Down the memory hole! After 7 mos, NBC story of WH failure to get Zarqawi

[AirAmFan]

Zarqawi despite THREE elaborately-planned chances disappears two weeks before Election Day.

I realize news stories published on the web don't stay there forever. But isn't it suspicious that a key story about abysmal White House counterterrorism failures in Iraq could stay up for seven full months, and then suddenly disappear two weeks before Election Day?

Try this Google search, for "Miklaszewski" and "Zarqawi": http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=Miklaszewski+Zarqawi&btnG=Search .

The first "hit" now gives an error message. But it was posted on March 2 2004, and it. worked as recently as two weeks ago.

Here is the beginning of the now-deleted story:

From http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4431601 /

'MSNBC - Avoiding attacking suspected terrorist mastermind: Abu Musab Zarqawi blamed for more than 700 killings in Iraq

By Jim Miklaszewski, Correspondent, NBC News. Updated: 7:14 p.m. ET March 2, 2004

Abu Musab Zarqawi, a Jordanian militant with ties to al-Qaida, is now blamed for more than 700 terrorist killings in Iraq. But NBC News has learned that long before the war the Bush administration had several chances to wipe out his terrorist operation and perhaps kill Zarqawi himself, but never pulled the trigger....

More snippets of the original story and links to other pages that cite it are archived in a DU thread from the first of this month, at http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x939354

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Note that another hit on the above Google search is a July item by Bob Novak that quotes Miklaszewski as still sticking by his story:

From http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/07/01/iraq/

"On March 2, terrorist attacks brought the death toll attributed to Zarqawi to over 700. Jim Miklaszewski, the longtime Pentagon correspondent for NBC, reported multiple U.S. chances to "wipe out" Zarqawi and his bioweapons lab. The chances were missed, according to unnamed "military officials," because "the administration feared destroying the terrorist camp in Iraq would undercut the case against Saddam."

<SNIP>

Jim Miklaszewski told me he stands by his story, and pointed to House Armed Services Committee hearings April 21. Congressman Snyder brought the NBC story up to retired Gen. John Keane, and asked why the attack was rejected. "I don't know," the former Army acting chief of staff replied. "We looked at it the weekend of the Fourth of July the summer before we went into Iraq.""

[kostya]

1. <tinfoil hat on> This fits well with the Oct. surprise theory

that they are going to pull Zarqarwi (or some poor brown-skinned bastard with his face blown off) out of a body bag about October 23rd. They are already trying to make him into the surrogate OBL. But first they have to remove evidence that they've bungled it so many times already.<tinfoil hat off> - K

[AirAmFan]

2. I don't think you need tinfoil to notice news disappearing down the

memory hole.

Now, going the next step, to taking this disappearance as an indicator of dramatic events to come soon in Iraq or elsewhere in the world, does seem to require a tinfoil hat. I lost mine, so I can't fully support your tongue-in-cheek prediction. Stranger things have happened, though, especially since Karl Rove and the Mayberry Machiavellis took over four years ago.

[AirAmFan]

3. .