Keeping a Step ahead of the Truth

Jun 23, 2003

On June 21, the Bush administration claimed it had found an enormous cache of top-secret documents in Iraq that could be "potentially significant" for finding Iraq’s nuclear weapons program.

The "find" is one more link in the chain of headlines touting some discovery that is supposed to provide the Administration with the evidence it needs to back up its stated reasons for invading Iraq. The problem with the chain is that each link disintegrates soon after being "found."

The so-called "germ trailers" are a recent example. Headlines for several days cited the discovery of two semi-trailers with equipment that supposedly could produce anthrax.

After the headlines had faded, some newspapers reported that the Administration’s own top experts concluded that the trailers were not equipped for germ making at all. They were in fact mobile hydrogen generators for inflating the weather balloons used by Saddam’s artillery.

Moreover, it was documented all along that Saddam’s armed forces included such trailers, because a British company had sold him such a system back in l987.

But there were no series of headlines about "Germ trailers are phony." Just another new set of manufactured headlines giving the impression of proof where there is no proof.

U.N. head weapons inspector Hans Blix recently denounced the U.S. for leaning on his inspectors to overstate and slant their findings in Iraq. Blix also revealed that before the war, U.S. and British intelligence services gave U.N. inspectors hundreds of Iraq sites said to have forbidden weapons–and every single claim proved to be untrue.

But the headlines continue, and the retractions remain in the back pages and small print. What do we expect? If headlines proclaimed "Iraq invaded so U.S. businesses can profit," they would be true–but they wouldn’t do Bush, his gang, or the big oil companies any good.