Liberals treat Docex Project like the plague

Interesting how there is a near deafening silence in the media surrounding the massive translation project Docex. True, there have been brief mentions here and there but very little. In Afghanistan and Iraq, many thousands of documents were captured and collected with the intention of translating. As time went on, it became obvious that there simply was not enough translating manpower to complete the effort for many years to come. At the urging of Stephen Hayes from the Weekly Standard and through the effort of a few congressmen the documents have been carefully scanned electronically and released to the public for translation. As the documents and video are translated, information is forming that strongly supports many of the allegations of the Bush administration prior to going to war.

Frontpagemag.com has a fascinating article on the project and the reaction of the media. It opens pointing to the day in and day out mantra of the media claiming "no wmd" ad nauseum. So "It comes as no surprise that when the Saddam Tapes came to light, they had to be dealt with." How did the media deal with it? Newsweek tried a quick hit and run:

The first salvo in the liberal media’s unsuccessful attempt to deep-six the tapes came from Newsweek, when they published “The Saddam Tapes, What They Don’t Prove” a week before the presentation of the tapes.

And

Newsweek then trotted out the “years old" response. According to this argument, since the tapes are years old, they are insignificant. The only relevant issue is whether the discussions took place during the time frame when Iraq said it was complying with UN resolutions.

Next ABC had a turn:

Next came ABC’s World News Tonight broadcast and Nightline segment three days before the presentation at the Intelligence Summit, a private conference where intelligence professionals and concerned citizens can discuss intelligence and national security matters away from the normal bureaucratic constrictions. To ABC’s credit, they did play a segment on Hussein Kamel stating how Iraq did not tell UNSCOM everything about their weapons program. However, on the discussion between Saddam and Tariq Aziz, they jumped to a suspect conclusion.

What was that suspect conclusion? That Saddam (out of the goodness of his heart, presumably) was warning the US and the UK of future WMD attacks by ??? Then ABC pulls the oldest media trick in the book: selective reporting. If ABC was actually reporting on the story instead of giving it lip service so they could not be accused of burying it, they would seek out and show the most qualified person to interview on the subject. Well, they did the seek and interview, but...

In preparation for their story, ABC interviewed a native Iraqi that not only knew Tikriti dialect, military and Baath Party jargon, but had actually addressed Saddam in similar meetings, General George Sada. According to General Sada, ABC asked him to listen to the tapes, and he stated that Saddam was probably discussing an attack through third parties to set up plausible denial if he were accused. He suggested that Saddam made the outburst of “terrorism is coming” during Tariq Aziz’s briefing, then realized he was on tape and came up with the "warning” to cover himself. This possibility adds yet another layer of complexity. Brian Ross went on to interview General Sada for forty minutes, attempting to get a sound bite to dismiss the tapes. The general knew his intention and didn't oblige; so this man, probably the most qualified man in the world available to the media, was omitted from ABC's story.

CNN also pulled some of the usual tricks. First, do some side reporting bolstering the story they have been stuffing down our throats to innoculate against what might come - then do a sorry reporting job:

Early on Saturday February 18th, the morning of the presentation, CNN ran a special on how the inspectors found nothing in Iraq. Later that day, they ran a television piece which filled the time focusing on their strenuous efforts to translate the tapes, and then in their television piece, reported only the Saddam – Aziz conversation. Apparently, status reports on rebuilding the chemical and nuclear weapons programs were not worth the cut.

FrontPageMag tells about a 2004 story in the Washington Post claiming the WMD arsenol was only on paper, then asks an important question:

The liberal media’s wishful thinking extends to print media also. On January 7, 2004, the Washington Post printed Barton Gellman’s story ”Iraq’s Arsenal Was Only on Paper.” In this article Gellman cites a letter supposedly written six days after a senior Iraqi official, Hussein Kamel, defected, which stated that “destruction of the biological weapons agents took place in the summer of 1991.” However, in 1995, UNSCOM forced the Iraqis to admit they had a facility used to produce biological weapons, which was destroyed in 1996. Are we to assume that they had a bioweapons facility between 1991 and 1996, but didn't produce any bioweapons?

Saddam was to prove destruction of his WMD to the UN. They lied about the bioweapons facility for over 5 years; then they admitted its existence before the facility was destroyed in 1996. Where did the bioweapons created in that facility go? Liberals are satisfied not knowing as long as it makes Bush look bad.

The full article is well worth reading and ends with:

The liberal media will continue to dissect any further information on the Iraqi weapons program according to their template that “Bush lied, people died.” With the continuing release of documents, it will be interesting to see how long they can keep it up before they finally admit "We were all wrong."

History is going to show George Bush was correct. The liberals must see Docex breathing over their shoulder and are trying their best to shake it off their trail by silence, distortion, partial reporting, hit and run reporting, etc. I'm not holding my breath on the admission of wrong by the liberals, though.

Here is the link to the Docex Project.