GUNS/BARMS

[jmhollen]

WMDs found......!!!!! Multiple Tests Confirming Iraq WMD Send (..slimy liberal..) Media Into Deep Spin

Sunday, Jan. 11, 2004 1:31 p.m. EST

Mulitple tests conducted in Iraq by Danish and British experts indicate that Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction have finally been discovered, but mainstream news editors either ignored the story Sunday morning or are furiously spinning the news as inconsequential.

More than 12 hours after the Fox News Channel, Reuters and the Associated Press carried reports that preliminary tests showed Iraqi mortar shells discovered near Basra contain a deadly liquid blister agent, the New York Times had yet to report the bombshell find on the main page of its Web site – or anywhere in its Sunday morning print edition.

The Washington Post's Web site also chose not to cover the blockbuster news, which ABC News military analyst Tony Cordesman said Saturday would be "the first real confirmation that Iraq actually had deployed chemical weapons and was prepared to use them" if tests confirmed the find.

Saturday night the Fox News Channel revealed that initial tests had indeed confirmed the blockbuster discovery.

"Danish troops are in charge of that area around the village of Al Quarnah, and they have found what they believe are, according to this official, two hundred shells," reported FNC's Greg Palkot.

Palkot said the Danish official told him: "They've run four different tests on that liquid inside those shells. And all those tests do indicate that there is blister gas – that's a deadly chemical weapon - inside of those shells."

The AP said that a statement released by Danish officials cited British experts, who had also confirmed that the shells contained "blister gas."

Before the war the Bush administration had alleged that Baghdad was stockpiling blister gas in liquid form.

Both reports noted that the find had yet to be confirmed by the U.S. team in Iraq assigned to search for weapons of mass destruction.

But according to the London Sunday Telegraph, Ali Nimir, a former colonel in an Iraqi Republican Guard artillery unit, had also confirmed the find.

"I remember seeing boxes of these kinds of armaments in our base two years ago," Nimir said. "We were told that they were chemical weapons."

"They were removed from our bases and distributed to secret hiding places about a year before the war," he explained. "I never saw them again."

Still, despite the staggering political consequences of the bombshell discovery – news that could mean total vindication for President Bush against Democrat charges that he "lied" about Iraq's WMDs – mainstream reports consistently downplayed the story.

The New York Daily News, for instance, covered the news on page 24 of its Sunday edition, and then only under a headline that obscured the potential impact of the story: "Old Iraqi Gas Shells."

New York's Newsday echoed the same theme with its page 20 headline, "Weapons Found, but Likely Old" – as if the vintage of Saddam's WMDs somehow mitigated genuine proof of their existence after months of media claims to the contrary.

The only news outlet to refer to weapons of mass destruction in its headline was the New York Post, which labeled its page 2 report: "WMD Gas Shells Dug Up in Iraq."

News of the WMD find was not discussed on the Sunday morning news shows.

http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2004/1/11/141836.shtml
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