Before the war in Iraq, the American media generally went along with the White House’s depiction of Saddam Hussein as an imminent threat to world security. Now, with no weapons of mass destruction uncovered in Iraq, the reporting is getting tougher. Today’s Washington Post, in a 5,000-word investigative story, targets the White House’s claims that Hussein was building a nuclear bomb: “The new information indicates a pattern in which President Bush, Vice President Cheney and their subordinates–in public and behind the scenes–made allegations depicting Iraq’s nuclear weapons program as more active, more certain and more imminent in its threat than the data they had would support. On occasion administration advocates withheld evidence that did not conform to their views. The White House seldom corrected misstatements or acknowledged loss of confidence in information upon which it had previously relied.”
