Bush Admin. Knew Trailers Weren’t WMD Threat
12 April 2006 1:53 am by Taylor Marsh
Bush Admin. Knew Trailers Weren't WMD Threat
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| BUSH KNEW but he didn't care. |
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.The three-page field report and a 122-page final report
three weeks later were stamped “secret” and shelved. Meanwhile,
for nearly a year, administration and intelligence officials continued to
publicly assert that the trailers were weapons factories.The authors of the reports were nine U.S. and British
civilian experts — scientists and engineers with extensive experience in
all the technical fields involved in making bioweapons — who were dispatched
to Baghdad by the Defense Intelligence Agency for an analysis of the trailers.
Their actions and findings were described to a Washington Post reporter in
interviews with six government officials and weapons experts who participated
in the mission or had direct knowledge of it.None would consent to being identified by name because
of fear that their jobs would be jeopardized. Their accounts were verified
by other current and former government officials knowledgeable about the mission.
The contents of the final report, “Final Technical Engineering Exploitation
Report on Iraqi Suspected Biological Weapons-Associated Trailers,” remain
classified. But interviews reveal that the technical team was unequivocal
in its conclusion that the trailers were not intended to manufacture biological
weapons. Those interviewed took care not to discuss the classified portions
of their work.“There was no connection to anything biological,”
said one expert who studied the trailers. Another recalled an epithet that
came to be associated with the trailers: “the biggest sand toilets in
the world.”
Lacking
Biolabs, Trailers Carried Case for War
Administration Pushed Notion of Banned Iraqi Weapons Despite Evidence to Contrary
They said they didn't hype intelligence.
They said they didn't manipulate it either.
What they did was make it up out of whole cloth.
The aluminum tubes being used for nuclear purposes was pure fiction
and the Bush administration was told so from the start.
The trailers that were supposed to be “biological laboratories”
were actually known as “the
biggest sand toilets in the world.”
Oh, but now we're supposed to believe that no one from the “political
realm” was told these critical facts? It strains all credulity.
The technical team's findings had no apparent
impact on the intelligence agencies' public statements on the trailers. A
day after the team's report was transmitted to Washington — May 28, 2003
— the CIA publicly released its first formal assessment of the trailers,
reflecting the views of its Washington analysts. That white paper, which also
bore the DIA seal, contended that U.S. officials were “confident”
that the trailers were used for “mobile biological weapons production.”Throughout the summer and fall of 2003, the trailers
became simply “mobile biological laboratories” in speeches and press
statements by administration officials. In late June, Secretary of State Colin
L. Powell declared that the “confidence level is increasing” that
the trailers were intended for biowarfare. In September, Vice President Cheney
pronounced the trailers to be “mobile biological facilities,” and
said they could have been used to produce anthrax or smallpox. (source)
But to learn that David Kay was not even told about the technical
team's finding until he was about to give up his job is a step too far away from decency.
Bush, Cheney and the administration obviously didn't want anyone
to know the facts about the “biggest sand toilets
in the world,” because they were a critical piece of the call to
wage war in Iraq. Evidence that came by way of Iraqi dissidents, Ahmed Chalabi and a guy named “Curveball”, who led the way, because he
was telling the Bush administration what they wanted to hear. To refresh your memory…
Bob Drogin and Greg Miller, of the Los
Angeles Times, recently reported that the source of this intelligence was
an Iraqi defector code-named Curveball, who is allegedly the brother of one
of Chalabi’s aides. (Chalabi says that the defector is not related to
anyone in his organization.) Curveball is said to have approached German intelligence
officials and provided them with detailed maps and descriptions of mobile
weapons labs. Curveball neglected to tell German officials that before fleeing
Iraq he had been jailed for embezzlement. Moreover, U.S. and U.N. experts
searched every corner of Iraq for the mobile labs; all they found were two
trucks, whose function is still in dispute. Last January, Cheney cited those
trucks as conclusive proof that Iraq had mobile weapons labs, but experts
have said that they more likely contained equipment for weather balloons.
(The New Yorker - Jane Mayer)
In around four hours the infamous trailers were proved not to
be for biological weaponry. But that didn't keep George W. Bush and his administration
from making the case that they were, compliments of a CIA white paper that became the foundation
for Bush's fiction.
After team members returned to Washington,
they began work on a final report. At several points, members were questioned
about revising their conclusions, according to sources knowledgeable about
the conversations. The questioners generally wanted to know the same thing:
Could the report's conclusions be softened, to leave open a possibility that
the trailers might have been intended for weapons?In the end, the final report — 19 pages plus a 103-page
appendix — remained unequivocal in declaring the trailers unsuitable for
weapons production.“It was very assertive,” said one weapons
expert familiar with the report's contents.Then, their mission completed, the team members returned
to their jobs and watched as their work appeared to vanish.“I went home and fully expected that our findings
would be publicly stated,” one member recalled. “It never happened.
And I just had to live with it.”
