The New York Times Lied and People Died

Here’s a news flash: The New York Times reported Wednesday that American military personnel in Iraq last decade were harmed by some of Saddam Hussein’s chemical weapons.

What makes this newsworthy, of course, is that the New York Times – and all the rest of the mainstream media – had been saying for years that there were no chemical or other weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. The meme they relentlessly promoted was that “Bush lied and people died.”

It turns out that, if the George W. Bush administration lied, it was by declining to refute this slander. Instead, it concealed the fact that American troops were harmed by some of the thousands of chemical arms discovered by U.S. forces, but left in place.

That error destroyed the Bush presidency. And needlessly devastated American lives.