Evidence of Weapons of Mass Destruction

For all of the print it has dedicated to ridiculing President Bush for failing to find weapons of mass destruction following the liberation of Iraq, the New York Times was hypocritically quiet in reporting yesterday that terrorists in Baghdad attempted to detonate an artillery shell filled with sarin gas. Prior to the American led liberation of Iraq, Saddam Hussein assured the United Nations that all of the hundreds of tons of Sarin and other chemical and biological weapons manufactured by his orders had been destroyed.

The sarin filled artillery shell may have been the sole and accidental survivor of a Baathist policy of weapons destruction- that is how the Times has chosen to spin the story. Lacking other significant weapons evidence, it is not an unreasonable conclusion. That is, unless one has consistently refused to extend the benefit of the doubt in other cases. The Times has established a reputation for concluding in all cases involving the Bush administration, that where there is smoke there is fire. For example, the Times has argued: that prisoner abuse in Abhu Graib is evidence of a policy of torture driven by the White House; that lack of evidence of weapons of mass destruction is proof that the President lied about his motives for liberating Iraq; and, that existence of oil in Iraq is proof that the war is all about oil.

Because of its pattern of hypocrisy, the Times lack of follow through on the discovery of the sarin filled artillery shell can only be seen as an effort to hush evidence inconvenient to its long running storyline that the President is not up to his job. One prays that more sarin is not found, but if the story is buried and another sarin shell surfaces we will know it was the Times that was not up to its job.