Last week, through a front-page reconsideration of its Iraq reporting written by media columnist Howard Kurtz (The Post on WMDs: An Inside Story, 8/12/04) the Washington Post finally hung out a piece or two of its dirty laundry. This comes three months after the New York Times buried its Iraq mea culpa on page 10 (and then its ombudsman Daniel Okrent did a far more forthcoming consideration of the same). The fact is that while its editorial page was beating the drums for war, Post prewar reportage was generally marginally better than that of the Times. They had no obvious raging embarrassments like Times‘ reporter Judith Miller’s shameful pieces and more recently, from Walter Pincus to Mike Allen to Dana Priest, they were on the beat of real Bush administration stories in Washington far sooner than their Times equivalents. Still, they have a good deal to apologize for (“From August 2002 through the March 19, 2003, launch of the war, The Post ran more than 140 front-page stories that focused heavily on administration rhetoric against Iraq. Some examples: ‘Cheney Says Iraqi Strike Is Justified’; ‘War Cabinet Argues for Iraq Attack’; ‘Bush Tells United Nations It Must Stand Up to Hussein or U.S. Will’; ‘Bush Cites Urgent Iraqi Threat’; ‘Bush Tells Troops: Prepare for War.’), though you’ll find no apologies here, certainly not for the front-paging of adminis

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