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Bentonite
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| Contributor | ArmyDem |
| Last Edited | ArmyDem Aug 04, 2008 08:26am |
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| Category | Blog Entry |
| News Date | Saturday, August 2, 2008 02:25:00 PM UTC0:0 |
| Description | I'm a little late to the party on this, but the must-read blog post of the weekend is Glenn Greenwald on bentonite.
Bento-what? Glenn's post is long, and you should read the whole thing (and while you're at it, check out his previous two posts on the subject as well), but it boils down to this: in September 2001, shortly after the post-9/11 anthrax attacks, ABC News' Brian Ross reported that four separate "well-placed" anonymous sources had told him that government tests showed traces of bentonite in the anthrax. Since bentonite had previously been connected to Saddam Hussein's biological weapons program, this was taken as evidence that Iraq might be behind the anthrax attacks.
As it turned out, this was wrong. There was no bentonite in the anthrax at all. But this wasn't just a mistake:
It's critical to note that it isn't the case that preliminary tests really did detect bentonite and then subsequent tests found there was none. No tests ever found or even suggested the presence of bentonite. The claim was just concocted from the start. It just never happened.
That means that ABC News' "four well-placed and separate sources" fed them information that was completely false — false information that created a very significant link in the public mind between the anthrax attacks and Saddam Hussein. |
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