[Headline] "Looting at Weapons Plants Was Systematic, Iraqi Says," New York Times yesterday. "In the weeks after Baghdad fell in April 2003, looters systematically dismantled and removed tons of machinery from Saddam Hussein's most important weapons installations, including some with high-precision equipment capable of making parts for nuclear arms, a senior Iraqi official said this week in the government's first extensive comments on the looting." Now, anybody have a red flag going up here yet with just this paragraph? Okay. I'm sure you do. Did The Times notice its own red flag in its own opening paragraph? No, it does not. "The Iraqi official, Sami al-Araji, the deputy minister of industry, said it appeared that a highly organized operation had pinpointed specific plants in search of valuable equipment, some of which could be used for both military and civilian applications, and carted the machinery away." This is in weeks after Baghdad fell in April of 2003. The deputy minister of industry's name is Sami al-Araji, and he said his account was based largely on observations by government employees and officials who either worked at the sites or lived near them. He said, "'They came in with cranes and the lorries and they depleted the whole site. They knew what they were doing, they knew what they wanted, and this was sophisticated looting.' The threat posed by these types of facilities was cited by the Bush administration as a reason for invading Iraq, but the installations were left largely unguarded by allied forces in the chaotic months after the invasion."...
...Let's see if they give credit where credit's due and give discredit where discredit is due. Because the New York Times has shown at least for yesterday that it's willing to report about this, although I feel certain that they want the world to focus on the timing of the removal of the material and equipment rather than it's existence, and this story does the best it can to hide the fact the stuff was there, but they can't hide it very well if their main focus is the fact that it was looted. So basically what we have here is a New York Times undermining its own position all these years, undermining the position of the left, and the Democratic Party, there were weapons that had ingredients for nuclear capability. They were looted. Of course they were looted! That's the whole point. Where are they now? That's what everybody should be asking, not saying that Bush had lied about this. And there's even more to back up the notion that those weapons were there.
Rush Limbaugh
