Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Moderate Forum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Win Smith who wrote (6537)	2/2/2004 2:02:01 AM
From: Sully-	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 20773

That article has way too much of the NYT propensity for slant, deception & distortion. Instead of building an accurate assessment of the serious intelligence failures, the NYT consistently misrepresented, distorted, or exaggerated what the Bush Admin said prior to removing Saddam. They frequently interjected terms like 'this suggested' & then grossly overstated their case without providing evidence to support it. They frequently stated things that were completely at odds with what David Kay actually stated. When unnamed people are cited making harsh criticisms to bolster shoddy reporting, I have to question the intent of the journalists. And there is plenty of critical information they left out that supports the Bush Admin. That's terrible & irresponsible journalism IMVHO. Their slant, distortions & misrepresentations were appalling. Here are a few excellent examples. I'll list what the article said & then direct quotes from Powell's presentation to the UN or what David Kay actually said.... The article doesn't make it past the 2nd paragraph before they misstate & distort what Powell said..... The NYT article said...added up to "facts" and "not assertions" that Iraq had large stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons and that it was reconstituting its nuclear weapons program and building a fleet of advanced missiles.... statements made by Mr. Powell have been confirmed, but many of his gravest findings have been upended by David A. Kay These statements by the NYT's reporters are misleading & deceptively used to imply that the Bush Admin overstated & misled. It's a fact that Iraq did have large stockpiles of WMD's & WMD materials at one time. What these journalists deceptively failed to mention was that the issue was that they remained unaccounted for. Per David Kay, Iraq did begin to reconstitute its nuclear weapons program & they were building a fleet of advanced missiles, all clearly in violation of UN Resolution 1441 (see "Calling Iraq's Bluff" & "Absence of evidence" linked below). Powell actually said, "as with biological weapons, Saddam Hussein has never accounted for vast amounts of chemical weaponry: 550 artillery shells with mustard, 30,000 empty munitions and enough precursors to increase his stockpile to as much as 500 tons of chemical agents. If we consider just one category of missing weaponry, 6500 bombs from the Iran-Iraq War, UNMOVIC says the amount of chemical agent in them would be on the order of a thousand tons. These quantities of chemical weapons are now unaccounted for. Dr. Blix has quipped that, "Mustard gas is not marmalade. You are supposed to know what you did with it." ....Iraq declared 8500 liters of anthrax. We have evidence these weapons existed. What we don't have is evidence from Iraq that they have been destroyed or where they are. That is what we are still waiting for.... .......Iraq declared 8500 liters of anthrax....And Saddam Hussein has not verifiably accounted for even one teaspoonful of this deadly material. And that is my third point. And it is key. The Iraqis have never accounted for all of the biological weapons they admitted they had and we know they had. They have never accounted for all the organic material used to make them. And they have not accounted for many of the weapons filled with these agents such as there are 400 bombs. This is evidence, not conjecture. This is true. This is all well documented. Iraq's record on chemical weapons is replete with lies. It took years for Iraq to finally admit that it had produced four tons of the deadly nerve agent VX. A single drop of VX on the skin will kill in minutes. Four tons. The admission only came out after inspectors collected documentation as a result of the defection of Hussein Kamel, Saddam Hussein's late son-in-law." Tne NYT article said, Mr. Powell's case was largely based on limited, fragmentary and mostly circumstantial evidence... That's an outright lie. UNSCOM had detailed, irrefutable evidence of unaccounted for WMD's & WMD materials that remained unresolved & that Iraq continued to pursue WMD programs. (as laid out above). And this was the main focus of the Bush Admin. Just read Powell's Presentation or Bush's major speeches on the subject (linked below). The Intelligence community's "estimates" of what happened from 1998 when the UN was thrown out clearly misjudged what Iraq continued to possess & that the WMD programs, though they continued, were less robust than had been "estimated" (again see "Calling Iraq's Bluff" & "Bush's decision on war affirmed"). Rather than honestly assess the serious intelligence failure that did occur, the NYT journalists turn their efforts into distorting the record to deceptively portray the Bush as negatively as possible. The NYT article said, Nor did they find evidence of anything but the most rudimentary nuclear program: United Nations sanctions had choked off the project, and the few parts saved from efforts to enrich uranium in the 1980's remained buried under a rose garden. While Mr. Hussein put money into reviving the program, scientists found themselves struggling to reproduce basic experiments they had conducted two decades before. They completely fail to note that any nuclear program was in violation of Resolution 1441. And David Kay's assessment was worse than the NYT's portrayed (See "Absence of evidence" & "Bush's decision on war affirmed", linked below) I could go on if you like, but why bother? If you lie & distort more than once on matters of significance, what credibility should reasonable people give to allegedly objective journalists? Calling Iraq's Bluff Message 19750170 Absence of evidence... Message 19753725 Bush's decision on war affirmed Message 19739296 Remarks to the United Nations Security Council Secretary Colin L. Powell globalsecurity.org. President Bush Outlines Iraqi Threat whitehouse.gov President Delivers "State of the Union" whitehouse.gov