Now I Remember

...why I largely stopped reading opinion columnists - because neither they nor their editors can evidently be bothered to indulge in the most rudimentary fact-checking exercises.  Linda McQuaig in today's Toronto Star:

This public obliviousness has allowed the Bush administration, with its disdain for disarmament, to keep expanding the U.S. nuclear arsenal, even openly defying the decades-old ban against weapons in space.

Say what you will abou the Bush administration, but they've done the exact opposite of "expanding the U.S. nuclear arsenal".  Don't take my word for it.  In 2002 the US and Russia signed the SORT treaty, which pledged both countries to the reduction of the number of their nuclear warheads to a maximum of 2,200 per state.  What does the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (the good folks who brought you the "doomsday clock", and who describe their mission as "inform[ing] the public about threats to the survival and development of humanity from nuclear weapons, climate change, and emerging technologies in the life sciences") have to say about Bush administration efforts vis-a-vis "expanding the U.S. nuclear arsenal"?  Well, let's look at their Nuclear Notebook - US Nuclear Forces, 2008 [.pdf]:

In 2007, [the US] restarted small-scale production of nuclear weapons for the first time in 15 years, though reduction of the stockpile continues...

The United States reduced its nuclear stockpile to 5,400 warheads.

The Defense Department removed an additional 5,150 warheads from the stockpile for future dismantlement ... An additional 15-percent reduction will be achieved by 2012...

Reduction of the Minuteman III missile force began on July 12, 2007...

Six years after SORT was signed, the air force is gradually reducing the number of warheads on ICBMs from roughly 1,600 in 2003 to approximately 764 today...

As the Bulletin notes, in 2004 Bush committed the US to a 50% reduction in its nuclear stockpile by 2012... a goal which was achieved in 2007, five years early.

Both McQuaig and her editor should be ashamed of publishing such an easily-disproved, incontrovertible lie.

Comments

[Mike H]

"....because neither they nor their editors can evidently be bothered to indulge in the most rudimentary fact-checking exercises."

Bob, that can't be right. McQuaig's column must have been fact-checked by her editor at The Star. McQuaig gave the editor her "facts." He liked them, thereby making them true, and signed off on the piece. Isn't that how fact-checking works?