I have been scratching my head all afternoon trying to understand the latest wrinkle in Iraq-WMD rhetoric.
“WARHEADS FOUND,” screams the headline on MSNBC’s home page. The story page, slightly more soberly, is headlined, “Empty chemical warheads found.”
The New York Times, even more carefully, has a headline now that reads: “Inspectors Find Empty Warheads Able to Carry Chemical Agents.”
Now, technically speaking, a “warhead” is the part of the missile, typically the head or tip, that gets loaded with whatever weaponry payload the missile is supposed to deliver. So an “empty warhead” is not a weapon at all but a delivery system.
Presumably what has been found in Iraq is a kind of warhead that is specially designed for chemical weapons. That’s certainly worth paying attention to, and we’re told that the U.N. inspectors will next try to determine whether these warheads show any evidence of having ever been loaded with chemical weapons.
But in the meantime, the media frenzy conveys the distinct impression that today’s news represents a smoking-gun finding of actual chemical weapons — when the truth seems considerably more complex. But then blurring these complexities has been a part of the Bush war plan from the start.
Look closely — you may find “empty warheads” in the White House, too.
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