THE SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE published an unsigned editorial on March 1 attacking Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz’s ideas as “scary” and “reckless.” The editorialist admitted that Wolfowitz, in an interview with the paper, had come across as “disarmingly soft-spoken and polite” and as a defense intellectual of “considerable talents.” It argued that he should use those talents to argue for “base closures” rather than “foreign adventurism”–i.e., a military offensive against Iraq’s Saddam Hussein. So far so good, in a manner of speaking. This is the sort of sharp argument editorial pages are supposed to make. But the editorialist also fleshed out his case with a self-serving and dishonest account of the interview:
“Although he stressed that President Bush has not made any final decision to attack Iraq, Wolfowitz said the frequent allegations that Saddam Hussein has been covertly working on nuclear weapons development would justify any U.S. decision to go to war.
