Olbermann tagged Hannity third “Worst Person” for criticizing media, White House for not “paying attention to” discredited WMD claims

Written by Kurt Donaldson

Published

Keith Olbermann granted Sean Hannity second runner-up of his nightly “Worst Person” award for complaining that the media and the Bush administration were not “paying attention to what was the biggest story in the lead-up to the [Iraq] war”: the discredited claim by Sen. Rick Santorum and House Intelligence Committee chairman Peter Hoekstra that a recently declassified intelligence report found that there were “weapons of mass destruction” in Iraq prior to the March 2003 U.S.-led invasion.

On the July 7 edition of MSNBC's Countdown, host Keith Olbermann granted Fox News host Sean Hannity second runner-up of his nightly “Worst Person in the World” award for complaining, as Media Matters for America noted, that the media and the Bush administration were not “paying attention to what was the biggest story in the lead-up to the [Iraq] war”: the discredited June 21 claim by Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA) and House Intelligence Committee chairman Peter Hoekstra (R-MI) that a recently declassified intelligence report found that there were “weapons of mass destruction” in Iraq prior to the March 2003 U.S.-led invasion.

Olbermann stated: “The bronze goes to Sean Hannity of Fox News. Wednesday, he complained about the lack of media coverage of, and the president's silence about, the Hoekstra-Santorum weapons of minor discomfort, the discovery of 15-year-old deteriorated mustard gas shells in Iraq.” Olbermann surmised that the purported WMD discovery might have received little media attention “because Mr. Bush's former head of weapons inspection in Iraq [David Kay] said those shells were less deadly than the bug spray you have in your garage."

As Media Matters has previously noted (here and here), intelligence officials, military officials, and the Bush administration have all confirmed that the pre-1991 shells were not the WMDs that the Bush administration cited in its argument for war.

From the July 7 edition of MSNBC's Countdown with Keith Olbermann:

OLBERMANN: The bronze goes to Sean Hannity of Fox News. Wednesday, he complained about the lack of media coverage of, and the president's silence about, the Hoekstra-Santorum weapons of minor discomfort, the discovery of 15-year-old deteriorated mustard gas shells in Iraq. “Why is nobody paying attention to what was the biggest story in the lead-up to the war?” he asked. Possibly because Mr. Bush's former head of weapons inspection in Iraq said those shells were less deadly than the bug spray you have in your garage. Sean has always wanted to be on this list. Sean, I hope you're happy now.