NYT Accidentally Admits Iraq Had W.M.D. And Denies It At The Same Time

By: Steve Berman,

Schizophrenic episode exposes bias.

The New York Times has the rather annoying problem of having to make actual facts fit their confirmation bias. By making journalistic pretzels of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, they’ve backed into the fact that W.M.D.’s really did exist in Saddam’s Iraq, despite their protestations.

In 2004, an NYT public apology declared:

To anyone who read the paper between September 2002 and June 2003, the impression that Saddam Hussein possessed, or was acquiring, a frightening arsenal of W.M.D. seemed unmistakable. Except, of course, it appears to have been mistaken. [emphasis mine]

Ten years later, above the fold “The Secret Casualties of Iraq’s Abandoned Chemical Weapons” dances like a drunk Muppet around the issue of W.M.D.:

Reached recently, [Charles A. Duelfer, a former United Nations official working for the Central Intelligence Agency] agreed that the weapons were still a menace, but said the report strove to make it clear that they were not “a secret cache of weapons of mass destruction.”

“What I was trying to convey is that these were not militarily significant because they not used as W.M.D.,” he said. “It wasn’t that they weren’t dangerous.”

The NYT, on one hand, is saying that a frightening arsenal of W.M.D. (chiefly, chemical weapons) didn’t exist in 2004, and on the other hand, the chemical weapons found in the last ten years are frightening, dangerous, but not W.M.D.

Assuming the mantle of self-righteousness, the NYT article goes on to slam the Bush administration for withholding the dangerous-but-not-W.M.D. chemical weapons finds from Congress, and covering it up, lest anyone find out that some of them were made by western (even American) companies in the 1980’s Iran-Iraq war (in which we supported Iraq). And now, the dangerous but militarily insignificant devices could pose a threat in the hands of—you guessed it—Daesh*

The New York Times has the rather annoying problem of having to make actual facts fit their confirmation bias. By making journalistic pretzels of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, they’ve backed into the fact that W.M.D.’s really did exist in Saddam’s Iraq, despite their protestations.

In 2004, an NYT public apology declared

To anyone who read the paper between September 2002 and June 2003, the impression that Saddam Hussein possessed, or was acquiring, a frightening arsenal of W.M.D. seemed unmistakable. Except, of course, it appears to have been mistaken. [emphasis mine]

Ten years later, above the fold “The Secret Casualties of Iraq’s Abandoned Chemical Weapons” dances like a drunk Muppet around the issue of W.M.D.:

Reached recently, [Charles A. Duelfer, a former United Nations official working for the Central Intelligence Agency] agreed that the weapons were still a menace, but said the report strove to make it clear that they were not “a secret cache of weapons of mass destruction.”

“What I was trying to convey is that these were not militarily significant because they not used as W.M.D.,” he said. “It wasn’t that they weren’t dangerous.”

The NYT, on one hand, is saying that a frightening arsenal of W.M.D. (chiefly, chemical weapons) didn’t exist in 2004, and on the other hand, the chemical weapons found in the last ten years are frightening, dangerous, but not W.M.D. This tweet sums it up pretty well.

Assuming the mantle of self-righteousness, the NYT article goes on to slam the Bush administration for withholding the dangerous-but-not-W.M.D. chemical weapons finds from Congress, and covering it up, lest anyone find out that some of them were made by western (even American) companies in the 1980’s Iran-Iraq war (in which we supported Iraq). And now, the dangerous but militarily insignificant devices could pose a threat in the hands of—you guessed it—Daesh*

In a schizophrenic episode, the New York Times simultaneously asserts that chemical weapons found in Iraq since 2003 are not W.M.D., and are in fact militarily insignificant; and that the weapons did not deteriorate and are still capable of causing havoc.

The report also played down the dangers of the lingering weapons, stating that because their contents would have deteriorated, “any remaining chemical munitions in Iraq do not pose a militarily significant threat.”
Facts have a disturbing effect of destroying liberal bias, like Bush’s justification for the 2003 Iraq invasion was false. I am continually amazed at how today’s “journalists” can dance so well and never seem to hear the real music.

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