Josh's Weblog: HMX and RDX Missing?

HMX and RDX Missing?

So, the New York Times rolls with a story about 380 tons of HDX and RDX from a Al Qaqaa (spellings vary) depot that had wandered off after the US took control.

Via the Daily Recycler we see NBC News respond with a report from one of their embedded reporters that was on the scene when the 101st Airborne hit that depot. They say the HMX and RDX wasn't there even then. NBC suspects the article on news which had been known in 2003 was politically motivated since it came a week before the election. More good coverage of this story is over here at the Belmont Club.

The Drudge Report tells us that CBS had intended to do a 60 Minutes story on the same supposed incident the day before the election. Fortunately for them they were scooped by the Times. One would wonder if their intentions were politically motivated too.

Is it any wonder that people readily believe stories of bias in the mainstream media?

Update: James Taranto's “Best of the Web” column today in OpinionJournal has this comment:

The New York Sun notes that the Times/CBS report was based on a letter from Mohamed ElBaradei, who is seeking a third term as head of the International Atomic Energy Commission. The Bush administration opposes ElBaradei's reappointment, so one suspects that this was a foreign effort to influence the outcome of America's presidential election, aided by our domestic partisan liberal media.

The plot thickens!

Josh Poulson

Posted Tuesday, Oct 26 2004 10:48 AM