November Surprise: NYT Will Lead With Major Story About Iraq And Nuke Research

On Drudge, at the top of the page.

Finally! The NYT will report on Saddam's active pursuit of a nuclear bomb, just four days from the election!

(Ahem.)

No, it will be a re-breaking of a story -- with NEW reportage and NEW quotes that aren't new at all -- that there was reason to doubt Saddam's capability in this area and that "some senior intelligence analysts at the State Department" strongly questioned the prevailing view that he sought a bomb.

The same "senior intelligence analysts" who have been saying the same thing for four years and who, no matter how right they may have turned out to be, were nonetheless a small minority of the intel community who were unable to persuade their fellow analysts of their point of view.

"It's a slam dunk," George Tenet said about the case for Saddam's WMD's. This was the consensus view of the entire intelligence establishment, and not controversial in the least.

Or, at least, about as controversial as global warming, which the MSM tells us should be accepted without question because it similarly commands the position of "widely-agreed consensus" among "experts in the field."

Sometimes the dissidents are right. Most of the time they're wrong. The NYT wants the country to impeach Bush because he failed to side with the dissidents over the great majority of analysts.

In this case, at least. In the case of global warming, it's enough to take a poll and go with the winner, and entirely ignore the dissenters.

So, you know -- big, big, big story, according to the media, much bigger than anything else in the entire universe, including Kerry's anti-military swipe, which, by the way, still didn't make a prominent mention in the NYT.

The Above Is Just Speculation. I'm saying that because See-Dub wasn't sure if I was speculating or had some inside information.

I'm very happy that someone imagines I could possibly have inside information.

I'm just guessing, based on the Times' past pre-election late-hits. The "missing explosives" story that was a bit dated and a bit overstated and all that.

Thre are three possibilities, one I already covered. One other possibility is worse, and the other other possibility is better.

The worse possibility is that this is some real, serious new reporting on a Bush cover-up about what it knew about the program, warnings it had and disregarded, etc.

But that's odd timing, isn't it? Very convenient. I suppose someone may have decided to leak something big right before the election, but I figure it's more something the Times has been working on, and finally said, "Write up what you have now, so we get it out before the election," and are juicing it up to make it seem like something more than it is.

The other other possiblity is the NYT is about to report Saddam was working harder on a bomb than previously reported, right on the eve of an election, which would of course greatly assist Republicans in retaining control of Congress.

Which, of course, is simply not a possibility.

Rove's "October Surprise:" For those who want to hope... well, there is that talk of Rove's previous declaration that the election was in the bag because he had an October Surprise on the way.

Rove, being Rove, and therefore Pure Evil, gives the huge story -- Saddam was working on a bomb until the invasion -- to the Times.

With this Hobbesian Choice: You can either run with this story, which we know you don't want to run, or in three days we take the story to the Washington Post, and we let the world know you actually had the story, but chose to pass on it.

So, your choice: You can either aid us with a big exclusive that you really should report, or you can spike the story, in which case not only won't you have the exclusive, but we'll further expose you to the world of being unwilling to report big, important exclusives if you feel they hurt Democrats.

However, that's just a flight of fancy. I don't believe it for a second.

Would be sweet, though.

It would also be sweet to be a velociraptor.

posted by Ace at 09:35 PM

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