Saturday, September 06, 2003

Snopes Playing Games

There's no reason that the Snopes.com site has to be seen as a Higher Authoriy. There's also no reason to expect them to be 100% correct all the time, if for no other reason than new facts sometimes come to light.

On the other hand, when you make a mistake you fess up and fix it. Instead what Snopes has done is a bit of revisionism. Their original page about the Bin Laden family being jetted around the country was dedicated to focusing on this "rumor":

Claim: Two days after September 11 -- while all other planes were grounded -- a secret flight arranged by George W. Bush flew Osama bin Laden's relatives out of the USA.

Status: False.

Example: [Collected on the Internet, 2002]
BIN LADEN FAMILY ALLOWED TO FLY DURING GROUND STOPPAGE? Michael Moore was on the Daily Show on Comedy Central and alleged that when all the nation's planes were grounded for 3 days after 9/11, the Bush Administration gave permission for a private Saudi jet to visit 5 cities to pick up around 20 members of the bin Laden family, over the objections of the FBI.


The key issues, of course, being that the Bush administration allowed the Bin Laden family to fly while most flights were grounded in order to hasten their departure from the country. That, we now find out, is true.

Now Snopes has expanded on the pieces of this "rumor" by emphasizing other, less important and rarely claimed aspects of it, in order to continue to pretend to "debunk it" even though the crucial parts now appear to be true. For example, they now act as if whether or not the Bin Laden family flew out of the country before the flight bans were lifted is somehow important, rather than their simply being allowed to fly at all. See Shock and Awe for more.

They also owe Michael Moore an apology.