{"id":1948,"date":"2005-03-23T12:48:55","date_gmt":"2005-03-23T19:48:55","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2005-03-23T12:48:55","modified_gmt":"2005-03-23T19:48:55","slug":"fact-free-frontpagemag","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2005\/03\/23\/fact-free-frontpagemag\/","title":{"rendered":"Fact-Free Frontpagemag"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In today&#8217;s centersmear at Frontpagemag, <a href=http:\/\/frontpagemag.com\/Articles\/ReadArticle.asp?ID=17422>a Steven Plaut writes<\/a>:<\/p>\n<ul>In a New York Times editorial, [Juan] Cole said that he saw the elections in Syria as a model for other Arab countries to follow: \u201cThe last thing the Arab people need is a red herring like \u2018free and open elections\u2019 to distract them from the international Zionist\/Neo-Con conspiracy to take their oil.\u201d Professor Cole then added that President Assad\u2019s ability to gain such a high percentage of the vote \u201call the while maintaining an oligarchic cult of personality oppressive regime mired in nepotism and corruption\u201d was \u201ctruly impressive\u201d and a positive sign of \u201cArab solidarity.\u201d <\/ul>\n<p>Wow. What a jerk that Cole is!<\/p>\n<p>One slight problem: Cole never wrote, and the <i>New York Times<\/i> never published, any such thing. It&#8217;s a lame attempt at satire from an <a href=http:\/\/iraqthemodel.blogspot.com\/2005\/02\/elections-vs-elections.html>Iraqi blog<\/a>. I didn&#8217;t bother reading any further. If David Horowitz can&#8217;t use some of <a href=http:\/\/www.mediatransparency.org\/people\/david_horowitz.htm>his massive cash<\/a> to hire a goddamn editor, then I assume he wants his writers to lie. Which they do, constantly.<\/p>\n<p>UPDATE 10:30 a.m. CT: Steven Plaut sends the following e-mail:<\/p>\n<ul>Well, here then is a LEGIT citation from Abu Cole <\/p>\n<p> Abu Cole&#8217;s ideas of democracy:<\/p>\n<p>From http:\/\/www.juancole.com\/ this week:<br \/>\n&#8220;Al-Qaeda has some political support in some regions of Saudi Arabia, and it should be remembered that Islamists did well in the recent municipal elections, so al-Qaeda there is sensitive to public opinion.&#8221;<\/ul>\n<p>Aside from the sheer pointlessness of this out-of-context quotation, am I to understand that a fake citation is nullified by a real one?<\/p>\n<p>By the way, the fake citation is still up, and the charming little Plaut has put the same message on the <a href=http:\/\/www.frontpagemag.com\/GoPostal\/commentdetail.asp?ID=17422&#038;commentID=529249>Frontpage comments board<\/a> under a pseudonym (Gallows).<\/p>\n<p>UPDATE 3:30 p.m. CT: The passage in question has finally been removed. I saved the page this morning if anyone would like to see the original.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In today&#8217;s centersmear at Frontpagemag, a Steven Plaut writes: In a New York Times editorial, [Juan] Cole said that he saw the elections in Syria as a model for other Arab countries to follow: \u201cThe last thing the Arab people need is a red herring like \u2018free and open elections\u2019 to distract them from the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[676],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-1948","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-antiwar-movement"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1948","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1948"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1948\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1948"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1948"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1948"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=1948"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}