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Old 03-25-06, 04:28 AM   #7
scandium
Ace of the Deep
 
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I'm not sure what to make of this:

"The unclassified report does not assess the value of the information or provide details beyond citing an Iraqi document that says the battlefield intelligence was provided to Saddam through the Russian ambassador in Baghdad."

That's a pretty vague and unconfirmed single source for the grand statements made later in the article. The basis for the whole article boils down to "an Iraqi document that says...". A single Iraqi document by an undisclosed author. I'd always thought that the standard for journalism required two independent sources prior to publication. Apparently if the story is sensational enough its ok to relax the standard though. Despite the debacle following the revelation that the Niger document citing Iraq was trying to procure yellow cake from Africa had been forged, the sensational pre-invasion stories by Judith Miller at the NY Times (among other so called journalists) whose primary source turned out, it seems, to be a discredited informant named Curveball (backed up no doubt by anonymous administration "officials" with a clear agenda to pimp the war), and on and on. I'm not calling it propaganda at this point, though if it were it certainly wouldn't be the first we've seen from the "left-wing media", but if there's more evidence to back up this sensational story I'd like to hear of it.

Without anything else to go on, I personally put about as much stock into this right now as I did the pre-war claims that Iraq had WMD.
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