Fox News and WMDs
A friend sent me a link to a Fox News story about
how WMDs have finally been discovered in
Iraq.Fox "News" frightens me. I
know they're just entertainment trying to make a buck by hitting a certain
market, but I feel that deliberate distortions of events done in order to
improve ratings are hardly more ethical than deliberate distortions to advance a
political agenda.The New
York Times used to be considered a staunchy, hard-core Republican
paper, but their backward tendency to largely report facts has branded them
left-wing in the eyes of the remaining true believers, who want their "no-spin"
news spun only one way."American
intelligence officials hastily scheduled a background briefing for the news
media on Thursday to clarify that. Hoekstra and Mr. Santorum were referring to
an Army report that described roughly 500 munitions containing "degraded"
mustard or sarin gas, all manufactured before the 1991 gulf war and found
scattered through Iraq since
2003."Such shells had previously been
reported and do not change the government conclusion, the officials
said."Traces of pre-1991 ordnance are
hard to get excited about. Sarin decomposes quickly
-- usually only a few weeks at the quality Iraq used. Mustard gas can
last longer, but is far from nasty in the quantities they're
talking about .Iraq didn't
have the ability to make or store WMDs after 1991 -- the first Gulf War
worked. While we were all disappointed that Hussein retained power, he was
preferable to most of the alternatives, such as a fundamentalist Islamic
government, or no government at all. (Or a $200 billion a year
nonfunctioning American-supported government.)
Filed Fri - June 23, 2006, 03:19 PM in
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