Hey did you see that story on the front page of the New York Times?

[NNN0LHI]

http://peaceandjustice.org/article.php/2005110308460918/print

Sunday Sept. 8, 2002 was a red letter day in the White House Iraq Group’s efforts to market the war. That was the day the administration’s war salesmen scored one of their biggest propaganda coups.

That morning, the New York Times ran a front page story co-written by Judy Miller about how Saddam was trying to get a hold of aluminum tubes to be used in building nuclear weapons.

Perfectly timed to coincide with this planted (and bogus) info, the administration blanketed the Sunday shows with its big guns -- who all used the New York Times’ credibility to bolster their case against Saddam and scare the American people.

Dick Cheney did Meet the Press, citing the Times story as evidence that Saddam was “actively and aggressively seeking to acquire nuclear weapons”. Condi Rice went on Wolf Blitzer and warned that the "smoking gun” in Iraq could turn out to be “a mushroom cloud”. Colin Powell on Fox News Sunday, Don Rumsfeld on Face the Nation, and Richard Meyers on This Week all made similar points, raising the specter of a nuked up Saddam. A month later, the House and Senate hastily authorized the administration to go to war.

Of course, the Plamegate investigation has revealed the political alchemy of turning crap into gold via a deadly game of neocon telephone tag. Cheney to Libby to Chalabi to Miller back to Libby for confirmation by “a senior administration official” (or is it “former Hill staffer”?)… then right to the front pages of the Times, which Cheney and Rice and Powell and Meyers and Rummy can wave around as “proof”.

It’s an iconic moment. A simple yet eye-opening narrative that exemplifies the way the war was sold. For me, it includes all the key pieces of the puzzle -- when you put them together, everything suddenly clicks into place.

[Hydra]

1. Of course

it all looked like bad Kabuki to me, and I couldn't believe that people were buying it. The Times article cited sources from the WH to substantiate the story, and then the WH people turned around and used the fact that the Media picked it up as proof, and started running 500 miles into Hell with that.

I also believe the poll numbers were set artificially high to convince people that this was real- hell if everyone else in America believed it, it must be true!

I was SO not with the program, apparently.

[NNN0LHI]

3. Drones

This was about the same time my elderly mother who is unable to believe our government would lie to us about something as important as this told me she was worried about the drones that Bush said Saddam had and was getting ready to send over here to kill her.

Nothing I could say to her would change her mind.

Don

[gilpo]

9. Drones...

People who unthinkingly believe what this "government" tells them.

[5X]

2. It was obvious at the time what they were up to.

I knew it, Kucinich knew it, lots of people saw what
they were doing and called them on it, but were ignored.

[NNN0LHI]

5. It was so obvious you would have thought the NYT could have recognized what was going on and acted

But they didn't. Instead the NYT supported the invasion. Wonder why they would do that?

Don

http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=2957

The New York Times' editorial page unskeptically accepted these claims and incorporated them into the paper's own arguments. In a September 18, 2002 editorial, the paper declared:

What really counts in this conflict...is the destruction of Iraq's unconventional weapons and the dismantling of its program to develop nuclear arms.... What makes Iraq the subject of intense concern, as Mr. Bush noted, is Mr. Hussein's defiance of the Security Council's longstanding instructions to dismantle Baghdad's nuclear weapons program and to eliminate all its biological and chemical weapons and the materials used to make them.

After the U.N. Security Council passed a resolution on inspectors returning to Iraq, the Times editorialized (11/9/02):

The unwavering goal is to disarm Iraq, enforcing a string of previous Security Council resolutions that Baghdad has contemptuously ignored. The cost of letting that happen has been diminished authority for the United Nations and a growing danger that Iraq's unconventional weapons will be used in war or passed on to terrorists. Mr. Bush has galvanized the Security Council to declare that its orders must now be obeyed and those dangers eliminated.

When the inspectors returned, the paper stated (12/6/02), "Iraq has to get rid of its biological and chemical arms and missiles and the means to make them, and abandon its efforts to develop nuclear weapons." When the inspectors failed to find any evidence of banned weapons, the Times insisted (2/15/03): "The Security Council doesn't need to sit through more months of inconclusive reports. It needs full and immediate Iraqi disarmament. It needs to say so, backed by the threat of military force."

As the invasion approached, the editorialists endorsed (3/13/03) British Prime Minister Tony Blair's six-point ultimatum to Iraq as the "last hope of forcing Saddam Hussein to disarm voluntarily." The first point: "Mr. Hussein would have to acknowledge that he has hidden unconventional weapons and pledge to stop producing or concealing such weapons."

[sicksicksick_N_tired]

4. September 2002: the month I discovered something was really wrong with this country. eom

[onethatcares]

6. november 2000

I realized something was very wrong with this country. I'd skipped over the assassinations of the liberal leaders, the JFKs, the RFKs, the Martin Luther Kings, thinking that some lone gun nut was out there just hoping for a chance to kill someone, then I began to question, "WHY". Why would someone "attempt" to kill a standing president with a .22 pistol? Why would a certain someone have connections with that persons' family? Why would people fly planes into two skyscrapers and then have another fall down, somehow destroying investigative records into some weird happenings.

I guess I'm just a loony leftist that thinks a country should be judged on how it treats its' elderly, its' sick, and its' young.

[NNN0LHI]

7. This is an important story because the NYT is all primed up to do it again with Iran if we let them

I promise.

Don

[NNN0LHI]

8. kick n/t

[NNN0LHI]

10. kick n/t

[NNN0LHI]

11. kick n/t