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Iran news agency report
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Truth
dies, just as people die, every day in Iraq. Sometimes the people are killed by Americans paid with our tax dollars. But we rarely hear about it, thanks to other Americans, the ones who kill truth: the journalists. There are different ways to send truth to its grave, as two current examples prove.
On March 13 the Iranian news agency Mehr reported a story that, if true, is surely the biggest news of this election year: "U.S. forces have unloaded a large cargo of parts for constructing long-range missiles and weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in the southern ports of Iraq. A reliable source from the Iraqi Governing Council, speaking on condition of anonymity, told the Mehr News Agency that U.S. forces, with the help of British forces stationed in southern Iraq, had made extensive efforts to conceal their actions."
According to Mehr's source, the parts are old ones, just the kind the U.S. gave to Saddam Hussein in the 1980s. Once they are "discovered," they would be the smoking gun that George W. needs to get re-elected.
Five days after Mehr broke this story, a Google and Lexis/Nexis search failed to find it reported in any U.S. news source. Not even a story to say "We checked and found nothing to support the allegations." Why? Two possibilities come to mind. Perhaps American journalists in Iraq, and their editors at home, saw it and said "Oh, that's silly. With all the serious stuff we have to investigate, why waste a good reporter's precious time on such nonsense?" They are not warmongers or conspirators, just serious professionals doing their job in the approved manner. They got their jobs by sticking to mainstream "common sense" thinking. Why change now?
Oh yes, they did use the same kind of mainstream "common sense" last year, when they assumed that the Bush administration must have secret evidence of Saddam's WMDs. But you don't abandon "common sense" just because of an occasional mistake, do you?
The other possibility is that some American journalists believe the U.S. might indeed be planting WMD parts in Iraq for pre-election "discovery." But the story is just too hot, too dangerous to touch. A reporter for a mainstream U.S. news source knows that his or her editor might very well not run it in any event. So why waste time on it, when so many other good stories are out there that could see the light of day.
In either event, if there is a startling pre-election "discovery," hang on to your Mehr News Agency report and remember: You saw it here first.
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