know Saddam did have links with al-Qa'ida but at the time of the column, 2003, this was less clear." - read in context, it appears that the sentence was supposed to read "We now know Saddam did NOT have links with al-Qa'ida but at the time of the column, 2003, this was less clear." - but its kinda fun anyway.

i leave the speculation as to whether this error was inadvertent, freudian, or editorially imposed...

as an aside, the original Manne article was called "Murdoch's War", the extract that appeared in murdockpress was called "Unbalanced view of war" (the original article isnt available)