Posted on 04/12/2006 7:26:55 PM PDT by West Coast Conservative
The White House on Wednesday hit back at The Washington Post for its front-page story this morning which suggested President Bush in 2003 cited the discovery of mobile biological weapons labs in Iraq as "weapons of mass destruction" just after the Pentagon received a top-level report revealing this was not true.
Press Secretary Scott McClellan called the account "reckless reporting" and asked media outlets who carried it to apologize. He said Bush made his statement based on multiple sources.
Appearing on MSNBC Wednesday night, the Post reporter who wrote the piece, Joby Warrick, stood by the reporting, and said he had never stated that Bush "knowingly" ignored the report. That left open why the president did not know about it, and why he and others in the administration continued to press the WMD mobile lab angle for months afterward.
On May 29, 2003, Bush said, "We have found the weapons of mass destruction,” after the finding of the mobile labs. However, the Post today said a Pentagon-sponsored fact-finding mission had already concluded and submitted a report finding that the trailers had nothing to do with biological weapons.
McClellan said the Post story was "nothing more than rehashing an old issue that was resolved long ago. " He singled out ABC for featuring report. "This is reckless reporting and for you all to go on the air this morning and make such a charge is irresponsible, and I hope that ABC would apologize for it and make a correction on the air," he said.
Later, without naming any network, he said, "I talked to one network about it and they have publicly -- well, they've expressed their apologies to the White House. I hope they will go and publicly apologize on the air about the statements that were made, because I think it's important, given that they had made those statements in front of all their viewers. And so we look forward to that happening, as well."
McClellan did not explain why the 122-page final report was classified and kept on the shelf. Despite debunkings from various sources, the Post noted, for nearly a year the Bush administration continued to assert that the trailers were biological weapons factories.
Talking to reporters today, McClellan said: “You know, I saw some reporting talking about how this latest revelation — which is not something that is new; this is all old information that’s being rehashed — was an embarrassment for the White House. No, it’s an embarrassment for the media that is out there reporting this....
"First of all, intelligence is -- when an assessment is made, it looks at a lot of different intelligence and it takes time to vet that intelligence, go through it, debate it, discuss it with the intelligence community, look at all the different intelligence coming in, whether it's human intelligence or signals intelligence or open-source intelligence. And they pull that all together and the intelligence community makes the assessment. The White House is not the intelligence-gathering agency....
"Now, I will point out that the reporting I saw this morning was simply reckless and it was irresponsible. The lead in The Washington Post left the impression for the reader that the President was saying something he knew at the time not to be true. That is absolutely false and it is irresponsible, and I don't know how The Washington Post can defend something so irresponsible."
I think that's right, but it's been some time since I read about it, so I'm not absolutely positive.
Here's the relevant post from today's PowerLine, just a little above half-way down the page:
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 | Permalink
I don't think that simply stating the facts and then asking for an apology is enough.
The media won't report the facts, and the request for an aplogy is met with and portrayed as a pathetic attempt at a defense without merit.
The WH has all the facts and it's time that they shove them down the media's throat until they gag...........and die.
I think the "fake" documents were "accurate."
New low for the ComPost, I agree.
Does the WAPO have a press pass to the White House? If yes, pull it until a front page apology is issued and the author of the "story" is fired. But demanding an apology is a good first step, finally some fight-back against the propaganda machines that call themselves media outlets.
I'd start by pulling the WH press passes for all the hacks from CNN, ABC, NBC, CBS, NY Times, Wash Post, Time, Newsweek, Helen Thomas, that dumb bitch from the Atlanta Journal......
I know that what I'm proposing is not reasonable, but, neither are the actions of the lame stream press.
I'm going to stick my neck out and make a prediction:
1) The documents are saying that something was up.
2) At least two writers have said where the WMD went.
3) The White House is starting to respond to the attacks with vigor.
4)Therefore, I look for significant pressure on Syria in September 2006 to relinquish what is buried in Bekaa Valley.
Long shot, I know. But one hopes for sweet justice.
HA! See my post just above yours!!! Old media are nothing but pigs.
Concur, tobyhill. These reporters are FAR better at dishing it out than they are at taking it. I don't know why the White House has been so long in understanding what most of us clearly see, that the media hates them with a passion. Let's get it all out in the open; it's energizing for supporters of the President. And it's also good entertainment.
The MSM always said that Bush approved of torture and that maybe what he's doing to them, just very slowly.
It's been obvious for a long time that Donald Graham Jr. will do or say anything, and use the Post as he wishes, in order to hurt America and advance the cause of his buddies in AlQaida.
That's the problem.
We live in a pop-up-book world........few have/make the time to get past the headline.
All the recent headlines online suggest that Bush knew about the trailers not being WMD labs BEFORE he said that they were, but, when one does a "little critical reading", one finds that he could not have known in advance, and that the question was still very much open to debate within the intelligence community.
But, ya know what?.........
Tomorrow's headline will be........
BUSH KNEW!!!!!!!!!
That's wierd, your dictionary has a defintion for the word "vigor" that's the same in mine for the word "wimpy".
Vimpy or wigor, what's the difference? :)
Exactly. That is one of those things that just makes me want to scream "DUH!" You KNOW they are not that naive, so they are LYING, WITHHOLDING, AND OBFUSCATING! **biting tongue to keep from screaming**
Have I mentioned lately how much I despise the MSM?
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