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Un des sujets polémiques de la campagne électorale a été la révélation qu’un dépôt irakien de plus de 300 tonnes d’explosifs à très haute intensité avait été laissé sans surveillance par l’armée américaine, permettant le vol de ces explosifs sans doute par des organisations terroristes. Cette affaire a été largement débattue dans la presse, avec, à nouveau, polémiques, manipulations, etc.
L’organisation FAIR, spécialisée dans l’étude et l’analyse des médias,
Ci-dessous, le texte de FAIR.
By FAIR, October 29, 2004
When the New York Times reported on Monday (10/25/04) that over 300 tons
of high-explosive materials appeared to be missing from an Iraqi weapons
facility, it was no surprise that the Bush administration and conservative
pundits would quickly challenge the story. But recent reporting has taken
this spin as proof that the facts of the story are in dispute-- even
though new evidence disproves the administration's rebuttals.
On October 28, ABC affiliate KSTP released footage that was shot by its
embedded reporters on April 18, 2003, showing members of the 101st
Airborne Division searching the Al Qaqaa bunkers. Clearly visible on the
tape are containers marked with labels that indicate the barrels contained
the high explosives in question. ABC World News Tonight broadcast the
footage on October 28, noting that soldiers opened the bunkers that had
been sealed by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), discovered
the high explosives, and then left those bunkers open and unguarded.
Given that the tape was shot nine days after the fall of Baghdad, it would
appear to prove that at least some of these explosives were looted after
the U.S. invasion-- a scenario that is consistent with statements from
Iraqi officials and witnesses to the looting (Agence France Presse,
10/27/04; New York Times, 10/28/04). As ABC's Martha Raddatz put it, ''It
is the strongest evidence to date the explosives disappeared after the
U.S. had taken control of Iraq.''
On the other hand, on the same day the Pentagon released satellite images
that they claim show vehicles near some of the bunkers at the Al Qaqaa
site on March 17, 2003. That would seem to be an attempt to bolster the
administration's claim that the explosives were removed by Saddam Hussein
prior to the U.S. invasion, though there is no evidence that the trucks
did anything at all with the explosives in question. Indeed, the fact
that trucks were in the vicinity of bunkers that contained large amounts
of battlefield weapons (in addition to the high explosives) just before a
war seems hardly newsworthy. Certainly the presence of trucks near the
bunkers does nothing to undermine the footage of explosives in the bunkers
days later.
But despite their dubious relevance, the Pentagon images-- along with the
White House's continued criticism of Kerry for bringing up the issue at
all-- seemed to leave some news outlets uncertain about the facts. A
subhead above a Los Angeles Times story read, ''Reporters Taped Troops
Apparently Finding Munitions. A Pentagon Photo Implies Otherwise.'' The
actual article, however, noted that the Pentagon photo implied very
little: ''The photograph reveals little about the fate of the 377 tons of
explosives, part of an estimated 600,000 tons of explosives believed to
have been scattered throughout Iraq at the time.''
And even though ABC's network newscast had broadcast the KSTP footage,
ABC's Ted Koppel reached a very different conclusion on the Nightline
broadcast later that evening (10/28/04). Koppel explained that ''a friend''
in the military had reminded him that he was actually at Al Qaqaa during
the war, and that ''my friend, the senior military commander, believes that
the explosives had already been removed by Saddam's forces before we ever
got there. The Iraqis, he said, were convinced that the U.S. was going to
bomb the place.'' For some reason, the theory advanced by his military
friend was apparently more credible to Koppel than the television footage
ABC had aired hours earlier that debunked his thesis.
Instead of reporting on this newly discovered footage from Al Qaqaa, the
Washington Post (10/29/04) pursued a different angle: ''This week's
assertions by Sen. John F. Kerry's campaign about the few hundred tons
said to have vanished from Iraq's Qaqaa facility have struck some defense
experts as exaggerated.'' The story's point, that the invasion allowed
vast quantities of weapons to be looted all over Iraq, would hardly seem
to undermine Kerry's critique of the Bush administration.
Ignoring the evidence released the day before that explosives were on site
after the fall of Baghdad, the Post instead reported that ''Pentagon
officials, reconstructing a timeline of what might have occurred at Qaqaa,
believe they have narrowed the window for the disappearance to a two-month
period between mid-March 2003, when the IAEA verified its seals were still
in place, and May 2003, when U.S. military search teams arrived at the
site and found it had been looted, stripped and vandalized.'' If the Post
had reported on the KSTP footage, though, the paper would have been able
to shut much of the Pentagon's ''window.''
Not surprisingly, Fox News Channel continued to aggressively challenge the
explosives story, even after the KSTP footage surfaced. On Special Report
(10/28/04), anchor Brit Hume told viewers that ''officials cite further
evidence the material had been moved before U.S. troops arrived''--
apparently a reference to the inconclusive Pentagon satellite images.
Special Report did not even mention the KSTP footage. But Fox campaign
reporter Carl Cameron claimed that the news of the day was damaging to the
Kerry campaign, since ''the Iraqi explosives may have disappeared before
the invasion, undercutting Kerry's attack on the president.'' Cameron
added, ''The Democrat hoped the explosive story would be explosive. But the
president is already calling it a dud, accusing Kerry of saying anything
to get elected.''
The Los Angeles Times followed a similar tack with an article (10/29/04)
headlined ''Munitions Issue Cuts Both Ways.'' The only evidence the paper
found to support the idea that the issue would be harmful to Kerry were
the claims of White House strategist Karl Rove, Bush communications
director Nicolle Devenish and George W. Bush.
That the subject of a scandal gets to decide how important it is is an odd
notion-- but many journalists seemed to put more faith in administration
pronouncements than in videotaped evidence.
[Notre recommandation est que ce texte doit être lu avec la mention classique à l'esprit, — “Disclaimer: In accordance with 17 U.S.C. 107, this material is distributed without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this information for non-profit research and educational purposes only.”.]
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