So last week the traditional media saturated itself with a "breaking" story that claimed horrifying and terrible chemical weapons had been found in a filing cabinet in the U.N. where the old Iraqi government had their offices. New York was practically under attack ten years after the fact. In their nutty bum rush to the wires, the "journalists" forgot to do their due diligence (whats that?), because if they did there would have been no story to report and no fear to spread through Manhattan and the rest of the country.
From The New York Times (at least they are clarifying a week later):
When officials said that a potentially deadly chemical from Iraq had been found last month in a Midtown United Nations office, many questions followed. How did the sample get here? How did it get misplaced? And how could it sit in a box, unnoticed, for more than a decade at a world agency in the middle of New York?But now, heaping embarrassment upon embarrassment, it appears that the chemical was merely a commercial solvent, a law enforcement official said.
Initially, officials said the substance was phosgene, an old-generation nerve-gas component used extensively at the end of World War I, and in Iraqi attacks against Kurds in the 1980s.
“We learned later,” said the official, who was not authorized to speak publicly about the case, “that initial tests indicated it might be some kind of over-the-counter solvent, though we don’t know what kind.”
Of course, the State Department is to blame for feeding them this crappy information....but seriously, these reporters need to do their jobs before falling all over themselves for the first crack at the airwaves and newspaper columns. Come on guys and gals, repeat after me, "I will do my due diligence, I will do my due....."
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