Anatomy of a Smear, Part 2

Does this surprise anyone?

Published on October 26, 2004 By Dr Guy In Current Events

In September, we had Rathergate, forged documents that were proven forged by little old bloggers, not the 'main stream' media with their wealth of resources. We should have learned from that, then and there, that some members of the mainstream media were just not playing with an unbiased book. Indeed, CBS and Dan Rather have never apologized for the smear they tried to perpetrate.

Now we appear to have caught the NY Times, that [sarcasm] bastion of non-partisanship [/sarcasm] with their pants down. They reported a story that was 18 months old as if it happened in the last month. OMG! 380 tons of weapons just up and disappeared on the Bush Watch!

But alas, it was not the blogosphere that outted this as another attempt at a smear. It was NBC News that reported it 18 months ago. Why? Because they were there!

But today, more dirt has surfaced. It appears that CBS also had the false story before the NY Times, and was going to run it on Sunday, October 31st, just 2 days before the election! The reason they did not? They did not think it would hold until then! Not that they wanted to report the truth, for it would only have taken a few hours, not 5 years, to reveal the truth to this lie. No, they wanted to sabotage the Bush campaign again. And behind it all, was none other than……drum roll…….Dan Rather!

These 2 episodes are not isolated incidents; just the most overt examples of what the main stream press, and in particular, the NY Times, CNS and Dan Rather, are really all about. Not the truth, but smear, smear and smear.

Now some on this blog may be liberal, and some are conservatives, but no honest person can argue that the mainstream media is impartial. Not with this deceit and deception and outright lies that they push as news.

The really sad part about this whole sordid affair is that Dan Rather got a second chance to smear the president. That shows that CBS is rotten to the core, and as trustworthy as Saddam Hussein. I wonder when the CBS (VIACOM) stock holders are going to just pull the plug on this sleaze outfit? It is their money that they see spiraling down that toilet bowl.

Addendum - 10/27/2004:

f there was any doubt this was a planned smear, just check out this link:

http://www.johnkerry.com/video/102604_obligation.html

It clearly shows that the day after the story broke, Kerry had an ad out. You cant produce an ad in less than 24 hours, without prior knowledge to the story. Just another example of the biased nature of the mainstream media, and how they have lost all claim to objectivity.

Comments (Page 2)

CrispE

on Oct 26, 2004

Dr. Guy:

You know, you really need to stop getting all YOUR news at Newsmax, FOX, and Drudge. 377 TONS of explosive WERE there at that site, recorded by the IAEA! Get it! That's tons, dude, not easily movable, not back up the Ford F-150 and cart it down the road. That requires big equipment that should have been EASILY spottable and U.S. troops went by the facility and never checked even though WE KNEW it was an explosive dump.

Now, not securing the site, that was MORONIC!

Nadeon

on Oct 26, 2004

That requires big equipment that should have been EASILY spottable and U.S. troops went by the facility and never checked even though WE KNEW it was an explosive dump.

Get it straight pal...it was gone before we got close enough to secure it. The next time we have a situation like that, you're welcome to run into the ammo dump and secure it while another army is trying their ever loving best to keep you away from it. And you're right. It does require big equipment. However that big equipment wasn't moving about freely when we rolled in. You prove your own antheisis. You might also want to consider how unstable that stuff is in a desert environment when it's removed from a controlled environment. Our little buddies with the AKs and RPGs over there seem to like to pry open just about every container to see what's in it. Funny how the press doesn't report how many of the bad guys blow themselves to hell trying to set up a roadside device.
By the way, stop listening to CBS...it'll rot your brain. All the networks need to stop manufacturing news and start reporting it, FOX included. It's more entertainment than serious journalism these days anyway...As The Spin Turns.

SSG Geezer

on Oct 26, 2004

I think the objective of the 101st was to move on Baghdad, not guard an ammo and supply depot.
You need to dig a bit deeper for how many tons of explosives were around before the invasion.
BTW the IAEA knew in may oy 03 that there was all of this explosive material missing.
the point is that CBS, the NYT and the UN want to slam the president. It has been reported that CBS was waiting for Halloween to break the story.
Hmmm, smells a bit like rotten fish to me.

T_Bone4Justice

on Oct 26, 2004

Just for the record, the story broke about 2 weeks ago as I posted an article about it at that time. As for "it was gone before we got close enough to secure it. The next time we have a situation like that, you're welcome to run into the ammo dump and secure it while another army is trying their ever loving best to keep you away from it. And you're right. It does require big equipment. However that big equipment wasn't moving about freely when we rolled in. You prove your own antheisis. You might also want to consider how unstable that stuff is in a desert environment when it's removed from a controlled environment."

This completely misses the point. The U.S. had Iraq under constant satellite and various other intrusive surveillence long before the war started. If this stuff was being moved around, why didn't we DO something about it? It could have been hit with cruise missiles because we had warships in the area. Arguments that we didn't bomb it out of concern for civilian casualties has no merit because the site actually had been PARTIALLY bombed in the past so there was no reason why it couldn't have been bombed in the run up to the war. We could have allowed the IAEA, who had been monitoring this site up until January 2003, to finish their investigation of the site and allowed inspectors to either destroy or remove it . We could have sent more troops into the Iraqi theatre to secure the borders. Your statement that this stuff is unstable is factually incorrect. The reason it's disappearance is so danagerous is that it is VERY stable and can easily be moved around! You need a triggering device to set it off. You could hit this stuff with a hammer and it would not detonate.

blogic is right when he wrote: "International Atomic Energy Agency spokeswoman Melissa Fleming said Tuesday that the Iraqis have not told the IAEA about any other missing materials since their Oct. 10 letter stating that the weapons vanished from Al-Qaqaa as a result of "theft and looting ... due to lack of security" sometime after coalition forces took control of the capital."

The reason the IAEA didn't make it public sooner, via a report to the security council, is because they wanted to give the U.S. time to try and track these explosives down or explain what happened to them. The media didn't KNOW about this story until it got a copy of the memo. Leaks are an everyday occurrence. This is hardly a case of media conspiracy to get Bush. For God's sake, they gave him such a free ride during the run up to the war, it is inconceivable to think they waited to break the story on purpose because they are "out to get him." It's just nonsense.

Daiwa

on Oct 26, 2004

If this was ever news, it was news 18 months ago. The IAEA states only that spot checks were done @ al Qaqaa in the weeks prior to the invasion, so the exact amount of explosive material present just prior to the invasion cannot be known with certainty. NBC reported at the time that none of the IAEA-tagged explosive materials were present when the ammo dump was first inspected - a whole buch of stuff was gone before we got there. So the charge that "Bush has been hiding the theft by insurgents of 380 tons of explosives" is just a crass wishful-thinking fabrication, and just one of things that Kerry is unscrupulously using in his desperate attempt to get something, anything around Bush's neck to weigh him down somehow. He is totally focused on trashing Bush unmercifully, not letting the truth impede him whatsoever, taking a pathetic campaign further & further into the gutter.

BTW, today when we filled out our mail-in ballots, for the first time in our married lives (34 years now) my wife & I failed to cancel out each other's presidential vote. I'll leave it to you to guess who we voted for.

Cheers,
Daiwa

SuperheroCanadian

on Oct 26, 2004

There is a reason i watch the Daily Show on Comedy central for my news. Its just about as good as any other (fake) news around.

T_Bone4Justice

on Oct 27, 2004

Daiwa, NBC news WITHDREW it's story! And your argument doesn't change the fact that this material was all accounted for prior to the war in Jan. 2003 except for a small amount that was being investigated by the IAEA until the U.S. FORCED them to leave so they could rush to war. Wouldn't it have been better to allow them to finish the job they had started instead of rusing to war and having this all of these explosives missing? The IAEA warned the U.S. about this site, it was on the CIA's top 500 list of sites to be monitored, checked and secured yet the U.S. failed to do so. That is tantamount to gross negligence. The U.S. had constant surveillence over Iraq in the run up to the war. Yet nothing was done to to secure the site even though the U.S. explicitly had taken responsibility for it, (and they told the IAEA as much) FROM THE MOMENT the IAEA was forced to leave in Jan. 2003. Here's why NBC withdrew its story:

The New York Times
October 27, 2004

"No Check of Bunker, Unit Commander Says"
By JIM DWYER and DAVID E. SANGER

White House officials reasserted yesterday that 380 tons of powerful explosives may have disappeared from a vast Iraqi military complex while Saddam Hussein controlled Iraq, saying a brigade of American soldiers did not find the explosives when they visited the complex on April 10, 2003, the day after Baghdad fell.

But the unit's commander said in an interview yesterday that his troops had not searched the site and had merely stopped there overnight.

The commander, Col. Joseph Anderson, of the Second Brigade of the Army's 101st Airborne Division, said he did not learn until this week that the site, Al Qaqaa, was considered sensitive, or that international inspectors had visited it before the war began in 2003 to inspect explosives that they had tagged during a decade of monitoring.

Colonel Anderson, who is now the chief of staff for the division and who spoke by telephone from Fort Campbell, Ky., said his troops had been driving north toward Baghdad and had paused at Al Qaqaa to make plans for their next push.

"We happened to stumble on it,'' he said. "I didn't know what the place was supposed to be. We did not get involved in any of the bunkers. It was not our mission. It was not our focus. We were just stopping there on our way to Baghdad. The plan was to leave that very same day. The plan was not to go in there and start searching. It looked like all the other ammunition supply points we had seen already."

What had been, for the colonel and his troops, an unremarkable moment during the sweep to Baghdad took on new significance this week, after The New York Times, working with the CBS News program "60 Minutes," reported that the explosives at Al Qaqaa, mainly HMX and RDX, had disappeared since the invasion.

Earlier this month, officials of the interim Iraqi government informed the United Nations International Atomic Energy Agency that the explosives disappeared sometime after the fall of Mr. Hussein on April 9, 2003. Al Qaqaa, which has been unguarded since the American invasion, was looted in the spring of 2003, and looters were seen there as recently as Sunday.

President Bush's aides told reporters that because the soldiers had found no trace of the missing explosives on April 10, they could have been removed before the invasion. They based their assertions on a report broadcast by NBC News on Monday night that showed video images of the 101st arriving at Al Qaqaa.

By yesterday afternoon Mr. Bush's aides had moderated their view, saying it was a "mystery" when the explosives disappeared and that Mr. Bush did not want to comment on the matter until the facts were known.

On Sunday, administration officials said that the Iraq Survey Group, the C.I.A. taskforce that hunted for unconventional weapons, had been ordered to look into the disappearance of the explosives. On Tuesday night, CBS News reported that Charles A. Duelfer, the head of the taskforce, denied receiving such an order.

At the Pentagon, a senior official, who asked not to be identified, acknowledged that the timing of the disappearance remained uncertain. "The bottom line is that there is still a lot that is not known," the official said.

The official suggested that the material could have vanished while Mr. Hussein was still in power, sometime between mid-March, when the international inspectors left, and April 3, when members of the Army's Third Infantry Division fought with Iraqis inside Al Qaqaa. At the time, it was reported that those soldiers found a white powder that was tentatively identified as explosives. The site was left unguarded, the official said.

The 101st Airborne Division arrived April 10 and left the next day. The next recorded visit by Americans came on May 27, when Task Force 75 inspected Al Qaqaa, but did not find the large quantities of explosives that had been seen in mid-March by the international inspectors. By then, Al Qaqaa had plainly been looted.

Colonel Anderson said he did not see any obvious signs of damage when he arrived on April 10, but that his focus was strictly on finding a secure place to collect his troops, who were driving and flying north from Karbala.

"There was no sign of looting here," Colonel Anderson said. "Looting was going on in Baghdad, and we were rushing on to Baghdad. We were marshaling in."

A few days earlier, some soldiers from the division thought they had discovered a cache of chemical weapons that turned out to be pesticides. Several of them came down with rashes, and they had to go through a decontamination procedure. Colonel Anderson said he wanted to avoid a repeat of those problems, and because he had already seen stockpiles of weapons in two dozen places, did not care to poke through the stores at Al Qaqaa.

"I had given instructions, 'Don't mess around with those. It looks like they are bunkers; we're not messing around with those things. That's not what we're here for,' " he said. "I thought we would be there for a few hours and move on. We ended up staying overnight."

joeKnowledge

on Oct 27, 2004

speaking of timely events:
The new video by mashall mathers aka Eminem makes Bush look like a no-no... surpised he didn't get arrested for the video
Allot of kill bush in there from what I saw.

so, it looks like its going to be a rough last few days in America, especially this weekend.

oh boy.

T_Bone4Justice

on Oct 27, 2004

joeKnowledge, "speaking of timely events:"

Doesn't the "timing" of the story miss the entire POINT of the real issues here? Who CARES when the story broke? You guys are so caught up in the political spin that you miss the real issue entirely. What matters are the facts and facts are that this adminstration's gross negligence and failed policies have made us LESS safe! It is so ridiculous to keep these conspiracy theories going when there are very real and important issues to be debated and discussed. The "timing" issue is a red hering...a diversion from the facts and the real issues.

Daiwa

on Oct 27, 2004

T_Bone -

The reporter in question (Dana Lewis) isn't backing off his story, stating unequivocally that he was familiar with IAEA tags & found no such tags or seals on any of the large number of bunkers he personally observed & filmed, & NBC re-iterated their reporting today. And I've learned that nothing the NYT prints ever turns out to be quite what it purports to be. It will all shake out, but there is a far greater likelihood that the explosives disappeared before the weapons inspectors arrived in May of 2003. What's clearly not true is that these explosives have been systematically squirreled out of the compound by the insurgency. The NYT wants us to buy into that to make it look like Bush has been asleep at the wheel, but it is wrong to imply that when the explosives were gone by May of 2003. How far up on the list of those 500 sites you refer to remains to be seen and whether any explosives are truly missing is yet to be determined, not to mention how much was detonated from bombing. The IAEA reported, and was even quoted in the NYT article to this effect, that there was evidence in satellite surveillance data of massive explosions in the compound and evidence that materiel may have been removed before the US troops arrived. This claim that this materiel disappeared while we should have been standing watch simply has not been proven.

It is also kind of interesting to me, and somewhat ironic, that the NYT is making a big deal about how these explosives could be used to detonate nuclear weapons, never mind that, in their view, we should never have invaded Iraq in the first place because there were no WMD materials.

Cheers,
Daiwa

T_Bone4Justice

on Oct 27, 2004

Daiwa, no one said there were "no" WMD "MATERIALS." What was said was that they didn't pose a threat IF inspections were continued. The main point, as I have said over and over and over is that if the U.S. had allowed to IAEA to FINISH their job instead of rushing to war, this whole thing would be a non-issue. And they should have allowed the IAEA back into Iraq AFTER the invasion. To this DAY the U.S. is refusing to allow the IAEA back in? Why would you do that if you know you don't have the man power to monitor/secure all of these sites? It makes no sense whatsoever! You can't conclude that these marterials were part of Iraq's continuing WMD programs because that simply is not the case. These explosives had PREVIOUSLY been used by Iraq in an effort to produce a nuclear bomb but those efforsts both failed and were dismantled/destroyed by the IAEA in 1991-1998. The IAEA allowed Iraq to keep them, as long as they were monitored and inventoried (which they had been) because they were "dual use" materials that could also be used for civilian construction projects. I believe I said this before. You can not say that just because a country has "dual use" materials, then they are an international security threat or we will be invading every nation on earth.

As for Dana Lewis, what he actually said was that the sites were never acutally searched by U.S. forces and so he had no way of knowing whether those materials were still there or not. He simply said that he didn't see them...which is an entirely different matter. Just how much of this site did he '"see/fim?" This place is HUGE! He is no expert and he certainly would have no way of thoroughly checking this entire site because he lacks the professional skills to do so.

As a final point, this whole issue of whether they were there when Dana Lewis saw them or didn't see them is moot. The fact remains that when the IAEA was forced to leave Iraq by the U.S. they officially took over reponsibilty for monitoring and securing this site. I have already stated, but will repeat for the hundredth time, that we had been conducting 24 hour surveillence all over Iraq long before the invasion began. The idea that Saddam used a fleet of 40 trucks and just pulled up to this site and suddenly removed all this stuff before the war without being detected is absurd. And even if this DID happen, why the hell didn't we know about it? That would just underscore the level of the administration's incompetence/gross negligence and doesn't help your argument. Why weren't we watching this site after we forced the IAEA to leave? They had Predator, satellite imagery, and other technology. The other alternative is that they DID see it, but didn't do anything about it...again incompetence/gross negligence. But I don't think they were watching it because if they were, then we would known what happened to it, now wouldn't we? The administration has already conceded that they have no idea where this stuff is so that just proves they failed to monitor the site and thus were completely incompetent for not doing so and guilty of gross negligence.

Dr Guy

on Oct 27, 2004

You know, you really need to stop getting all YOUR news at Newsmax, FOX, and Drudge. 377 TONS of explosive WERE there at that site, recorded by the IAEA! Get it! That's tons, dude, not easily movable, not back up the Ford F-150 and cart it down the road. That requires big equipment that should have been EASILY spottable and U.S. troops went by the facility and never checked even though WE KNEW it was an explosive dump. Now, not securing the site, that was MORONIC!

Not securing an empty site, when there are bad guys running all over the place is moronic? Your statement is moronic! You would have the farmer close the barn door after the horse got out! And for the record, it would take a company of soldiers a week to move that much stuff. Simple physics of the matter, It was proved it was long gone, and CBS, Dan Rather, and the Kerry Kool aid drinkers are the only ones trying to stretch credulity to suggest otherwise. And for the record, my sources came from NBC, CNN and your beloved CBS. I did not reference anything on Fox, but they sure can do a more honest job than any of the above! But in this case, it was your own precious liberal sources that outed the smear. Next, Kerry wil be saying we should have gone in earlier to prevent Saddam from spiriting them away! Now that is moronic, but then I never claimed Kerry was intelligent, just glib.

Dr Guy

on Oct 27, 2004

Doesn't the "timing" of the story miss the entire POINT of the real issues here? Who CARES when the story broke? You guys are so caught up in the political spin that you miss the real issue entirely

You accuse others of yoru own crime. Typical Liberal. The timing of the story is the story! The missing material was missing 18 months ago, and was not hidden even then. But apparently Dan Rather and you thought that springing an october surprise (ala a 30 yr old DUI - and you claim that what happened 30 years ago is not relevant? Hypocrit!) would torpedo the president. Your spin is too old to work, and too lame to be used by any but the most desperate and ignorant of people. I guess that is why Kerry Edwards and you are still trying to make it a story. Cause you dont have a clue.

T_Bone4Justice

on Oct 27, 2004

Dr. Guy, the story wasn't even broken by Dan Rather. The New York Times in collaboration with CBS broke the story. Secondly, I had already stated in a prior post:

"The reason the IAEA didn't make it public sooner, via a report to the security council, is because they wanted to give the U.S. time to try and track these explosives down or explain what happened to them. The media didn't KNOW about this story until it got a copy of the memo. Leaks are an everyday occurrence. This is hardly a case of media conspiracy to get Bush. For God's sake, they gave him such a free ride during the run up to the war, it is inconceivable to think they waited to break the story on purpose because they are "out to get him." It's just nonsense. "

As far as your comment about me being a hypocrit about something that happened 30 years ago: WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT??? Did I ever mention ANYTHING related to 30 years ago anywhere in my blog site or in yours? I think you are going a bit off the deep-end Dr. Guy. I am not spinning anything. I am debating facts about the core issues related to this story in lieu of engaging in some ridiculous discussion about media conspiracy theories. Talk about not having a clue. Your constant name-calling, stereotyping, and basless accusations that have no relevance to anything is demonstrative that you CAN'T debate the real substantive issues so you resort to these petty scuffles about nothing. Posting a blog about a media conspiracy and then getting angry because people point out the weaknesses in your theory...is pretty childish.

And just for the record: " It was proved it was long gone, and CBS, Dan Rather, and the Kerry Kool aid drinkers are the only ones trying to stretch credulity to suggest otherwise. "

Here is exactly what NBC (who started this debate) had to say about the matter:

"NBC NEWS UPDATE: "Republican officials have sought to discredit the initial reports and seized on an NBC News account, broadcast Monday night, that said when troops from the 101st Airborne arrived at the vast site on April 10, 2003, they found conventional weapons but none of the extremely powerful high explosives, HMX and RDX, which can be used to set off a nuclear weapon. In an e-mail message sent to reporters on Monday evening, Scott Stanzel, a spokesman for the Bush campaign, said, "The weapons were not there when the military arrived, making John Kerry's latest ripped-from-the-headlines attack baseless and false."

But Tuesday evening, NBC again reported on the issue. This time it reported that it had not said that the explosives were gone before American troops arrived at Al Qaqaa. Instead, it reported that troops from the Third Infantry Division and the 101st Airborne searched bunkers at the site and had not found the powerful explosives. NBC reported that it was not clear whether American troops searched all of the bunkers.

"Last night on this broadcast we reported that the 101st Airborne never found the nearly 380 tons of HMX and RDX explosives,'' Tom Brokaw, the NBC anchor, said. "We did not conclude the explosives were missing or had vanished, nor did we say they missed the explosives. We simply reported that the 101st did not find them.''

"For its part, the Bush campaign immediately pointed to our report as conclusive proof that the weapons had been removed before the Americans arrived,'' Mr. Brokaw added. "That is possible, but that is not what we reported.''

For the second day Mr. Bush did not speak about the issue, twice ignoring questions from reporters.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/27/politics/campaign/27kerry.html

Who's been sipping on the Cool-Aid?

CrispE

on Oct 27, 2004

Dr. Guy:

The FACTS are that when the soldiers were advancing on Baghdad they "passed by" the dump and it went UNSECURED for 2 weeks that could have been used to take some or all of the explosives. The FACTS are that when they passed by the Iraqi soldiers were retreating and not mounting any offensive. The FACTS are that the millitary command did not ISSUE COMMANDS to take the supply dump so they passed it by.

This does not show incompetence on the part of the soldiers. This show INCOMPETENCE of our intelligence and chain of command, which starts at, oh, let me see, oh yes, the COMMANDER IN CHIEF. Now that would be.......George W. Bush.

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