The Age sadly continues its slow slide into mediocrity. This is too bad, because it used to be a world-class newspaper, but it now seems to think that a couple of pages of originally sourced news, a few (largely predictable) opinion columns and several pages of wire stories a good newspaper make.

Today they decided to reprint Robert Kagan’s WaPo OpEd from a week or so ago, already torn to shreds by Brown’s own Josh Marshall, arguing that claims that Bush, Blair and Howard lied about Iraq’s WMD capacity are a giant ‘conspiracy theory’. Kagan’s argument relies on the premise that critics of the unholy trinity are saying that not only they lied, but so did the UN weapon inspectors. And that would be, not to put to fine a point on it, a lie. I’d go into greater detail about where Kagan is wrong, but I’d basically just be repeating what Josh said, so if you care mightily about these matters, go read his reply.

If The Age has to find old foreign right-wing opinion pieces to reprint, they could at least try to find half-way decent ones. But really I’m not sure why they bother. There should be some kind of political balance on the opinion pages, but there’s no reason why they can’t find domestic right-wingers to write original pieces in defence of the war. For all their flaws, Australian conservatives will usually display more intellectual honesty than their American bretheren. (Well, perhaps that’s why they had to import a column defending pre-war WMD claims.)

In better news, The Age does feature a cool extended interview with the Go-Betweens. The Go-Betweens are playing in Richmond next week and it should be a fun time. “I’ve got tickets, to the best show in town…”