# Posted 12:49 AM by Ariel David Adesnik  

CATCHING UP ON MY SCANDALS: Having spent the week focused on John Kerry, I've missed the talk of the blogosphere. On Wednesday morning, the WaPo breathlessly reported that countless administration officials had lied for months on end about the alleged discovery of mobile bioweapons laboratories in Iraq:

On May 29, 2003, 50 days after the fall of Baghdad, President Bush proclaimed a fresh victory for his administration in Iraq: Two small trailers captured by U.S. and Kurdish troops had turned out to be long-sought mobile "biological laboratories." He declared, "We have found the weapons of mass destruction."

The claim, repeated by top administration officials for months afterward, was hailed at the time as a vindication of the decision to go to war. But even as Bush spoke, U.S. intelligence officials possessed powerful evidence that it was not true.

A secret fact-finding mission to Iraq -- not made public until now -- had already concluded that the trailers had nothing to do with biological weapons. Leaders of the Pentagon-sponsored mission transmitted their unanimous findings to Washington in a field report on May 27, 2003, two days before the president's statement.

Pretty unequivocal, huh? Well, as Capatin Ed points out, it took a lot of mischief on the part correspondent Joby Warrick to make things sound so cut on dry. Yet buried in the 12th paragraph of Warrick's report was this critical bit of background information:

Two teams of military experts who viewed the trailers soon after their discovery concluded that the facilities were weapons labs, a finding that strongly influenced views of intelligence officials in Washington, the analysts said. "It was hotly debated, and there were experts making arguments on both sides," said one former senior official who spoke on the condition that he not be identified.

So rather than lying, the President was actually voicing the opinion of a majority within the intelligence community. Nor does Warrick tell us whether Bush personally knew about the dissenting report before his May 29th statement. But for the sake of a good headline, what's the difference?

Now, as Kevin Drum points out, the administration still seems to have offered up to the American public

A flat statement of fact about intelligence matters that's made with great fanfare even though they know there's significant dissent within the intelligence community.

That is seriously problematic, although it's still not clear to me when the administration finally concluded that the majority opinion about the biolabs was wrong and whether it still trumpeted their discovery after that point.

Both Kevin and Ed, I think, had the potential to strengthen their arguments by pursuing this point. Without such information, it seems quite premature for Kevin to conclude that the administration had an: "Intent to deceive? Check. Unreasonable decision? Check. Deliberate lie? Check."

On the other hand, Ed doesn't explore whether the administration was misrepresenting its intelligence to the American public, a sin, Kevin says, it has often committed before. Instead, Ed focuses entirely on the WaPo's misrepresentation of its intelligence to the American public -- a subject about which Kevin has nothing to say. (In an earlier post, Kevin even takes the WaPo story at face value.)

So, is it a much greater sin for senior government officials to take liberties with the truth, since they ultimately decide whether there will be war or peace? Or is it more disturbing that journalists abuse their considerable reputation for honesty to print misleading stories, whereas most Americans consider every word that comes out of the mouth of politician to be suspect?

You might say it's a classic case of chicken and egg. The government exaggerates in order to force its message through the media filter and to the American public. The media constantly attacks the government's credibility in hopes of immunizing the public from government propaganda.

The real question is, how do we change the game and bring both the government and media back to the point of fairness? (8) opinions -- Add your opinion