Multiple Tests Confirming Iraq WMD Send Media Into Deep Spin
Mulitple tests conducted in Iraq by Danish and British experts
indicate that Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction have finally been
discovered, but mainstream news editors either ignored the story Sunday morning
or are furiously spinning the news as inconsequential.
More than 12 hours after the Fox News Channel, Reuters and the Associated
Press carried reports that preliminary tests showed Iraqi mortar shells
discovered near Basra contain a deadly liquid blister agent, the New York Times
had yet to report the bombshell find on the main page of its Web site – or
anywhere in its Sunday morning print edition.
The Washington Post's Web site also chose not to cover the blockbuster news,
which ABC News military analyst Tony Cordesman said Saturday would be "the first
real confirmation that Iraq actually had deployed chemical weapons and was
prepared to use them" if tests confirmed the find.
Saturday night the Fox News Channel revealed that initial tests had indeed
confirmed the blockbuster discovery.
"Danish troops are in charge of that area around the village of Al Quarnah,
and they have found what they believe are, according to this official, two
hundred shells," reported FNC's Greg Palkrow.
Palkrow said the Danish official told him: "They've run four different tests
on that liquid inside those shells. And all those tests do indicate that there
is blister gas – that's a deadly chemical weapon - inside of those shells."
The AP said that a statement released by Danish officials cited British
experts, who had also confirmed that the shells contained "blister gas."
Before the war the Bush administration had alleged that Baghdad was
stockpiling blister gas in liquid form.
Both reports noted that the find had yet to be confirmed by the U.S. team in
Iraq assigned to search for weapons of mass destruction.
But according to the London Sunday Telegraph, Ali Nimir, a former colonel in
an Iraqi Republican Guard artillery unit, had also confirmed the find.
"I remember seeing boxes of these kinds of armaments in our base two years
ago," Nimir said. "We were told that they were chemical weapons."
"They were removed from our bases and distributed to secret hiding places
about a year before the war," he explained. "I never saw them again."
Still, despite the staggering political consequences of the bombshell
discovery – news that could mean total vindication for President Bush against
Democrat charges that he "lied" about Iraq's WMDs – mainstream reports
consistently downplayed the story.
The New York Daily News, for instance, covered the news on page 24 of its
Sunday edition, and then only under a headline that obscured the potential
impact of the story: "Old Iraqi Gas Shells."
New York's Newsday echoed the same theme with its page 20 headline, "Weapons
Found, but Likely Old" – as if the vintage of Saddam's WMDs somehow mitigated
genuine proof of their existence after months of media claims to the contrary.
The only news outlet to refer to weapons of mass destruction in its headline
was the New York Post, which labeled its page 2 report: "WMD Gas Shells Dug Up
in Iraq."
News of the WMD find was not discussed on the Sunday morning news
shows.
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