js7a's Journal: firehose vs. eyedropper

Today I set up a couple dozen Google News Alerts, mostly for obscure topics, people, and companies in my industry. Of course I couldn't resist the urge to set up a few political topics. In doing so, I decided to try to find some stories that weren't being followed in my usual news sources.

So after declining to be alerted for today's juciest story (Valerie Plame, 628 stories at the moment), I finally settled on this one (brought to my attention by buffer-overflowed; thanks), which at present only has only been published eight times, and only in two U.S. publications.

In short, Senator Nelson (D-FL) said about 75 senators were told during a classified briefing immediatly prior to the vote authorizing force that Iraq had both biological and chemical weapons, notably anthrax, and it could deliver them to cities along the Eastern seaboard via unmanned aerial vehicles. Both the White House and Pentagon refused to confirm or deny the content of the briefing.

I wonder how many times it has to play on Al-Jazeerah before the U.S. media notices it?

Anyway, if you want to follow it, you can set up your own alert for it.

Here's another couple sites you can check.

[buffer-overflowed]

Tacitus [tacitus.org]
InstaPundit [instapundit.com]

And my favorite(all news/summary, no analysis/commentary):
The Agonist [agonist.org] (Which is where I think I got that link)

Heard about it

[pudge]

I heard about back on Dec. 15; I don't recall where, though. However, realize a few points:

1. We do not know what was said, and it is plausible he is misremembering, in part or otherwise: he does not give any names, or provide specific quotes/facts.
2. The statements themselves are not very exceptional: if Iraq didn't even HAVE such weapons to begin with, as many people think, then that's far more important than this is.
3. I suppose if it could be shown that the administration was lying to Congressmen, tha

Re:Heard about it

[js7a]

I think Nelson retracted his statement soon after

Not the substance, just that the information was no longer classified [floridatoday.com].

Nelson was surprised to hear the president talk about the information in public, [Nelson's spokesman] McLaughlin said. After asking about it, Nelson was told by a Pentagon official that it had been decided to disseminate the information, McLaughlin said.

What Bush said [whitehouse.gov] was:

We've also discovered through intelligence that Iraq has a growing fleet of manned and unmanned aerial vehicles

Re:Heard about it

[pudge]

I think this is important because the classified briefing didn't say that "Iraq is exploring" targeting the U.S., it apparently said ...

And that's my main complaint about the story. We don't know what it said, we have one guy who is recalling something from over a year ago by memory, with no substantiation.

from Nelson's office: briefer was Dick Cheney

[js7a]

Senator Nelson's Washington press staff told me on the phone that he stands by the substance of the Florida Today article, in particular that the sentators were told in no uncertain terms that "Iraqi drones could deliver biological weapons to the U.S. Eastern seaboard," not that Iraq was simply exploring such tactics. When I asked how sure the Senator was about that recollection, I was told that after the flurry of calls from angry right-wing bloggers [floridatoday.com] accusing Nelson of espionage, Nelson confirmed his recol

I heard about this when it happened

[TPFH]

I think, or at the least last summer on Free Speech Radio News.

It still amazes me that they believed the briefing and that Scott Ritter never testified before congress on the issues or anything.

But then you have to realize that most politicians are:

1. Liars
2. Stupid enough not to realize that other politicians are liars.
3. Evil

(I'm not really saying anything that radical here am I?)

They shouldn't have voted to escalate the Iraq war. We've used up lots of resources on this and I don't think it has made