The Incredible Shrinking Big Impact

In August, the White House announced what it called a "big impact" plan to overwhelm and silence critics of its failure to find Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, with former UNSCOM inspector David Kay assigned to compile a big, impactful report that would answer questions once and for all. According to a Monday report on ABC News, however, a draft version of Kay's report provides no solid evidence that Iraq had such arms when the United States invaded. Former UN chief weapons inspector Hans Blix now believes Iraq destroyed all its weapons 10 years ago. That hasn't stopped administration officials like Dick Cheney from continuing efforts at spin control. FAIR/Extra! has compiled some examples of the role that journalists themselves played in hyping the WMD story.