Well, on Monday, the front page of New York Times featured a flawed article asserting, “The Iraqi interim government has warned the United States and international nuclear inspectors that nearly 380 tons of powerful conventional explosives — used to demolish buildings, make missile warheads and detonate nuclear weapons — are missing from one of Iraq’s most sensitive former military installations. 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.”
CBS News’ “60 Minutes” admitted today they were saving the same story to air the Sunday before the election.
John Kerry seized on the New York Times headline to launch a political attack on President Bush, saying U.S. troops “failed to guard those stockpiles” and that is “one of the great blunders” of the war.
Senator Kerry and the New York Times leave the impression that these weapons went missing recently and U.S. troops were derilict in their duty to guard the stockpile–neither of which is true.
Network and cable news programs repeated the incomplete report and Sen. Kerry’s attacks more than 100 times on Monday.
But last night NBC “Nightly News” reported that on April 10, 2003, one day after Baghdad fell, U.S. troops entered Al Qaqaa, accompanied by an embedded reporter from NBC, and found no such weapons.
It also turns out that our troops have found and destroyed or are destroying 400,000 tons of weapons and explosives.
There was no mention of either one of these facts in today’s New York Times front page story, which regurgitated yesterday’s charges and Senator Kerry’s attacks based on them.
Liberal groups like MoveOn.org have already blasted out e-mails repeating the discredited report and urging people to vote against President Bush based on the flawed coverage.
We can not count on the media to set the story straight. We have to get the truth out to our friends and neighbors ourselves.
Sincerely,
Ed Gillespie
Chairman, Republican National Committee
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Folks, I will not be convinced that John Kerry was not given a heads up on this “missing weapons” bs. Within 24 hrs he had an ad up on his web site. How is that possible? If you see the ad on JohnKerry dot com, you will see that it was a full fledged attempt to boost him. It was craven and deceptive.
Are American people so stupid to fall for this? By nature Libs always fall for it, its part of their doctrine. So, folks, are you going to allow CBS and 60 minutes to determine YOUR future?