Mistakes in Reporting on WMD in Iraq

The WMD Mailbag Correspondent sent me this AP article which illustrates the mistakes being made in reporting the WMD story.

Dozens of ballistic missiles are missing in Iraq. Vials of dangerous microbes are unaccounted for. Sensitive sites, once under U.N. seal, stand gutted today, their arms-making gear hauled off by looters, or by arms-makers.

All the world now knows that Iraq had no threatening "WMD" programs. But two years after U.S. teams began their futile hunt for weapons of mass destruction, Iraq has something else: a landscape of ruined military plants and of unanswered questions and loose ends, some potentially lethal, an Associated Press review of official reporting shows.

The problem is this: if dozens of missiles and vials of dangerous microbes are missing, how can you say in the very next paragraph that Iraq had no WMD programs? Clearly, there was a program if material is missing. What this author should have said is that there were no stockpiles of WMDs found in Iraq...then he'd be factually correct.

Is it bias that causes authors to editorialize this way? I report, you decide...