According to an article by the Washington Post, the New York Times has admitted in a note "from the editors" of the paper that its coverage of Iraqi WMD was lacking, at best. The Times now acknowledges that the paper's "coverage of whether Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction 'was not as rigorous as it shold have been' and that 'we wish we had been more aggressive in reexamining the claims as new evidence emerged--or failed to emerge.'" The Post cited five instances in which the Times had fallen prey to the Bush administration propaganda machine that pushed a false rationale for war with Iraq on the basis of the (nonexistent) WMD in question. It is very disturbing when the largest paper in the United States, the "Newspaper of Record," oft-described as part of the American "liberal media" establishment, doesn't do its job and instead parrots government rhetoric without second thought. As Thomas Jefferson once said that the path toward a tyrannical government is one that is not questioned; our free press must exercise the right of dissent, which Jefferson referred to as "the highest form" of patriotism. If the largest mainstream newspaper in our free society won't do it, who will?