Selective Witnessing - Over and over I've had conservative acquaintences tell me about Saddam Hussein's son in law - the one who escaped from Iraq and told us all about his weapons of mass destruction, but then returned to Iraq only to be killed.

For example: "Secretary of State Colin Powell's February 5 presentation to the U.N. Security Council claimed: "It took years for Iraq to finally admit that it had produced four tons of the deadly nerve agent, VX. A single drop of VX on the skin will kill in minutes. Four tons. The admission only came out after inspectors collected documentation as a result of the defection of Hussein Kamel, Saddam Hussein's late son-in-law."

Only, it turns out that Kamel was talking about weapons that Iraq had before 1991 - weapons our witness says Hussein secretly destroyed in order to avoid admitting they ever existed.

FAIR MEDIA ADVISORY: Star Witness on Iraq Said Weapons Were Destroyed

Selectively using the information from Kamel does not increase my confidence in this administration's strident claims that war is necessary. We keep being told that they can't tell us the whole story (which they imply would obviate war) but when the story starts coming out we see that knowing the whole story weakens their position.