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Washington Post Deception Rears Its Ugly Head (again)
Powerlineblog.com ^ | April 12, 2005 | Paul Mirengoff

Posted on 04/12/2006 10:17:21 AM PDT by khnyny

April 12, 2006 More deception from the Washington Post

While the Washington Post frets about a U.S. military "propaganda campaign" against Zarqawi that consists of spreading true information reasonably calculated to save American lives, the Post conducts a propaganda campaign against the administration that's based on distortion. The latest instance is today's story on the Bush administration's statements that certain Iraqi trailers were biological laboratories. As Ed Morrissey shows, the Post's report is highly deceptive. While trumpeting the fact that a team of experts concluded after the invasion that, contrary to the administration's claim, the trailers were not bio labs, it does not reveal until a dozen paragraphs later that two other teams of experts reached a contrary conclusion. Thus, the view of the team that the Post highlights appears to have been a minority view at the time the administration referred to the trailers as bio labs.

Posted by Paul at 08:41 AM


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Foreign Affairs; Front Page News; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: biolabs; deceit; iraq; iraqwar; isis; jobywarrick; military; mobilelaboratories; mobilelabs; terrorism; war; warrick; washingtonpost; wp; zarqawi
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1 posted on 04/12/2006 10:17:23 AM PDT by khnyny
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To: khnyny

I am starting to lose my faith in the Wash Post.....


2 posted on 04/12/2006 10:19:24 AM PDT by Onelifetogive (* Sarcasm tag ALWAYS required. For some FReepers, sarcasm can NEVER be obvious enough.)
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To: Onelifetogive
I am starting to lose my faith in the Wash Post.....

What took you so long?

3 posted on 04/12/2006 10:22:31 AM PDT by Puppage (You may disagree with what I have to say, but I shall defend to your death my right to say it)
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To: Puppage

The only industry that insults and lies to its customers on a daily basis.

Antique Media Bump.


4 posted on 04/12/2006 10:23:55 AM PDT by samadams2000 (Somebody important make The Call.....pitchforks and lanterns.!)
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To: khnyny

I weep for the trees that are cut down each day to publish the WashingtonComPost


5 posted on 04/12/2006 10:23:57 AM PDT by Hoodat ( Silly Dems, AYBABTU.)
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To: Puppage
What took you so long?

He forgot where he left his sarcasm.

6 posted on 04/12/2006 10:24:38 AM PDT by lepton ("It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into"--Jonathan Swift)
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To: khnyny

The Washington Compost is trying to catch the NYTimes in the irrelevancy sweepstakes.


7 posted on 04/12/2006 10:24:38 AM PDT by pissant
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To: khnyny
Thus, the view of the team that the Post highlights appears to have been a minority view at the time the administration referred to the trailers as bio labs.

I noted this as well, its not until you read well into the article that you see this.

My point to liberals and other naysayers about this is that there are ALWAYS contrary opinions about something, but you go with the majority opinion, or the opinion which, in your judgement, given the circumstances (Iraq HAD and USED WMD before, they were a rogue nation in violation of numerous agreements, etc etc), is most likely or prudent.

Sheesh, this is so obvious, one would have to be deliberately obtuse not to understand this.

8 posted on 04/12/2006 10:27:01 AM PDT by Paradox (Removing all Doubt since 1998!)
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To: Hoodat

"I weep for the trees that are cut down each day to publish the WashingtonComPost"

LOL, yes what a waste, isn't it.


9 posted on 04/12/2006 10:32:39 AM PDT by khnyny
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To: Onelifetogive

Your being sarcastic, right? Never trust the comPost.


10 posted on 04/12/2006 10:38:38 AM PDT by BoBToMatoE
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To: Paradox
This is a propaganda campaign for sure, they know what they are doing.

Reminds me of how the MSM often states that the VP said on MTP that Iraq had nuclear weapons.

In fact, if you read that entire transcript, the VP and Russert were REPEATEDLY discussing Iraqis nuclear "programs", and during ONE sentence the VP neglects to had the word "program".

It is this lie that they smear with, this and many, many, others.
11 posted on 04/12/2006 10:39:09 AM PDT by roses of sharon
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To: BoBToMatoE
Your being sarcastic, right?

I failed to heed the advice in my own tagline.....

12 posted on 04/12/2006 10:44:09 AM PDT by Onelifetogive (* Sarcasm tag ALWAYS required. For some FReepers, sarcasm can NEVER be obvious enough.)
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To: Hoodat
I weep for the trees that are cut down each day to publish the WashingtonComPost.

Considering the destruction of trees, 'compost' is certainly an appropriate term.

13 posted on 04/12/2006 10:48:19 AM PDT by jigsaw (Cynthia McKinney has changed her name to Shooter Lippy.)
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To: khnyny

Washington Post Struggles

Amidst declining circulation, declining advertising revenues, and rising newsprint costs, the Washington Post announced that it will eliminate some 80 newsroom positions over the next year. That’s close to 10 percent of its reporters and editors.

“An analysis of our business practices revealed that we weren’t using reporters to write our stories anyway,” said Preston Cash, assistant publisher for the paper. “Why pay for something we don’t need?”

Cash indicated that the basic structure for all future news stories already exists. “Our internal review showed that one basic theme ran through all our stories,” said Cash. “This theme can be plugged into a computer program that will generate all future stories. All we have to do is throw in a few specific topical anchors like ‘failed war on terror’ or ‘Bush blunders,’ stir in a few statistics or location names and the software will write the story for us.”

“Right-wingers say this isn’t news,” said Cash. “We say, if it’s in our paper it is news. After all, the Post is a newspaper.”

Skeptics aren’t persuaded that the Post’s strategy will work. “Relying on fabricated news may lower the Post’s labor costs, but it will do little to address the problem of declining circulation and ad revenues,” said Brent Bozell of the Media Research Center. “In fact, it’s likely to aggravate these problems.”

read more at...

http://www.azconservative.org/Column_Archives.htm


14 posted on 04/12/2006 11:50:17 AM PDT by John Semmens
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To: khnyny

Proud to say I cancelled my subscription years ago.


15 posted on 04/12/2006 11:52:38 AM PDT by YourAdHere (Bradypalooza. Available at Amazon.Com)
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To: pissant
But I thought it was the NY Slimes, not NY Times...

They earned that title when they went after innocent children of US Supreme Court Justice Roberts.

But the WaPo helped in the MD4BUSH to help spread lies...

16 posted on 04/12/2006 12:26:49 PM PDT by topher (Let us return to old-fashioned morality - morality that has stood the test of time...)
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To: khnyny
Zarqawi has and is costing the American tax payer a bundle - imagine the cost of deporting all the aliens who work here. Send Zarqawi to the chair and DENY the Right to Vote to any illegal - class D Citizen - in any election.

Starting NOW all illegal aliens caught entering the country without going through the proper channels - they will be rightfully called FELON and treated with a very simple short trial announcing their departure as they have no RIGHTS! Deport them and be done with it!

17 posted on 04/12/2006 12:53:34 PM PDT by yoe (Bill Clinton and Madeline Albright did what with the UAE?!! - and Hillary didn't know?)
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To: yoe; potlatch; Travis McGee; PhilDragoo; ntnychik
the word they most hate:

18 posted on 04/12/2006 4:24:40 PM PDT by devolve ((----Kimberly Guilfoyle - bicoastal or another thespian?))
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To: roses of sharon
Now Powell tells us

On Monday, former Secretary of State Colin Powell told me that he and his department's top experts never believed that Iraq posed an imminent nuclear threat, but that the president followed the misleading advice of Vice President Dick Cheney and the CIA in making the claim. Now he tells us.

The harsh truth is that this president cherry-picked the intelligence data in making his case for invading Iraq and deliberately kept the public in the dark as to the countervailing analysis at the highest level of the intelligence community. While the president and his top Cabinet officials were fear-mongering with stark images of a "mushroom cloud" over American cities, the leading experts on nuclear weaponry at the Department of Energy (the agency in charge of the U.S. nuclear-weapons program) and the State Department thought the claim of a near-term Iraqi nuclear threat was absurd.

I queried Powell at a reception following a talk he gave in Los Angeles on Monday. Pointing out that the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate showed that his State Department had gotten it right on the nonexistent Iraq nuclear threat, I asked why did the president ignore that wisdom in his stated case for the invasion?

"The CIA was pushing the aluminum tube argument heavily and Cheney went with that instead of what our guys wrote," Powell said. And the Niger reference in Bush's State of the Union speech? "That was a big mistake," he said. "It should never have been in the speech. I didn't need Wilson to tell me that there wasn't a Niger connection. He didn't tell us anything we didn't already know. I never believed it."

When I pressed further as to why the president played up the Iraq nuclear threat, Powell said it wasn't the president: "That was all Cheney." A convenient response for a Bush family loyalist, perhaps, but it begs the question of how the president came to be a captive of his vice president's fantasies.

More important: Why was this doubt, on the part of the secretary of state and others, about the salient facts justifying the invasion of Iraq kept from the public until we heard the truth from whistle-blower Wilson, whose credibility the president then sought to destroy?

More

19 posted on 04/12/2006 4:49:14 PM PDT by TexKat
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White House angrily denies report on Iraqi WMD

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The White House vehemently denounced a US newspaper report suggesting President George W. Bush insisted on the existence of biological weapons laboratories in Iraq while knowing the claim was false.

The Washington Post said Wednesday that Bush and other top administration officials cited two trailers found in Iraq as evidence of a banned Iraqi weapons program even though Pentagon experts had found they were probably designed to produce hydrogen for weather balloons.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan condemned the newspaper report as "reckless", saying Bush had based his assertions on intelligence assesssments.

"And for you all to go on the air this morning and make such a charge is irresponsible," McClellan told reporters.

On May 29, 2003, Bush proclaimed that the trailers, located just weeks after the start of the US-led invasion of Iraq, were long-sought mobile "biological laboratories".

"We have found the weapons of mass destruction," the president said confidently at the time.

Two days before the president's statement, however, a secret Pentagon-sponsored mission had returned findings that the trailers were not suited for the production of biological weapons, according to the Post, citing unnamed government officials.

The claim was repeated by top administration officials for months, even though US intelligence officials had received the findings of the Pentagon experts determining that the allegations were not true, the Post reported.

The White House said Bush was not aware of the findings by the fact-finding mission and had based his remarks on a "white paper" issued by the Central Intelligence Agency and the Defense Intelligence Agency.

"The president's comments were based on the intelligence assessment of the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency that was publicly released on May 28, 2003," McClellan said.

"In fact, the CIA and Defense Intelligence Agency had jointly assessed at the time that the labs were for producing biological weapons," he added.

The newspaper report renewed attention on the Bush administration's rationale for going to war in Iraq amid declining approval ratings for Bush and mounting public anxiety over the war.

In the run-up to the war, the trailers were presented as crucial evidence by the Bush administration to back its assertion that Saddam Hussein was building weapons of mass destruction.

The administration has denied persistent allegations that it manipulated intelligence to justify military action.

The Pentagon confirmed the existence of the expert team's report but would not say what the team's findings were.

The Defense Intelligence Agency-sponsored Technical Exploitation Team filed their preliminary report on the trailers on May 27, 2003, it said.

The DIA team's report was sent to a center that worked with the Iraq Survey Group, a CIA-led team responsible for the hunt for Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, and was also faxed directly to the Iraq Survey Group, the Pentagon said.

Despite the findings of the expert team, the CIA-DIA assessment on May 28, 2003 cited by the White House on Wednesday held that US officials were confident that Iraq had "mobile biological weapons production".

The assessment "reflected the position of the intelligence community at that time," Pentagon spokesman Lieutenant Commander Greg Hicks said.

As more information was gathered and analyzed by experts, it eventually became clear that the trailers were not designed for biological weapons, Hicks said.

20 posted on 04/12/2006 4:51:52 PM PDT by TexKat
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