December 16, 2003
#139: an equal opportunity snipper!
KRUGMAN TRUTH SQUAD
Patriots and ProfitsWith (12/16/04) Paul Krugman crawled into a journalistic spider hole all his own. He opened this column with the lofty disclaimer that charges of profiteering by Halliburton "have, inevitably and appropriately, been pushed temporarily into the background by the news of Saddam's capture." He then proceeded to write a less than appropriate and definitely "uninevitable" column on exactly that subject.
What happened here is pretty obvious. Krugman had ALREADY written this column before the Hussein capture and was too lazy (and cowardly) to switch to the major topic of the weekend; a topic on which he has pounded the Bush administration over and over in previous columns. At least Maureen Dowd had the good sense to be on vacation and did not have to deal with the broader implications for the anti-war left of Saddam in custody.
As to the column itself, it is a classic example of a "Krugman investigation." Basically, he strings together some carefully selected news sources and then yells corruption. In this case his slanted snippets come from the Wall Street Journal, the Army Corps of Engineers, NBC News and US News and World Report among others. At least he's an equal opportunity snipper! Nothing is sourced precisely; no dates are given and interspersed between these "citations" are a litany of Krugman innuendos and character assassinations.
In other words; it was business as usual. In his first column after the biggest story since the beginning of the war, Paul Krugman was AWOL.
[The Truth Squad is a group of economists who have long marveled at the writings of Paul Krugman. The Squad Reports are synopses of their discussions. ]
Posted by John Weidner at December 16, 2003 9:29 AM
