NYT Letting Bush Re-Frame Reasons for War

The NYT’s takes a leak from the Bush Adminstration to let them frame the headline, Inspector's Report to Detail Iraqi Plans to Undermine Sanctions and Produce Illicit Arms

But yet they provide no evidence for their hypothetical predictions of how Saddam would break the sanctions to build WMD.

With Election Day less than a month away, the White House has been seeking to persuade voters that the war in Iraq was justified even though the weapons stockpiles it cited as the main rationale for the invasion now do not appear to have existed.

So Jehl realizes this much. But why the alarming headline when this is buried in the last paragraph.

The officials said the report included new information about efforts by Iraq to bypass the sanctions and to undermine international support for them, but did not spell out any precise Iraqi plan on how it might resume weapons production once they were lifted.

Slate’s Eric Umansky points out:

Reporter Douglas Jehl didn't actually see the inspector's report, which is going to be released Wednesday. Rather it "was described by three [anonymous] administration officials who have seen it or been briefed on its contents." A few questions: Might the sources have an agenda that could, say, result in them presenting a less than complete picture of the report?

The Bush Administration is attempting to justify the war based upon conjecture for what Saddam was going to do in the future.

Mr. Powell said the report by Mr. Duelfer would make "very, very clear" that "what Saddam Hussein was trying to do was to break out of the sanctions" imposed by the United Nations.

The Bush Administration is trying to whitewash historical record to cast Iraq as a future threat when there is no probably real evidence "beyond a reasonable doubt" to support it.