Those Bioweapon Labs: The WaPo Flat-Out Lied

Great piece in the Spectator.

The WaPo article, suggesting Bush lied by saying these trailers were WMD factories because it had already been "unanimously" determined they were not for WMD purposes, was already caught out in its deception, as two teams who investigated the trailers concluded they were, in fact, bioweapons factories.

But it gets worse, because previously we had thought the WaPo article was merely deliberately misleading-- the one team, we thought, was in fact "unanimous" in determining they were not for WMD purposes. But it turns out even that team was not unaminous at all:

Curiously, on June 7, 2003, the New York Times had already described three teams looking over the trailers in Iraq. Two of the teams were in agreement that the trailers were WMD labs, but the third, more senior team was not at all "unequivocal," but "divided sharply over the functions of the trailers."

The piece also quotes that intercepted communication between an Iraqi general and colonel that Colin Powell played at his UN presentation on Iraq's WMD's.

COL: About this committee that is coming...
GEN: Yeah, yeah...
COL: ...with Mohamed El Baradei [Director, International Atomic Energy Agency]
GEN: Yeah, yeah.
COL: Yeah.
GEN: Yeah?
COL: We have this modified vehicle.
GEN: Yeah.
COL: What do we say if one of them sees it?
GEN: You didn't get a modified...You don't have a modified...
COL: By God, I have one.
GEN: Which? From the workshop...?
COL: From the al-Kindi Company
GEN: What?
COL: From al-Kindi.
GEN: Yeah, yeah. I'll come to you in the morning. I have some comments. I'm worried you all have something left.
COL: We evacuated everything. We don't have anything left.
GEN: I will come to you tomorrow.
COL: Okay.

Make sure you read the article to realize the importance of the reference to the "Al-Kindi company." They were not in the business of making mobile hydrogen production laboratories for weather balloons.

posted by Ace at 02:35 PM

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