Trailer Trash

THIS POST HAS BEEN UPDATED:

Okay, according to the Washington Post, Georgie Boy Pudding and Lies fibs ... again. (All boldface is mine.)

On May 29, 2003, 50 days after the fall of Baghdad, President Bush proclaimed a fresh victory for his administration in Iraq: Two small trailers captured by U.S. and Kurdish troops had turned out to be long-sought mobile "biological laboratories." He declared, "We have found the weapons of mass destruction."

The claim, repeated by top administration officials for months afterward, was hailed at the time as a vindication of the decision to go to war. But even as Bush spoke, U.S. intelligence officials possessed powerful evidence that it was not true.

A secret fact-finding mission to Iraq - not made public until now - had already concluded that the trailers had nothing to do with biological weapons. Leaders of the Pentagon-sponsored mission transmitted their unanimous findings to Washington in a field report on May 27, 2003, two days before the president's statement.

Here's what the preznit actually said, in an interview with Poland's TVP:

THE PRESIDENT: We found the weapons of mass destruction. We found biological laboratories. You remember when Colin Powell stood up in front of the world, and he said, Iraq has got laboratories, mobile labs to build biological weapons. They're illegal. They're against the United Nations resolutions, and we've so far discovered two. And we'll find more weapons as time goes on. But for those who say we haven't found the banned manufacturing devices or banned weapons, they're wrong, we found them.

Indeed, according to Justin Rood, Bush was not the only administration liar on this one.

While the Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency debunked the story in a May 27, 2003 report, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, along with Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith, continued to push the mobile weapons labs quackery for months ...

More lies here.

But do you think the White House can actually come clean on anything? Are you insane?

Talking to reporters today, McClellan said: “You know, I saw some reporter talking about how this latest revelation — which is not something that is new; this is all old information that’s being rehashed — was an embarrassment for the White House. No, it’s an embarrassment for the media that is out there reporting this....

"First of all, intelligence is - when an assessment is made, it looks at a lot of different intelligence and it takes time to vet that intelligence, go through it, debate it, discuss it with the intelligence community, look at all the different intelligence coming in, whether it's human intelligence or signals intelligence or open-source intelligence. And they pull that all together and the intelligence community makes the assessment. The White House is not the intelligence-gathering agency....

"Now, I will point out that the reporting I saw this morning was simply reckless and it was irresponsible. The lead in The Washington Post left the impression for the reader that the President was saying something he knew at the time not to be true. That is absolutely false and it is irresponsible, and I don't know how The Washington Post can defend something so irresponsible."

Yabbut ...

McClellan’s complaint is that the Washington Post and others suggest that President Bush may have known about the report before he made definitive statements that the trailers were for the purpose of building biological weapons.

When McClellan was asked when the White House became aware of the Pentagon field report, however, McClellan couldn’t say. He told the press corps “I’m looking into that matter” but the answer was “not the point.”

Scottie went even further ...

When an ABC reporter pressed McClellan on the subject at his morning briefing, McClellan upbraided the network for picking up on the report.

"This is reckless reporting and for you all to go on the air this morning and make such a charge is irresponsible, and I hope that ABC would apologize for it and make a correction on the air," he said.

Indeed, one network, so far not named, did beat a hasty retreat, said McClellan.

I brought up with some of you earlier today some of the reporting that was based of this Washington Post report. And I talked to one of networks about it…they expressed their apologies to the White House.

We're all guessing which network it could be.

Hmmm... ya think? (Antonia sez: See update below.)

The Moderate Voice considers the larger question:

A new dispute between the White House and the Washington Post over a published report boils down to the question: did President George W. Bush knowingly use information on weapons of mass destruction that had been officially debunked, or not?

That's the issue at hand. But a bigger issue is the overriding one facing and steadily undermining this administration: seemingly each day there is new information that underscores what is either a major credibility problem, — or major competency one.

Meanwhile the right-wing echo-sphere is seizing on sentences and paragraphs deep in the story which appear to contradict the Washington Post headline and lead paragraphs. For example, below the fold is this:

Intelligence analysts involved in high-level discussions about the trailers noted that the technical team was among several groups that analyzed the suspected mobile labs throughout the spring and summer of 2003. Two teams of military experts who viewed the trailers soon after their discovery concluded that the facilities were weapons labs, a finding that strongly influenced views of intelligence officials in Washington, the analysts said. “It was hotly debated, and there were experts making arguments on both sides,” said one former senior official who spoke on the condition that he not be identified.

But I think the apparent contradiction is just sloppy writing or editing because there's no misunderstanding this sentence in the third paragraph, as already excerpted at the top of this post:

Leaders of the Pentagon-sponsored mission transmitted their unanimous findings to Washington in a field report on May 27, 2003, two days before the president's statement.

What's more, here's the New York Times' Judy Miller, of all people, on June 7, 2003 - sortly after she was in on finding the ''mobile weapons labs'' on May 11, 2003. Her later piece reinforces the notion that lthe official documents were - once again - cooked to bolster the mobile labs theory.

American and British intelligence analysts with direct access to the evidence are disputing claims that the mysterious trailers found in Iraq were for making deadly germs. In interviews over the last week, they said the mobile units were more likely intended for other purposes and charged that the evaluation process had been damaged by a rush to judgment.

"Everyone has wanted to find the 'smoking gun' so much that they may have wanted to have reached this conclusion," said one intelligence expert who has seen the trailers and, like some others, spoke on condition that he not be identified. He added, "I am very upset with the process."

The Bush administration has said the two trailers, which allied forces found in Iraq in April and May, are evidence that Saddam Hussein was hiding a program for biological warfare. In a white paper last week, it publicly detailed its case, even while conceding discrepancies in the evidence and a lack of hard proof.

Now, intelligence analysts stationed in the Middle East, as well as in the United States and Britain, are disclosing serious doubts about the administration's conclusions in what appears to be a bitter debate within the intelligence community. Skeptics said their initial judgments of a weapon application for the trailers had faltered as new evidence came to light.

Outside the Beltway sums up what this is really about.

(I)t obviously became clear within a few weeks that there was doubt as to the nature of those trailers. To keep referring to them in public as if they were slam dunk evidence of Iraqi WMD is disengenuous at best.

Finally, if there's anything funny in all of this, it's here.

Top Reasons You Wouldn't Want a Mobile Biological Weapons Lab

1. How could you have a clean room in a mobile biological weapons laboratory?

2. Petrie dishes might vibrate off the table.

3. Germs might get carsick. Now that's something you don't want to have to clean up.

4. Biologists keep pulling up at the drive-through at McDonald's.

5. What if you hit a big bump while working on the plague?

And really, where do they have water hook-ups in the desert?

UPPITY DATE: Commenter Stuart MacDonald below writes:

Antonia - I think it was ABC (not FOX) which caved and apologized when the White House went on the attack.
I followed one of your links to NewsHound - and noted a suggestion, and went to it - and saw an ABC clarification - check it out.

FOX probably never even bothered to cover the story.

Here's the apology, which is not a retraction of the Washington Post story but of a misrepresentation of it.

Clarification: A report in today's Washington Post said, "On May 29, 2003, 50 days after the fall of Baghdad, President Bush proclaimed a fresh victory for his administration in Iraq: Two small trailers captured by U.S. and Kurdish troops had turned out to be long-sought mobile 'biological laboratories.' He declared 'We have found the weapons of mass destruction.' The claim, repeated by top administration officials for months afterward, was hailed at the time as a vindication of the decision to go to war. But even as Bush spoke, U.S. intelligence officials possessed powerful evidence that it was not true."

This morning on "Good Morning America," in a question to White House Correspondent Martha Raddatz, Charles Gibson misstated the Washington Post story when he said, "The Washington Post says today that the president knew at the time that was not true."

The White House was unable to say today when or whether the White House received the information to which the Post referred.

And here's the latest from the Post:

A White House spokesman acknowledged that President Bush's assertions about the suspected labs were in error but said this was caused by flawed intelligence work rather than an effort to mislead.

Yeah, you're doing a good job, Tenny.

Comments

[Jay Currie]

Antonia, there has never been any question that the intelligence community dropped the ball on any number of assessments. But the Wapo story is entirely misleading where it suggests Bush or Powell were aware that the analysts had concluded these were not bio-weapons labs but nevertheless claimed they were. There is not the slightest evidence that this was the case and the Post knows it.

You'll want to balance yet another drive by smear from the no news unless it fits Post you might want to read Seixon http://www.seixon.com/blog/archives/2006/04/hydrogen_warfar.html

Dredging up three year old news to beat Bush about the ears is not much more than a demonstration of the sheer implausibility of the lefts anti-war narrative.

[Randall Isaacs]

Apparently, the issue of WMD is not exactly cut and dried and over. There is more to the story then the MSM is willing to tell. For example, there is this interview with one of Saddam's ex-Vice Marshall:

http://www.melaniephillips.com/diary/archives/001665.html

[Antonia]

Oh it's cut and dried and over, alright.
They lied, and knew they were lying -- about everything -- and I can cite dozens, if not 100s, on instances.

http://harpers.org/RevisionThing.html

Or watch the movie instead.

http://www.hategun.com/features/mistaken/index.html

But let's say they honestly believed everything.

Then why are you defending an administration that is so f**king ICOMPETENT and can't even honestly own up to its errors??

[nps]

Gottta get off the Iraq kick..... who really cares. The Americans are bogged down and will be for some time. We(Canada) will not be involved despite what our own neocon(Harper) might think/do as the Canadian public want no part of it

[True North]

And now Robert Sheer reports -

"On Monday, former Secretary of State Colin Powell told me that he and his department's top experts never believed that Iraq posed an imminent nuclear threat, but that the president followed the misleading advice of Vice President Dick Cheney and the CIA in making the claim. Now he tells us."

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20060411_bush_leak_plame_libby_powell/

[Michael Watkins]

The current US administration (and many others) have been lying through their teeth for so long that one wonders if they've got the entire population down their on drugs or something, so muted is the reaction. How much evidence is needed before they haul Bush and Cheney and Feith and Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld and Pearle, and ... well you get the picture... before a court?

Forget that, how did these clowns get re-elected in 2004?

">http://mikewatkins.net/categories/world/nytimesforkerry.html">

Oct 17, 2004: His most frightening allegation was that Saddam Hussein was close to getting nuclear weapons. It was based on two pieces of evidence. One was a story about attempts to purchase critical materials from Niger, and it was the product of rumor and forgery. The other evidence, the purchase of aluminum tubes that the administration said were meant for a nuclear centrifuge, was concocted by one low-level analyst and had been thoroughly debunked by administration investigators and international vetting. Top members of the administration knew this, but the selling went on anyway. None of the president’s chief advisers have ever been held accountable for their misrepresentations to the American people or for their mismanagement of the war that followed.

Oct">http://mikewatkins.net/categories/world/shameonyou.html">Oct 2, 2004

In a speech to veterans that August, Vice President Dick Cheney said Mr. Hussein could have an atomic bomb “fairly soon.” The next month, Mr. Cheney told a group of Wyoming Republicans the United States had “irrefutable evidence” – thousands of tubes made of high-strength aluminum, tubes that the Bush administration said were destined for clandestine Iraqi uranium centrifuges, before some were seized at the behest of the United States.

The most compelling information within the article is that the top experts in the entire world – the US’s own experts, the so-called “A” Team, quite easily was able to conclude that the tubes in question were not designed to be used for nuclear weapons use, and this assessment was available to Condoleeza Rice and the US administration before 9/11/2001. They knew the information they based their case to attack Iraq on was completely bogus and they used the horror of 9/11 to lie to the people and do it anyway.

[Randall Isaacs]

I don't think that WMD necessarily meant only nukes. I think that chemical and biological weapons, like the ones used in the war with Iran and on the Kurds was what those claiming WMD's were talking about. As an aside, I note that the esteemed William Rivers Pitt (I assume that he does not eat his candy bars with a fork and knife like the other Mr. Pitt) claims that Syria is believed to have substantial biological and chemical weapons stocks which is, if anything, quite coincidental -- hmm wonder where these came from.

[Dana]

Jay?

Jay?

Get in here, man.

You made the deal, do your damn job now.

You don't have a choice anymore son. Get on with your shit.

[Jay Currie]

Dana, my daily koolaid is safe....I'm first post on this thread.

But you know, Antonia types very, very fast and in a fact free environment typing speed is what really counts. It's sometimes tough to keep up.

[Antonia]

Uh, which fact exactly did I get wrong Jay??

[Michael Watkins]

Bush used the spectre of a mushroom cloud to push Congress over the edge in his State of the Union Address... same address which preceded the "official" call to war, but the drums had been beating all along.

Its impossible to look at the build up to war as anything but a set-up job. Cheney and his pals wanted a war. Full stop. They organized themselves to be sure they got one.

Cheney's hand-picked "Office of Special Plans", specifically designed to give only that "intel" which would support the case for war, and cutting out the regular professional intelligence community effectively out of the loop.

There was not so much as failure of intelligence which led to war, but an intentional plan of the warmongers to ensure that intelligence didn't disrupt their plans.

No sane person can look at the literal mountain of evidence and claim otherwise.

Of course, we have some insane people in our government now, who are just as likely to believe the horse shit that Cheney et al pushed down the American people's throats. People like Stockwell Day, for example, or Peter MacKay! Then there was Stephen Harper who proudly beat his chest about marching into war with our natural allies, but now tries to evade the fact that he did so time and again in the build up and then savaged the quite correct decision by Chretien to stay out of the bloody mess.

Sadly the quality of "conservative" thinking in my party has gone dramatically downhill over the years. We're supposed to be Guardians of Canada, not morons who buy any moronic story that our pals to the south concoct, or that the PMO decides to dish out.

Iraq War: Cheney and pals wanted it, the got it. It never had anything to do with WMD. Containment WAS working. Hussein didn't have a functioning air force. Had no air superiority over his own country. Wasn't able to repair major equipment efficiently. Had a poorly motivated army. US and British aircraft ruled the skies over the majority of the country for years after the Kuwait war (and lets not go down that rat hole).

Iraq was a weakling, and the US administration knew it, otherwise there is no way that Rumsfeld would ever have contemplated invading with a very light force. He wanted to go in with far fewer troops than he did! You don't do that if you actually believe your own BS that Saddam is armed to the teeth.

And the invasion was always unnecessary.

Bush, in a post 9-11 world, had he been a leader at all, could have used his *immense* political capital then to strengthen the containment regime and break Saddam, in an entirely different way. By using political capital to cut out all the illegitimate deals in oil for food, strengthening inspection regimes, but rewarding compliance, they could have teased Hussein into being more useful.

Chances are that had he done that, Saddam might still be in place, but Iraq would be taking on a Libya-like transformation, with nary a shot fired. Now international oil companies are lining up to do business with Ghadaffi.

Eventually Iraq would have grown up and dealt with Saddam and his sons, with far less loss of life and without plunging the region into chaos... chaos which is barely begun and is all on the hands of Bush, Cheney and company not to mention their predecessors and their actions in the region going back to split up of the Ottoman Empire.

The right wing nutbars on both sides of the 49th parallel that support Cheney's war are living on borrowed time. Most sane people that do more than watch the 5 minutes of news in between the latest car crash and the weather report are coming to the inescapable conclusion that they've been lied to on a massive scale.

About time. Some of us have been pushing for this awakening for a very long time, and its not just the "left" that has their heads screwed on straight.

[Jay Currie]

Antonia, you didn't get a fact wrong; rather you relied on the Washington Post which pretty clearly wrote a startlingly misleading article.

On May 27 evidence emerges and is sent to Washington suggesting the trailers were not mobile bio-weapon labs. May 29 the President, relying on earlier intelligence material which said they were, says they were.

Your conclusion, drawn from a rather uncritical examination of the WAPO article is that Bush deliberately lied. Which is quite a stretch.

What do you think happens in the ordinary course in a large, bureaucratic, organization such as the military intelligence community in Washington. Do you think the faxes from the field are dumped higgley piggley on the President's desk with a post-it note saying "This just in".

Of course you don't and neither does the Washington Post; but it ran the entirely misleading story anyway simply because it had the potential to reflect badly on Bush.

This is shabby journalism and, even in the midst of your BDS, you should have the critical capacity to call it that. Instead you opted to pile on yet another non-story simply to take another cheap shot at Bush.

For your sake I hope it does not turn out to be as embarassingly false as the most recent Fitz/Scooter dust up where Fitz simply got it wrong.

[Antonia]

"For your sake I hope it does not turn out to be as embarassingly false as the most recent Fitz/Scooter dust up where Fitz simply got it wrong."

Give me a break Jay: I should be so wrong as to have called the entire Iraq war a screw-up since Sept. 2002.

Which is what I did.

Google me baby.

[Jay Currie]

Well Antonia, I am delighted you have been consistently wrong on Iraq. Consistency is a virtue.

Presumably you would agree with your commentor Watkins that the clever strategy would have been to "tease" Uncle Cuddles into compliance. Just for fun we might want to try that teasing strategy with North Korea as there is no other effective strategy available.

Of course with hindsight there are lots of things which should have been done differently in Iraq. Starting with shooting the looters on sight, appointing a competent administrator,and dividing the country into independent Kurdish, Shi'ite and Sunni areas. Arresting or killing Sadr might also have been helpful but keeping Sistani onboard was, I suspect, more important.

I note you really have nothing at all to say to contradict my assertion that the Wapo story was misleading. Nor, frankly, that Fitz's filing was incorrect in detail and entirely misleading.

[arthurdecco]

Jay, You're embarrassing yourself once again by ignoring the mountains of irrefutable evidence that disproved your talking points years ago. And as far as your contention that this story in the WaPo is an example of "shabby journalism"...Really? How then would you describe your own postings on the subject here? Cognitive dissonance?

[sooey]

if bush jr is *un*knowingly using information on weapons of mass destruction that have been officially debunked - it would explain a lot of blank stares.

[Bill-Muskoka]

I saw it coming way back in the '60's. The amalgamation of the MSM into corporate mouth pieces controlled by a few 'friends' of the politicians.

Not all corporations are evil, but when there are the Pulliams, Aspers, and Blacks running the show, they are. Same goes for Old Fish Lips, D. Trump!

The media glorified these sociopathic sickos, and then once the majority was overrun by profit motivated survival, the politicans knew they had a clear field.

They have been lying and getting away with it for so long they truly believe what they say, as do their on their knees lackeys.

No one calls a horse a horse, nor a duck a duck anymore. It takes myriads of words to simply say 'LYING SOB!'

[Stuart Macdonald]

Antonia - I think it was ABC (not FOX) which caved and apologized when the White House went on the attack.
I followed one of your links to NewsHound - and noted a suggestion, and went to it - and saw an ABC clarification - check it out - http://www.abcnews.go.com/GMA/popup?id=1835610
FOX probably never even bothered to cover the story.

Cheers

SM

[Ti-Guy]

"Your conclusion, drawn from a rather uncritical examination of the WAPO article is that Bush deliberately lied. Which is quite a stretch."

Oh for God sakes. Haven't we seen enough iterations of this excuse to come to the conclusion that it's completely grasping and totally unconvincing?

I'm surprised anyone still has the chutzpah to advance it.

[Huge Seagull]

Jay, the Sexion link you provide is an interesting counterpoint, but if you read the comments on that page, the commenter by the name of 'st' (who appears to be basically pro-Iraq-invasion) basically demolishes Sexion's argument.

[Dana]

A live naked girl in Bush's lap, a dead naked boy at his feet and Jay would find a way.

[Bill-Muskoka]

Dana,

I do not think there is much chance of that happening. His Dom wife would kill the bitch! LOL at least we can be resonably assured there will be no cigars to discuss.

[Bill-Muskoka]

Seems the barriers are starting to crumble, and not just in the streets, but where it can really count in the RANKS of the military.

Right in today's Star this quote:

'Flight Lieut. Malcolm Kendall-Smith, who said U.S. actions in Iraq were on par with those of Nazi Germany, was convicted by a panel of Royal Air Force officers after a three-day session. He was sentenced to eight months in prison and ordered dismissed from the air force.

Kendall-Smith, 37, had served twice in southern Iraq with British forces, but refused to return a third time in June because he said he was not prepared to take part in an "act of aggression."

He had pleaded innocent to five charges of failing to comply with a lawful order after refusing to deploy to the southern city of Basra last year.

Kendall-Smith's lawyer, Philip Sapsford, had argued that since Iraq had not attacked Britain or one of its allies, there was no lawful reason to invade. The officer was entitled to disobey the ``unlawful" orders, the lawyer said.'

Now, as a former serviceman I can only say this. All military personnel take an oath to defend their Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic, and (after that check) to obey the LAWFUL orders of their respective Commander...be it an officer or head of State.

They hold the DUTY as CITIZENS to maintain that actions taken on behalf of the people (at least in a democracy) are, in fact, lawful.

When the officers fail to uphold legalities, they are then operating unlawfully. That includes the Geneva Convention, International Treaties, etc.

If the military started standing up and not budging how long would the war mongering politicians be able to BS the masses?

SALUTE to Flight Lieut. Malcolm Kendall-Smith for being a MAN and a true defender of real democracy!

[Jay Currie]

Dana, you're mixing up this administration with the last one...and Bill, surely you are mixing up Laura with Hillary.

[Bill-Muskoka]

Jay,

'Bill, surely you are mixing up Laura with Hillary.'

No! Now I undertsand your posts clearly. So, how was that session with Laura? Exciting I bet?