Why do I call this latest Halloween Surprise "Al Qaqaa II"?
A few months after the 2004 presidential election, Jonah Goldberg dredged up the long since forgotten dirty trick pulled by the New York Times-Fishwrap, which was clearly designed to swing last-minute support to John "D-Student" Kerry.
On Monday, October 25, 2004, the New York Times published a 2,600-word front page story headlined “Huge Cache of Explosives Vanished From Site in Iraq.” Written by three Times journalists [alleged that] 380 tons of very high explosives–munitions that could be used by Iraqi insurgents to attack American troops–were missing, and had probably been looted, from Iraq’s Al Qaqaa weapons-storage facility.
The story, published eight days before the presidential election, caused an immediate uproar. Aides to Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry quickly arranged a conference call with reporters that Monday morning to push the Times’s findings...
Despite questions raised by critics about the story’s accuracy, completeness and timing, in the days that followed the Times mounted the journalistic equivalent of a full-court press on Al Qaqaa. On October 26, the paper ran a front-page article on Kerry’s quick pickup of the issue... That same day, Times columnist Paul Krugman charged that the administration’s handling of Al Qaqaa was part of a “culture of coverups.” ...The next day, October 27, the Times published two stories on the subject... Columnist Maureen Dowd also mentioned Al Qaqaa in an article entitled “White House of Horrors.”
The paper published two more stories mentioning Al Qaqaa on October 29 (one was another Krugman column), then two more on October 30, then two more on October 31, and then two more on November 1, the day before Election Day. Each day Kerry, who abandoned much of his planned final-week strategy to concentrate on Al Qaqaa, tried to capitalize on the latest reports. In all, in the eight days from October 25 to November 1, the Times published 16 stories and columns about Al Qaqaa, plus seven letters to the editor (all of which were critical of the Bush administration).
...And then, abruptly, it stopped. In the four months since the election, the Times appears to have simply dropped the Al Qaqaa story, publishing nothing about the munitions dump and the supposedly critical issues it raised about the Bush administration’s handling of the war in Iraq...
Simple: it was thinly disguised agitprop, designed to sway the masses the way Julius Streicher might have: by using "The Big Lie". And, yes, I'm using Nazi allusions because (a) they're accurate; and (b) I'm sick of the liberals constantly referring to those who love the Constitution as Nazi extremists, when it is they who constantly advocate for bigger government and for more centralized control without any limits whatsoever! But I digress...
Six years later, basically to the day, the Times will run a sensationalistic Sunday hit-piece designed to: (a) swing the elections; (b) undermine our troops; (c) hurt our allies; and (d) salvage six wavering subscribers.
And all of it will have the same impact as Al Qaqaa I. Which is to say: bupkis.
And they wonder why no normal American trusts the media. Get out on Tuesday morning with the other patriots. Line up thousands strong with your neighbors, family and friends. And help crush the liberal-progressive-Statist-Marxist machine. This time, we really are doing it for the children.
Hat tip: Memeorandum.
Much as I hate this leaks thing and the traitors that supplied the data, the fact that WMDs were found in Iraq should make some waves.
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