Posted on 10/27/2004 4:47:59 AM PDT by Happy2BMe
WASHINGTON (Talon News) -- Despite being highly criticized last month for running a story using forged memos regarding President George W. Bush's service in the Texas Air National Guard, CBS's "60 Minutes," along with the New York Times, is again at the center of an election year scandal regarding missing explosives in Iraq.
At the heart of the controversy are reports that both CBS and the New York Times were working on news stories which would focus on the missing explosives in the context that the explosives disappeared due to inadequate security provided by coalition forces following the fall of Baghdad. The segments would thus be critical of President Bush and his handling of post-war Iraq.
According to CBS News executive producer Jeff Fager, an announcement by the interim Iraqi government to the International Atomic Energy Agency that a cache of 380 tons of explosives in a storage depot at Al Qaqaa have been missing since former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was ousted from power was going to be revealed on this Sunday's episode of "60 Minutes."
"[Ou]r plan was to run the story on October 31, but it became clear that it wouldn't hold," Fager said in a statement.
The New York Times beat CBS to the punch by releasing their story on Monday. Under the headline "Huge Cache of Explosives Vanished From Site in Iraq," the New York Times said that Iraqi interim government warned the U.S. and the IAEA that the explosives were missing from "one of Iraq's most sensitive former military installations."
In a statement which implies that coalition forces did not provide adequate security, the story reads, "The huge facility, called Al Qaqaa, was supposed to be under American military control but is now a no man's land, still picked over by looters as recently as Sunday. United Nations weapons inspectors had monitored the explosives for many years, but White House and Pentagon officials acknowledge that the explosives vanished sometime after the American-led invasion last year."
The news story goes on to credit CBS News and "60 Minutes" by stating, "This article was reported in cooperation with the CBS News program "60 Minutes." "60 Minutes" first obtained information on the missing explosives."
Many political observers believe CBS was planning to unveil this as an "October surprise" in an effort to defeat President Bush in the November 2 election by airing the segment on Sunday, October 31.
Democratic presidential nominee Sen. John F. Kerry reacted to this story by describing the missing explosives as "one of the great blunders of Iraq and one of the great blunders of this administration," arguing that Bush did not keep enough troops in Iraq to secure these explosives from being removed and falling into the hands of terrorists.
"George W. Bush who talks tough and brags about making America safer has once again failed to deliver," Kerry remarked on Tuesday. "After being warned about the danger of major stockpiles of explosives in Iraq, this administration failed to guard those stockpiles -- where nearly 380 tons of highly explosive weapons were kept. Today we learned that these explosives are missing, unaccounted for, and could be in the hands of terrorists."
Yet, as reported by Talon News on Monday, a segment by NBC News on Monday directly countered Kerry's claims that the weapons disappeared because of low post-war troop levels, but instead shows that the HMX and RDX explosives were not even present when coalition forces first arrived at Al Qaqaa during Operation Iraqi Freedom.
NBC News confirmed that an embedded reporter with the Army's 101st Airborne on April 10, 2003, one day after Iraq was liberated from Saddam Hussein, said the explosives were already gone when coalition forces arrived.
"[T]hese troops never found the nearly 380 tons of some of the most powerful conventional explosives, called HMX and RDX, which is now missing," the NBC reporter said at the time.
Bush campaign spokesman Steve Schmidt said Kerry's attacks against the president have "been proven false" and shown to be "baseless."
"[Kerry] said American troops did not secure the explosives, when the explosives were already missing," Schmidt exclaimed in a statement.
Schmidt added that Kerry "neglects to mention the 400,000 tons of weapons and explosives [in Iraq] that are either destroyed or in the process of being destroyed." Speaking to supporters, Vice President Dick Cheney added, "If our troops had not gone into Iraq as John Kerry apparently thinks they should not have, that is 400,000 tons of weapons and explosives that would be in the hands of Saddam Hussein, who would still be sitting in his palace instead of jail."
Despite clear evidence presented by NBC News that the explosives were already missing from Al Qaqaa, Kerry senior adviser Joe Lockhart said Tuesday that the Bush campaign is "distorting" the information.
"In a shameless attempt to cover up its failure to secure 380 tons of highly explosive material in Iraq, the White House is desperately flailing in an effort to escape blame," Lockhart expressed to supporters, although he never explained how the Bush administration was doing this. "It is the latest pathetic excuse from an administration that never admits a mistake, no matter how disastrous."
|
|
||
| Rush just read a CNN story from 1/2003 "Al Aqaa a WMD site"...anyone have a link (vanity) | ||
| The Iraqi explosives story CBS and the New York Times ran yesterday is a fraud. These weapons were not there when US troops went to this site in 2003. The IAEA and its head, the anti-American Mohammed El Baradei, leaked a false letter on this issue to the media to embarrass the Bush administration. Here you go: http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/meast/01/24/sprj.irq.inspections/index.html Here is a link to DRUDGE story on it: Fox also had an article about Qa Qaa Site: |
||
Somehow, you must have missed that special time, "The Clinton Years".
Maybe the explosives left with the WMD's?
I think that the DNC and the Kerry Campaign were left off the list of conspriators . . . especially in light of the fact that Kerry was able to release a new ad with this as the theme on the same day the story "broke" . . .
What a bunch of hypocrits
They claim we shouldn't have been there to begin with
___________________________________________
Backhoe has em by the 'nads - PING.
To: Campaignlaw
Subject: Kerry false/misleading statements...
The Kerry/Edwards campaign intends to run an ad entitled "Obligation." This ad is based on demonstrably false information, in violation of the Federal Communications Act, and the Kerry/Edwards campaign must be enjoined from running this ad in any medium within the ambit of the FCC's regulatory authority.
The television ad is based on a discredited story that ran in the New York Times, asserting that a large cache of explosives went missing in Iraq after the war began -- and placing the blame on President Bush. This story is absolutely, and unambiguously false.
The National Broadcasting Company ('NBC'), via its embedded reporters in place prior to the war, has reported, currently and previously, that these weapons were missing PRIOR to U.S. presence in Iraq. Hence, the ad is false, misleading, and must be enjoined from airing. Plainly stated, there is no causal nexus between the disappearance of this cache and U.S. presence or action, as falsely asserted in this advertisement.
I trust the FCC will investigate this pressing matter promptly and take the appropriate action.
FCC Reply...
Although the FCC licenses broadcast stations, we have virtually no control over the content of what they broadcast. That's because of the First Amendment's freedom of expression and the no-censorship provision of the Communications Act. Thus, we cannot tell stations what to air and what not to air. (A notable exception to that is obscenity and indecency, because the U.S. Supreme Court has held that obscenity is not protected speech under the First Amendment.) Consequently, in most cases, it is within the station's discretion to determine what it will air. A key exception to that is candidate advertisements. Section 315 of the Communications Act prohibits stations from censoring the content of candidate-provided programming. Therefore, both the FCC and the stations are without power to censor the content of candidates' advertising - even if the information included is false. Moreover, stations are forbidden from adding a disclaimer advising viewers of the falsity of such an ad.
Sincerely,
Mark Berlin
Policy Division (political office)
Media Bureau
Some people heard the false reports and believed them. Maybe even made up their minds based on what they heard in the media on Monday.
The retractions from the mainstream media may come too late (like post-election), if at all.
Not everyone uses the Internet to check their news. This is unfortunate, because it enables the mainstream media to disseminate propaganda (to some people) and get away with it.
We must understand that most people do not have access to the information that we have here on FreeRepublic (or they refuse to search it out). This is quite dangerous because if they are relying on the mainstream media for their news, they are not getting the full story.
The challenge for us is not to convince ourselves, but to convince our unsuspecting neighbors that they are "being had" by the mainstream media.
Does anyone remember a posting on FR about a week ago in which an obvious Kerry-hole Dem operative wrote an article (forget which publication) telling the libs to remain calm because there would be a "devastating" October surprise unveiled in the media this week which would knock GWB out of the race??
I remember it clearly. It was posted around Oct. 19 or 18. People here on FR were scoffing at the author or poster, I forget which.
Anyway, this explosives story was probably it, and just shows how in-bed the partisan media has become with Kerry-hole/Democratic operatives.
After all, if some low-life Dem/Lib blogger had access to this NYTimes story, then the strategy on how to take down the President was obviouosly circulating through liberal circles for some time.
The wealthy executives of the great corporations are one of a kind with the wealthy executives of the alphabet networks and the wealthy executives of the famous advertising agencies.
They wine and dine each, country-club with each other, their wives socialize with each other, they all network with each other and even share interlocking directorates with each other.
The public, stockholders and the well-being of our country be damned.
Hopefully, this evil cabal will weaken somewhat with the breaking scandals and the noble efforts of bloggers and patriotic web sites.
I hope to see some improvement in my lifetime, but I'm not holding my breath. Most of these elites are leftists and stick together like Krazy Glue. They are almost impenetratable.
I've heard of no advertisers withdrawing from CBS despite its proven corruption. Has anyone?
Leni
Duelfer also said U.N. weapons inspectors recommended in 1995 that the high explosives be destroyed because of their potential use in a nuclear weapons program.The International Atomic Energy Agency instead ordered the explosives stored in sealed bunkers 30 miles south of the Iraqi capital. The last time the IAEA verified that the bunkers were still sealed was in March of last year, about a month before the first U.S. troops moved into the complex as they pushed toward Baghdad.
Rumor has it that at the joint CBS-NY Times Holloween party all of the news people will be dressing up like journalists.
"NBC News confirmed that an embedded reporter with the Army's 101st Airborne on April 10, 2003, one day after Iraq was liberated from Saddam Hussein, said the explosives were already gone when coalition forces arrived."
So much for their "surprise" to hurt Bush.
They'll just have to dream up another paranoid lie as a "surprise".
Everybody: Encourage EVERYONE to vote for Bush !!All GOP: Go to the polls, take a few friends and vote for Bush !!
[Expletive deleted] !!!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
