"The New York Times offered a sharp editorial [3] Tuesday critiquing the indisputable role of the White House in distorting the intelligence on Iraq and weapons of mass destruction, and in stampeding Congressional and public opinion by spinning worst-case scenarios -- 'inflating them drastically' -- to justify an immediate invasion last March to repel an alleged imminent threat to the United States. Indeed, the logical implication of the editorial might well have been to charge senior officials -- in particular the vice president -- with an impeachable offense. However, strangely missing from the paper of record was any indictment of the national press, starting with the Times, for its obvious role in gravely misleading the institutions of government and the public when hyping the WMD threat. Times reporters and editors bear a heavy responsibility, as far back as September 2002, for having raised the nuclear specter that could materialize in the form of a 'mushroom cloud.' National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice and Vice President Dick Cheney took some of their talk-show lines on the nuclear danger from the Times article of Sept. 8, 2002 by Judith Miller and Michael Gordon, 'US Says Hussein Intensifies Quest for A-Bomb Parts.' "