The New York Times is running another story about "weapons of mass destruction" with Judith Miller's byline (along with Douglas Jehl). Any time you see Judith Miller's name on a story, you should not assume any of it is true unless you see it reported separately by a reliable reporter.
For details, check articles on her by Slate's Fred Kaplan, like here, here and here. But it's safe to say that readers should give claims like these in the new Times article zero credibility if a story of Judith Miller's is the only source. In fact, if you want to bet money that the underlying claims will prove to be false, you're not likely to lose. She writes of the upcoming report by David Kay's team looking for WMDs in Iraq:
The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that Mr. Kay and his team had not found illicit weapons. They said they believed that Mr. Kay had found evidence of precursors and dual-use equipment that could have been used to manufacture chemical and biological weapons.
They also said that Mr. Kay's team had interviewed at least one Iraqi security officer who said he had worked in such a chemical and biological weapons program until shortly before the American invasion in March.
In this story, we've got one guy - one guy - who says he worked in some kind of bio-chem weapons program. So at least General Judy is more modest in her claims this time than her previous whoppers. But even with a crass propagandist like her at work, this is a long, long way from the "25,000 liters of anthrax ... 38,000 liters of botulinum toxin ... materials to produce as much as 500 tons of sarin, mustard and VX nerve agent ... 30,000 munitions capable of delivering chemical agents" Bush talked about in his State of the Union address this past January.
Out of all this fearsome arsenal that we went to war over, all that even General Judy can find now is one guy who says he was involved in some kind of weapons program. It's amazing.
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