January 26, 2004
Page One
A few weeks ago, this blog noted that a New York Times story revealing that the Bush Administration had "quietly withdrawn from Iraq a 400-member military team whose job was to scour the country for military equipment," had been relegated to Page Six in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer -- while the Seattle Times had not deemed it newsworthy at all.
The story, now, has gained prominence in both papers. The P-I again carries the New York Times' coverage of the evolving story ("Kay says he concluded [that] at start of war no stockpile existed") -- this time on Page One, above the fold. The Seattle Times, meanwhile, is now on board, on Page Five, with the Los Angeles Times' reporting of David Kay's resignation. The NYT itself places the story above the fold as well.
So, good for them. Maybe the dawning realisation that the Administration lied out its arse ten ways from Sunday when making its case for war even has something to do with the results of a new Newsweek poll indicating that 52% of voters don't want The Superbrain to be re-elected, while only 44% do want him to be.
A shame the mainstream media could not be bothered to make an independent attempt to ascertain the status of Iraq's banned weapons programmes before the bombs began falling... Also a shame that the mainstream media does not choose to notice the serendipitous timing of Kay's admission that Iraq was not in possession of any banned weapons, coupled with Colin Powell's shameful climb-down from last year's histrionical performance at the United Nations: "The answer to that question is, we don't know yet." (You sure as hell "knew" then, numb-nuts.)
The Kay-Powell double-whammy comes just a few days after George Dubya's open-faced State-Of-The-Union lies regarding the Kay's findings: "Already, the Kay Report identified dozens of weapons of mass destruction-related program activities and significant amounts of equipment that Iraq concealed from the United Nations. Had we failed to act, the dictatator's weapons of mass destruction programs would continue to this day." Even if we, charitably, choose to look past Bush's striking rhetorical about-face from his 2003 State Of the Union address (wherein he claimed as established fact, on repeated occasions, the existence of huge quantities of banned weapons), The October 2003 Kay Report, in fact, asserted precisely the opposite: that there were no banned weapons to be found, and that there were no active programmes -- thus more less corroborating the claims of high-level defectors and current and former inspectors (claims initiated long before the war, indeed, long before Dubya even arrived on the scene). Moreover, what was Dubya doing referencing a three-month-old interim report, knowing full well that Kay would, in just a few days' time, issue his conclusion that Saddam had "got rid of" his banned weapons following the 1991 Gulf War?
"America will never seek a permission slip to defend the security of our country," sez George Bush. So why is not the mainstream media lowering the hammer upon him when it's acknowledged, once and for all, by Bush's own appointees, three days later, that Iraq posed absolutely zero threat to "the security of our country"?
And, for the record, the mainstream media has not even once (to this blogger's knowlege) questioned the sacrosanctity of the United States' right to obliterate Iraq had banned weapons been found -- an issue this blog discussed just over a year ago.
Posted by Eddie Tews at January 26, 2004 03:23 PM
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