Happy Wonderer

You can tell we are getting jaded about the reports of found weapons of mass destruction, when as far as I can tell the recent CNN/MSNBC announcement of "buried weapons labs" generates no threads.

It is interesting to watch the "buried lab" story. It has grown in the telling:

Buried containers that
could have been used as weapons labs or something else.
are some sort of dual-purpose lab
are dual-purpose chemical and biological weapons labs
are trailers worth a total of 1 million dollars
are trailers with 1 million dollars of equipment in them
<no story on CNN at all that I can find>

A constant has been the "1000 pounds of documentation" which frankly I do not believe. Books are heavy, but I doubt that chemical weapons inspectors spend their time weighing all of the books they find. Some grunt said "wow, look at all that paperwork, I bet there is 1000 pounds of the stuff!" and it became the story.

Interestingly the "1 million total value of trailer" to "1 million worth of equipment inside" stories were both on CNN at the same time. I should have copied it then.

There is also the story of how well-marked the trailers were so that the iraqis could find them again. This proves how well-hidden they were from the UN inspectors. (I kid you not, again I should have copied the story last night but was lazy.)

It is an interesting study in the media.

Aha, here is the retraction buried way in the list of "other news on Iraq" on CNN. Note even the wording -- were they buried labs or cargo containers. I don't know about your University, but at mine we made the English department use the cargo containers. We let the biologists and chemists have tents at least.

hw