LA Times: prints refuted statement as headline

So, what's new?

Sunday the LA fishwrap had this as a headline: "U.S. has an Iran attack plan, report says"

Despite the Bush administration's position that it has no plans to go to war with Iran, a Pentagon panel has been created to plan a bombing attack that could be implemented within 24 hours of getting the go-ahead from the president, the New Yorker magazine reported in its latest issue.

so says an unidentified former U.S. intelligence official to Seymour Hersh. However, the last paragraph contradicts their own headline:

Pentagon officials say they maintain contingency plans for dozens of potential conflicts around the world and that all are subject to regular review.

Journalists fail to understand that planning is an ongoing, important process. Often involving a great deal of self discovery. We've been doing this for decades now. In fact, if we ever decided to not examine our defences from an unconstrained perspective, we'd be doing ourselves a disservice. I'd venture that if we had done extensive planning of the Iraq conflict involving several post-invasion scenarios, we'd have been better off.