April 15, 2003: CNN.com headline proclaims, "Mobile Labs Found In Iraq"

On April 15, 2003, CNN.com published a piece entitled Mobile Labs Found In Iraq.which stated:

U.S. troops have found 11 mobile laboratories buried south of Baghdad that are capable of biological and chemical uses, a U.S. general said Monday.

The article closed with this paragraph, which everyone should have recognized as a huge caveat:

Last week, troops from the 101st Airborne found a stash of chemicals, which was investigated as possible nerve agents, but the material turned out to be pesticides, Freakly said. The United States will further examine the latest find, he said.

The whole thing petered out on closer examination; this Wikipedia article, Mobile Weapons Laboratory, gives the entire history.

But of course, the damage had been done. CNN REPORTS MOBILE LABORATORIES FOUND! was the headline at NewsBusters, NewsMax, WorldNetDaily, and all the other right-wing sites. According to the Wikipedia article, this story was hyped by George Bush, Condoleeza Rice, and Dick Cheney, among others, as incontrovertible proof that WMD had been found; case closed. This belief still crops up among right-wing war justifiers today -- and it's completely untrue.