Searching for WMD in Iraq (Since the Times Won't)
Posted by: Clay Waters
6/23/2006 2:24:47 PM
Reporter Scott Shane suggests only right-wing “diehards” (and certainly not anyone at the New York Times) are still interested in looking for WMD in Iraq in Friday’s “For “The United States government abandoned the search for unconventional weapons in Iraq long ago. But Dave Gaubatz has never given up. Mr. Gaubatz, an earnest, Arabic-speaking investigator who spent the first months of the war as an Air Force civilian in southern Iraq, has said he has identified four sites where residents said chemical weapons were buried in concrete bunkers. The sites were never searched, he said, and he is not going to let anyone forget it.”
Following the dismissive response of the rest of the media, Shane quickly douses any potency this WMD story may have.
“More than a year after the White House, at considerable political cost, accepted the intelligence agencies' verdict that Mr. Hussein destroyed his stockpiles in the 1990's, these Americans have an unshakable faith that the weapons continue to exist.
“The proponents include some members of Congress. Two Republicans, Representative Peter Hoekstra of Michigan, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, and Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania held a news conference on Wednesday to announce that, as Mr. Santorum put it, ‘We have found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.’”
“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.”
This is the second time Shane has patted the heads of what he apparently considers dubious lone-wolf right-wing researchers.
In contrast to Shane’s skeptical take on the judgment of mavericks on the right, Shane finds anti-war serial misleader Joseph Wilson to be quite trustworthy, and claimed Wilson’s wife Valerie Plame had ‘shunned publicity,’ even as her photo appeared in Vanity Fair that same month.
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