Shock and Awe

With the western world, in the immediate aftermath, trying to discover the perpetrators to take the appropriate actions for some sort of justice, the general belief by those who work in such issues is that the 9/11 terrorist attacks were carried out by Al-Qaeda led by Osama bin Laden. In addition, the George W. Bush administration, the primary faces being Bush himself and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, floats the notion in their press briefings that it was also state sponsored terrorism, the most likely state being Iraq led by Saddam Hussein. Journalists Jonathan Landay and Warren Strobel, working for Knight Ridder, a consortium of thirty-one newspapers across the US, under the Washington Bureau Chief John Walcott, know that inherently the Iraq story does not make any sense, and investigate, speaking to any on-the-record or off-the-record sources, especially within the Pentagon if they can. As the Bush administration further begins to state that Hussein, as an extension to 9/11, is trying to obtain nuclear weapons, which most know is true but that he is highly unlikely ever to achieve, but already has in his arsenal what are coined WMDs - weapons of mass destruction - most credible and respected mainstream media report the issue behind such statements as fact, while Landay, Strobel and Walcott go down the path of trying to discover if the reason for this belief by the administration is faulty intelligence or the more dangerous path of using 9/11 as an excuse for instigation of war against Hussein in a want for a regime change in Iraq, despite such most likely only destabilizing the region. With generally inexperienced Landay and Strobel not having the proverbial Rolodex of built-in contacts, Walcott is able to add to the team famed Vietnam War correspondent Joseph Lee Galloway, most recently having been hired at the State Department on September 10, 2001. Beyond their credibility or lack thereof both in going against all of mainstream media and with some of their own newspapers not printing their stories in the belief that the other media are accurate, they face an uphill battle in the court of public opinion, with Landay's Yugoslav wife, Vlatka Landay, further believing her husband putting them in potential danger in going against the government.