John Fund Libel Of Juan Cole Still Not

John Fund Libel of Juan Cole Still Not Retracted

John Fund of the Wall Street Journal attacked me in a column on Monday in which he alleged that I had called Israel the “most dangerous regime in the Middle East.”

This quote is a sheer fabrication. Mr. Fund put it forward as a reason for which I should not have a professorship. Yet I never said it. He knows that I never said it. He has still not retracted it or apologized for this and other falsehoods he spewed about me in his column.

What kind of journalist just makes falsehoods up and puts them in someone’s mouth? What kind of newspaper allows that? And in order to damage someone’s career? Isn’t that a tort?

By the way, has John Fund ever apologized for his repeated assertions in 2002 and 2003 that Iraq had “weapons of mass destruction” and that therefore the United States needed to go to war and get thousands of its young men and women blown up? What else has he gotten wrong? With this kind of track record of grievous error, why does he deserve a privileged perch as an influential talking head?