Minor and Major News Update
First and foremost, Friar Dave has posted a reaction and addition to my post about the Episcopal Church; his post addresses some recent concerns with political action within the Presbyterian Church. I don't really have anything to add to it; it's worth reading.
Major news sources such as CNN, the BBC, ABC News, NBC, CBS, et cetera, are still ignoring the WMD story. I went to Fre Republic and found these two citations:
No Mention of WMD Documents on ABC News Tonight
Rush Limbaugh: Why Nobody Seems Interested in the Hundreds of Saddam's WMD Found in Iraq
To some degree, I'm at a loss to explain this. As is pointed out in at least the first article, maistream news media outlets made a point of talking about casualties in Iraq, and allegations against American military personnel. I can imagine mainstream news outlets giving short coverage to this story, trying to downplay it, or trying to spin it; after all, even I can admit that this is far from evidence of ongoing development of WMD programs in Hussein's regime.
However, this is proof that at least some of what Colin Powell said in his address to the Security Council was correct. Aside from the very public (and, unfortunately, very much overlooked) fact that Saddam was providing financial and material aid to terrorists, including al Qaeda, Hussein had nearly five hundred sarin and mustard gas munitions that we've found so far.
It doesn't surprise me at all that this information was very closely guarded and classified. A terrorist insurgency cropped up very quickly after the fall of Baghdad, and we're still fighting it three years later. Can you imagine making announcements that there were bio-chem weapons "here and there"? Every terrorist in the world would be working to try and find them so that they could use them in one way or another. In fact, they probably still will be. There are a lot of reasons why this was kept secret, beyond anything any of us can imagine. Also, I think it's necessary to give credit to President Bush for his integrity; he easily could have declassified this information in late October of 2004 and beaten Senator Kerry in the election by a good fifteen or twenty points, and he didn't.
The mainstream media's non-coverage of this story, which should have been one of the top ten or fifteen stories of the year, is absolutely unacceptable, and it's further proof of an underlying agenda. It's further proof that the news media isn't objective and neutral, as it makes itself out to be; instead, they're sweeping it completely under the rug, not even content to mine it for some further proof that President Bush's claims have not yet been wholly verified. They should be ashamed of themselves, and Republicans and alternative news outlets should be ashamed of themselves for not screaming this louder on blogs, talk radio, et cetera. Though I haven't done an exhaustive search, mine is the only blog I've seen this news on.
The world must have laws, the world must have standards of conduct, from the individual all the way up to the international level. Saddam Hussein was in material breach of those laws; he gave support to terrorists, he maintained hidden stockpiles of illegal weapons, he violated treaties, and justice demanded that he and his thugs be held accountable for it. The only regret that I have about sending American soldiers to Iraq is that we let the cowards and thugs in the international community delay us by so many years.
Thus saith the Fly.
Major news sources such as CNN, the BBC, ABC News, NBC, CBS, et cetera, are still ignoring the WMD story. I went to Fre Republic and found these two citations:
To some degree, I'm at a loss to explain this. As is pointed out in at least the first article, maistream news media outlets made a point of talking about casualties in Iraq, and allegations against American military personnel. I can imagine mainstream news outlets giving short coverage to this story, trying to downplay it, or trying to spin it; after all, even I can admit that this is far from evidence of ongoing development of WMD programs in Hussein's regime.
However, this is proof that at least some of what Colin Powell said in his address to the Security Council was correct. Aside from the very public (and, unfortunately, very much overlooked) fact that Saddam was providing financial and material aid to terrorists, including al Qaeda, Hussein had nearly five hundred sarin and mustard gas munitions that we've found so far.
It doesn't surprise me at all that this information was very closely guarded and classified. A terrorist insurgency cropped up very quickly after the fall of Baghdad, and we're still fighting it three years later. Can you imagine making announcements that there were bio-chem weapons "here and there"? Every terrorist in the world would be working to try and find them so that they could use them in one way or another. In fact, they probably still will be. There are a lot of reasons why this was kept secret, beyond anything any of us can imagine. Also, I think it's necessary to give credit to President Bush for his integrity; he easily could have declassified this information in late October of 2004 and beaten Senator Kerry in the election by a good fifteen or twenty points, and he didn't.
The mainstream media's non-coverage of this story, which should have been one of the top ten or fifteen stories of the year, is absolutely unacceptable, and it's further proof of an underlying agenda. It's further proof that the news media isn't objective and neutral, as it makes itself out to be; instead, they're sweeping it completely under the rug, not even content to mine it for some further proof that President Bush's claims have not yet been wholly verified. They should be ashamed of themselves, and Republicans and alternative news outlets should be ashamed of themselves for not screaming this louder on blogs, talk radio, et cetera. Though I haven't done an exhaustive search, mine is the only blog I've seen this news on.
The world must have laws, the world must have standards of conduct, from the individual all the way up to the international level. Saddam Hussein was in material breach of those laws; he gave support to terrorists, he maintained hidden stockpiles of illegal weapons, he violated treaties, and justice demanded that he and his thugs be held accountable for it. The only regret that I have about sending American soldiers to Iraq is that we let the cowards and thugs in the international community delay us by so many years.
Thus saith the Fly.
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