Posted on 05/22/2003 12:07:22 PM PDT by ZGuy
The Los Angeles Times has conveniently provided yet another example of its "journalistic" standards on its front page this morning: John Hendren filed "Dangerous Loot South of Baghdad --Iraqis close to a nuclear research site become ill after materials are pilfered. Doctor says symptoms point to acute radiation syndrome." Bad stuff, right? More evidence of callous neglect of post-war planning by an American military too bust staging POW rescues and seizing oil assets to guard the Iraqi people against radiation poisoning, right?
Read the entire LAT piece and then read Paul Martin's Washington Times piece, also from this morning: "U.S. calls looting from nuke site no risk." The Martin piece leads with the conclusion "U.S. military inspection teams have concluded that material looted from Iraq's main nuclear facility at Tuwaitha poses little or no danger to the people who stole it and cannot be converted into an effective 'dirty bomb.'" The article quotes Col. Tim Madere, the 5th Corps officer in charge of coalition forces chemical, biological, radiation and nuclear weapons search teams --in other words, someone who knows what he is talking about.
The LAT did not approach Col. Madere or any other senior U.S. officer involved in the security or investigation of the complex. Such an interview would no doubt have been inconvenient to the agenda of the Times in Iraq: to portray the post-war situation as a complete disaster. The LAT threw in a quote from Rumsfeld, but like the BBC's discredited story on Private Lynch's rescue --the LAT remains the only major American paper to have run a piece like Robert Scheer's endorsing the theory that the rescue was staged-- the Times' primary source is an Iraqi doctor.
The Times chose not to run any of the letters it has received on the Scheer madness, copies of which have been provided to me by Times' readers. Again, such integrity is routine at the paper.
EVERY DAY
I am convinced that half the time the write their own letters to the editor, either that or they just really, really, really like to publish letters from folks the AGREE WITH THEM. They are also more than willing to publish letters full of "factual errors", I guess they don't have to fact check these, they should.
Even after such days as the April 9th freeing of Iraq, they want us to think that somehow all the letters they got were totally against the whole thing. I check them everyday, just to keep an eye on them, but as I have said before, I would pay double to get a newspaper with a "balance OP ED section but it's not going to happen in LA.
Some thing about wanting to know just who it is that reads their lies.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.