The MSM Just Can’t Help Themselves

So the big news this morning is the typically deceptive reporting done by the Washington Post. I gather they had to make up for that pro-Bush editorial a few days ago.

On May 29, 2003, 50 days after the fall of Baghdad, President Bush proclaimed a fresh victory for his administration in Iraq: Two small trailers captured by U.S. and Kurdish troops had turned out to be long-sought mobile “biological laboratories.” He declared, “We have found the weapons of mass destruction.”

The claim, repeated by top administration officials for months afterward, was hailed at the time as a vindication of the decision to go to war. But even as Bush spoke, U.S. intelligence officials possessed powerful evidence that it was not true.

A secret fact-finding mission to Iraq — not made public until now — had already concluded that the trailers had nothing to do with biological weapons. Leaders of the Pentagon-sponsored mission transmitted their unanimous findings to Washington in a field report on May 27, 2003, two days before the president’s statement.

Wow….you mean to tell me a team of experts studied the trailers and decided they were not WMD trailers, but Bush went ahead and stated they were? Get outta here!

No really, get out of here. Deep into the article they let us in on a interesting tidbit:

Intelligence analysts involved in high-level discussions about the trailers noted that the technical team was among several groups that analyzed the suspected mobile labs throughout the spring and summer of 2003. Two teams of military experts who viewed the trailers soon after their discovery concluded that the facilities were weapons labs, a finding that strongly influenced views of intelligence officials in Washington, the analysts said. “It was hotly debated, and there were experts making arguments on both sides,” said one former senior official who spoke on the condition that he not be identified.

So after spending the headline, byline, and everyline from the front page to the middle breathlessly reporting the news that Bush lied (again….sigh) they tell us that well, not really, maybe he didn’t lie. 3 teams were sent, 2 reported back that the trailers were WMD carriers while 1 disagreed. Which one do you think the Post agreed with?

And this is what constitutes reporting these days? Pathetic.

The White House demanded a apology but I doubt they will get it. The post has to keep in the good graces of the schizophrenic left:

McClellan dismissed the Post article and a report based on it that aired on ABC News Wednesday morning as irresponsible. He said ABC News should apologize and took issue with the way the Post story was written.

?The lead suggested that what the president was saying was based on something that had been debunked, and that is not true,? McClellan said. ?In fact, the president was saying something that was based on what the intelligence community ? through the CIA and DIA ? were saying.?

McClellan said information for public reports from the CIA comes from many sources and takes time to vet.

?It?s not something that, they will tell you, turns on a dime,? McClellan said.

The MSM no longer disseminates news it seems, they manufacture it. Thank god for blog’s and talk radio. Imagine what it would be like if all you had was this kind of hit piece disguised as news to rely on.

Chad at In The Bullpen writes about the decision the Post made:

And there you have the dilema. As an editor or journalist you can do one of two things. You can either report that the Bush Administration decided to take the advice of two of the investigative teams over one, which is a sound stance to take, or you can trumpet the findings of the dissenting group and lump that in with evidence that the Bush Administration didn?t look at their own evidence. It?s clear the Washington Post prefers the latter even though only one out of the three investigative teams came to this conclusion.

Every day it seems like the MSM is schreeching from every hilltop that Bush lied. They are throwing more and more spitballs at the wall hoping they will stick and I think I know why they are ratcheting up the pressure.

The Saddam documents. As more and more of these documents get translated that show Saddam did have WMD’s, that he did support terrorists, that he even asked for pilots from his own military to carry out suicide missions against American’s….the more the MSM and the left have to scream louder “BUSH LIED!”.

They cannot be proven wrong. Their whole world will fall apart if they have to tell the world that Bush was right.

What a sad pathetic group these people are.

Brainster has a timeline up that puts it all together for you.

I’ll end this with Ed Morrissey’s take on the matter:

This is a rather pathetic and transparent example of how the news media stages information so as to be most damaging to an administration they don’t like. The downplaying of the full context of this story shows that Warrick and his editors want sensationalism and hyperbole over facts and real reporting. This could have been a story about how even a creative strategy as that used by the Pentagon to review these trailers still wound up producing the wrong analysis. In trying to paint it as an example of administration dishonesty, the Post instead reveals its own.

What he said.

Other’s Blogging:

• Confederate Yankee
• Riehl World View
• Blue Crab Boulevard
• Sister Toldjah
• The Anchoress
• Dread Pundit Bluto
• The Political Pitbull
• Junkyard Blog
• Basil’s Blog
• Outside The Beltway
• Church and State
• Protein Wisdom
• Wizbang

So after spending the headline, byline, and everyline from the front page to the middle breathlessly reporting the news that Bush lied (again….sigh) they tell us that well, not really, maybe he didn’t lie. 3 teams were sent, 2 reported back that the trailers were WMD carriers while 1 disagreed. Which one do you think the Post agreed with?

And this is what constitutes reporting these days? Pathetic.

Curt

See author page