An ABC News story starts with this near-hysterical teaser:
Bush Cancels Iraqi Strike
President Bush Calls Off Operation to Take Out Al Qaeda Poison Gas Laboratory
Followed by this alarming lede:
The CIA and the Pentagon began planning a covert operation into Northern Iraq to destroy what appeared to be a budding chemical weapons laboratory several weeks ago, but late last week, the president called it off, sources told ABCNEWS.
Buried ten paragraphs down, the second-to-last graf admits:
As U.S. surveillance intensified, officials concluded the operation was so small and crude that in the final analysis, it was not worth risking American lives to go after it
