But you left out the best part

Back today to an occasional theme of ours: how New York Times corrections could sometimes use a little elaboration. In Wednesday's paper, the following correction runs:

A front-page article on Monday about the capture of a half-brother of Saddam Hussein, who has been accused of helping to finance the insurgency in Iraq, misattributed the report of his transfer to Iraqi custody. That information, depicting the capture as a Syrian action, came from Iraqi officials and from an American scholar with contacts in Syria, who said he had been informed of the transfer by Syrian officials in Damascus.

So of course we want to know: which American scholar? Our first thought was Juan Cole, in which case the Vast Rightwing Conspiracy would have a problem, for while Cole is one of their bêtes noirs, they relied on the original story as an example of how the Syrians were cowed by Dubya's manliness (or is it Condi's boots?). However, Cole has no mention of the incident so far. But wouldn't it serve the cause of a more open journalistic process at the NYT to provide the name?

UPDATE 4 March: Another potential name. In their story on the Saudis telling Syria that the jig is up in Lebanon, the NYT includes the following:

"Assad needs the Arabs to support him in keeping troops behind," said Joshua Landis, a professor of history at the University of Oklahoma and editor of the Web site Syria Comment. (link added)

FURTHER UPDATE 7 MARCH: Mixed signals at the Wall Street Journal Op-Ed Page. Friday's notable and quotable (subs. req'd) makes a few sentences from the Mark Steyn column above their highlight of the week, including the since retracted account of the Syrian handover of the Saddam relative. Yet a weekend column on the companion OpinionJournal site gets it right:

This week, Saddam Hussein's half-brother, Sabawi Ibrahim Hassan, was arrested with Syrian assistance and handed over to the interim Iraqi government

-- a much more careful phrasing than the hackneyed VRC notion that this dude was sunbathing in Damascus till last week. The writer of this piece actually works for a Beirut paper and so, unlike most of the VRC spinners, has some expertise in this area.