Tuesday, May 18, 2004
By Neil Cavuto
What if we found chemical weapons in Iraq?
A bunch of 'em. All sorts of stuff: sarin, mustard gas, you name it. What if we found it all? Would the media cover it at all?
I doubt it.
Reports of a bomb containing the deadly nerve agent sarin exploding near a U.S. military convoy in Iraq yesterday barely got much coverage yesterday. It's almost as if nothing at all was discovered yesterday.
And scant reporting of it today.
Must be old Saddam stockpiled weapons from a decade ago, one newspaper said. Iraqis from the old regime probably didn't know they had this old stuff, another mentioned.
It's amazing to me that the same media that jump to conclusions on a prison picture of a naked Iraqi wouldn't take the time to look at perhaps the naked truth.
Weapons might still be out there. The same weapons this president said justified going into Iraq. And the president before him insisted were still in Iraq.
It's amazing still that we cannot account for more than 100 tons of missing sarin agents. As if they all just disappeared.
I don't know. But this much I do know: A country that can bury hundreds of thousands of bodies under schools and mosques and factories and dilapidated buildings, that can hide dozens of military aircraft under desert sand, surely, conceivably, can hide smaller things, more dangerous things.
But these are not the things that interest journalists today. They get a good story, and they call it only a story.
I don't know what to make of these nerve agents. I just fear my colleagues haven't the nerve to report the day we find still more agents.
Will it be news then? I doubt it. It's a good story. Too bad it doesn't fit their story.
By Neil Cavuto
What if we found chemical weapons in Iraq?
A bunch of 'em. All sorts of stuff: sarin, mustard gas, you name it. What if we found it all? Would the media cover it at all?
I doubt it.
Reports of a bomb containing the deadly nerve agent sarin exploding near a U.S. military convoy in Iraq yesterday barely got much coverage yesterday. It's almost as if nothing at all was discovered yesterday.
And scant reporting of it today.
Must be old Saddam stockpiled weapons from a decade ago, one newspaper said. Iraqis from the old regime probably didn't know they had this old stuff, another mentioned.
It's amazing to me that the same media that jump to conclusions on a prison picture of a naked Iraqi wouldn't take the time to look at perhaps the naked truth.
Weapons might still be out there. The same weapons this president said justified going into Iraq. And the president before him insisted were still in Iraq.
It's amazing still that we cannot account for more than 100 tons of missing sarin agents. As if they all just disappeared.
I don't know. But this much I do know: A country that can bury hundreds of thousands of bodies under schools and mosques and factories and dilapidated buildings, that can hide dozens of military aircraft under desert sand, surely, conceivably, can hide smaller things, more dangerous things.
But these are not the things that interest journalists today. They get a good story, and they call it only a story.
I don't know what to make of these nerve agents. I just fear my colleagues haven't the nerve to report the day we find still more agents.
Will it be news then? I doubt it. It's a good story. Too bad it doesn't fit their story.
