Wmd Finds Downplayed

[FC]

By Investor's Business Daily

Why Does Weapons Story Go Unreported?

 

 

 

L. BRENT BOZELL III

 

 

 

 

While the Bush administration focuses on eliminating the terrorist threat in Iraq, the Saddam-wasno-threat left has remained obsessed with the prewar months, harping on the failures of Western intelligence and advancing a hardened historical narrative.

They would have the world believe the Bush administration was not only wrong about the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, but also lied intentionally and went to war for some unstated cynical reason — oil, enriching war profiteers, avenging Daddy Bush.

To a large degree, they are succeeding with their revisionist history lesson. The proof is in the pudding of the polls. Most people say the war wasn’t worth the cost to our troops and treasury and that George W. Bush isn’t honest or trustworthy.

When the USA Today-Gallup poll asked if “honest” and “trustworthy” applied to Bush in February 2001, 64% said he was honest, while 29% said the words did not apply. By April 2006, the numbers were 41% honest, 56% dishonest. It’s an easy guess that a lot of that turnaround is our failure to find Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction.

So it was surprising to Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., and Rep. Peter Hoekstra, R-Mich., who were investigating whispers that weapons of mass destruction have actually been found by American troops in Iraq, to learn the rumors were true.

After badgering administration officials for several months, the government gave the legislators a declassified memo stating that some 500 weapons of mass destruction have been found by coalition forces in Iraq, mostly sarin and mustard-gas agents, some of which “remain hazardous and potentially lethal.”

But when the legislators released this information, some Bush administration officials poor-mouthed the findings, noting that these old WMD were hardly evidence of an ongoing post-Gulf War WMD program by Saddam, the fearful scenario that dominated the prewar debate. Others, like Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, emphatically declared that this was hard evidence.

Regardless, this memo packs an important rhetorical punch. How many hundreds of times have our major media told us there were “no weapons of mass destruction” found? And how many thousands of times have leftists jumped off that springboard to an elaborate Bush-liedpeople-died jeremiad?

This discovery should be a crucial, corrective turning point to the stuck-in-2003, prewar obsession. The hardened historical narrative needs to be amended. There were WMD in Iraq that could have been used against our troops or acquired by terrorists.

An honest, nonpartisan news media that cared about the facts without political calculation would have taken care to correct the record, even if the findings were comparatively underwhelming to the prewar scenarios. A fair and balanced story could be done. But the reception of this declassified memo shows we do not have an honest, nonpartisan news media, and political calculation is everything.

Here’s how the news of the WMD finds in Iraq was filtered by the “mainstream media.” Fox News treated it as an important story. NBC reported on it with one “Nightly News” story, with pros and cons, noting that unnamed sources at the Pentagon “poured cold water” on the scoop’s importance. ABC and CBS did nothing.

CNN mentioned it in passing, heavy on the skepticism. On MSNBC, Keith Olbermann howled at the moon, mocking the find as “weapons of minor discomfort” and suggesting Santorum was like Sen. Joe McCarthy, holding up a “blank page” of supposed communists in the government.

Our major newspapers were also foot-draggers. The Washington Post ran five paragraphs of dismissive tone on Page A10. The New York Times skipped it for a day, then put it on A20 with the headline “For Diehards, Search For Iraq’s WMD Isn’t Over.”

(The liberal diehards at the Times were saving Page 1 for their infamous scoop disclosing to the public, including terrorists, our government’s financial tracking methods for terrorist groups.)

The news magazines weren’t interested in the WMD scoop, either. Time and U.S. News & World Report ran nothing, and Newsweek dismissed it with another headline about “trumpedup threats” in Iraq.

The largest remaining mystery is why Team Bush seems allergic to releasing more information on the missing weapons in Iraq and more facts out of the archives of Hussein’s heinous regime. If the Bush people are acting — or better put, not acting — out of intimidation by the media, which don’t want any new information to change their tilted first draft of history, the polls suggest that inaction has damaged them dramatically.

[FC]

Here's what a democrat (who shoots) wrote to me when I sent him this article. He hates Bush. Seems to me that democrats vote on feelings, not on facts.

 

Tony

That was old rusty crap burried way back in the early 80's, were probably

afraid to use it themselves as it might explode in there own guns, lot of

different articles in the news about it. Grasping at straws to justify

bullshit.

Jim

[Doble Troble]

Have you ever asked him why, specifically, he hates Bush? Ask for specific reasons. A bulleted list.

 

You probably won't get one. Feelings and bulleted lists don't mix. But bulleted lists are required to lead any successful organization.

[FC]

The reason I brought up about democrats voting off of "feelings" is because of the man on the street interviews on the Sean Hannity show. Most go like this: Who did you vote for? Why? I hate George Bush. Why do you hate Bush? He started a war and we need to get out. Why did you vote for Kerry? I didn't want to vote for Bush. Who was Kerry's running mate? I can't remember. Who's Secretary of State? I don't know. Who's the Secretary of Defense? I don't know.

 

The guy who wrote me the letter is in his 70's and hates Bush with a purple passion. Why? I don't know- he just hates him. I asked him not to send me stuff that was derogatory to the President, but he kept doing it. I then sent anti-Sheehan and anti-Clinton stuff to all the others (democrats) that he emailed, and I quit hearing from him for about a year. I just started hearing from him again. He goes to the gun boards, but I don't think he comes to this one.