Moon's "cover-up"

I haven't discussed the nonsense about Al Qaqaa that we've been hearing from the rightists, because Josh Marshall, Kos and the others are doing such a terrific job on that front. But I just saw the latest from Drudge -- who now claims, by way of the Moonie Times, that those pesky Russkies carted the mysteriously-missing exposives off to Syria before American troops showed up.

Puh-LEASE.

Are we to believe that a massive Russian force could enter Iraq, carry off tons of equipment, and convoy it off to Syria -- without our knowledge? Even though we had spy satellites? And UAVs? Even though we controlled the airspace? And had weapons inspectors crawling all over the country?

Not bloody likely!

You know what this situation reminds me of? During the invasion, we heard all sorts of disinformation stories, and many of those fairy tales concerned Iraq getting help of some sort from Russia and Syria. Remember the yarn about those night vision goggles? There were about half-a-dozen dubious allegations of that sort floating around...

These tales always had a common origin: A "high official" would spin fables to one of the usual conservative propaganda outlets (Fox, the Washington Times, Drudge), and from there the lie would spread to the rest of the all-too-gullible media. Many viewers and readers didn't notice when these bits-of-buncombe were later discredited.

If the trick worked once, why not work it again?

This time, I hope, the mainstream media have wised up.

And now I've got to run outside and watch another Moon cover-up -- this one involving a telescope. My astronomy-buff girlfriend will howl at me it I miss it...