by Simon 865 Replies latest social current
So George Bush is going find the WMD to help Blair...what about himself?
to the dismay of many on this forum, bush is going to be the heavy favorite to win the 2004 election.....and thats whether or not any wmd are found. blair needs a lot more comforting than bush does at this point.
aa
Yes, I think Blair is more likely to suffer out of all this. I think he was a complete fool to trust Bush and was used by the US administration. Either that, or he is as dishonest ... both are equally bad IMHO.
What he should have done is tied support for the USA to getting them signed up for some of the environmental agreements but as it is, he's come out of it with nothing but a headache.
1400 new 'specialists' have been flown into Iraq to search for WMD.
GW bush is shortly going to visit Iraq.
Whats the betting that suddenly, just before or on the day, that Bush arrives in Iraq, he will be able to congratulate the 'specialists' upon finding the missing WMD?
Am I being cynical? Hell yes, but would you bet against it?
| |||||||||||
Yeru, Dubla, Thichi,
there is NEWS ON THE MOBILE BIO LABS!
NYtimes from today:
By JUDITH MILLER and WILLIAM J. BROAD
merican 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.
Bill Harlow, a spokesman for the Central Intelligence Agency, said the dissenters "are entitled to their opinion, of course, but we stand behind the assertions in the white paper."
In all, at least three teams of Western experts have now examined the trailers and evidence from them. While the first two groups to see the trailers were largely convinced that the vehicles were intended for the purpose of making germ agents, the third group of more senior analysts divided sharply over the function of the trailers, with several members expressing strong skepticism, some of the dissenters said.
In effect, early conclusions by agents on the ground that the trailers were indeed mobile units to produce germs for weapons have since been challenged.
"I have no great confidence that it's a fermenter," a senior analyst with long experience in unconventional arms said of a tank for multiplying seed germs into lethal swarms. The government's public report, he added, "was a rushed job and looks political." This analyst had not seen the trailers himself, but reviewed evidence from them.
The skeptical experts said the mobile plants lacked gear for steam sterilization, normally a prerequisite for any kind of biological production, peaceful or otherwise. Its lack of availability between production runs would threaten to let in germ contaminants, resulting in failed weapons.
Second, if this shortcoming were somehow circumvented, each unit would still produce only a relatively small amount of germ-laden liquid, which would have to undergo further processing at some other factory unit to make it concentrated and prepare it for use as a weapon.
Finally, they said, the trailers have no easy way for technicians to remove germ fluids from the processing tank.
Senior intelligence officials in Washington rebutted the skeptics, saying, for instance, that the Iraqis might have obtained the needed steam for sterilization from a separate supply truck.
The skeptics noted further that the mobile plants had a means of easily extracting gas. Iraqi scientists have said the trailers were used to produce hydrogen for weather balloons. While the white paper dismisses that as a cover story, some analysts see the Iraqi explanation as potentially credible.
A senior administration official conceded that "some analysts give the hydrogen claim more credence." But he asserted that the majority still linked the Iraqi trailers to germ weapons.
The depth of dissent is hard to gauge. Even if it turns out to be a minority view, which seems likely, the skepticism is significant given the image of consensus that Washington has projected and the political reliance the administration has come to place on the mobile units. At the recent summit meeting with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, President Bush cited the trailers as evidence of illegal Iraqi arms.
Critics seem likely to cite the internal dispute as further reason for an independent evaluation of the Iraqi trailers. Since the war's end, the White House has come under heavy political pressure because American soldiers have found no unconventional arms, a main rationale for the invasion of Iraq.
Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain, who also used Iraqi illicit weapons as a chief justification of the war, has been repeatedly attacked on this question in Parliament and outside it.
Experts described the debate as intense despite the American intelligence agencies' release last week of the nuanced, carefully qualified white paper concluding that the mobile units were most likely part of Iraq's biowarfare program. It was posted May 28 on the Internet at www.cia.gov.
"We are in full agreement on it," an official said of the Central Intelligence Agency and the Defense Intelligence Agency at a briefing on the white paper.
The six-page report, "Iraqi Mobile Biological Warfare Agent Production Plants," called discovery of the trailers "the strongest evidence to date that Iraq was hiding a biological warfare program."
A senior administration official said the White House had not put pressure on the intelligence community in any way on the content of its white paper, or on the timing of its release.
In interviews, the intelligence analysts disputing its conclusions focused on the lack of steam sterilization gear for the central processing tank, which the white paper calls a fermenter for germ multiplication.
In theory, the dissenting analysts added, the Iraqis could have sterilized the tank with harsh chemicals rather than steam. But they said that would require a heavy wash afterward with sterile water to remove any chemical residue - a feat judged difficult for a mobile unit presumably situated somewhere in the Iraqi desert.
William C. Patrick III, a senior official in the germ warfare program that Washington renounced in 1969, said the lack of steam sterilization had caused him to question the germ-plant theory that he had once tentatively endorsed. "That's a huge minus," he said. "I don't see how you can clean those tanks chemically."
Three senior intelligence officials in Washington, responding to the criticisms during a group interview on Tuesday, said the Iraqis could have used a separate mobile unit to supply steam to the trailer. Some Iraqi decontamination units, they said, have such steam generators.
The officials also said some types of chemical sterilization were feasible without drastic follow-up actions.
Finally, they proposed that the Iraqis might have engineered anthrax or other killer germs for immunity to antibiotics, and then riddled germ food in the trailers with such potent drugs. That, they said, would be a clever way to grow lethal bacteria and selectively decontaminate the equipment at the same time - though the officials conceded that they had no evidence the Iraqis had used such advanced techniques.
On the second issue, the officials disputed the claim that the mobile units could make only small amounts of germ-laden liquids. If the trailers brewed up germs in high concentrations, they said, every month one truck could make enough raw material to fill five R-400 bombs.
Finally, the officials countered the claim that the trailers had no easy way for technicians to drain germ concoctions from the processing tank. The fluids could go down a pipe at its bottom, they said. While the pipe is small in diameter - too small to work effectively, some analysts hold - the officials said high pressure from an air compressor on the trailer could force the tank to drain in 10 or 20 minutes.
A senior official said "we've considered these objections" and dismissed them as having no bearing on the overall conclusions of the white paper. He added that Iraq, which declared several classes of mobile vehicles to the United Nations, never said anything about hydrogen factories.
Some doubters noted that the intelligence community was still scrambling to analyze the trailers, suggesting that the white paper may have been premature. They said laboratories in the Middle East and the United States were now analyzing more than 100 samples from the trailers to verify the intelligence findings. Allied forces, they noted, have so far failed to find any of the envisioned support vehicles that the trailers would need to produce biological weapons.
One skeptic questioned the practicality of some of the conjectural steps the Iraqis are envisioned as having taken to adapt the trailers to the job of making deadly germs.
"It's not built and designed as a standard fermenter," he said of the central tank. "Certainly, if you modify it enough you could use it. But that's true of any tin can."
The reporting for this article was carried out by Judith Miller in Iraq and Kuwait and by William Broad in New York. Her agreement with the Pentagon, for an "embedded" assignment, allowed the military to review her copy to prevent breaches of troop protection and security. No changes were made in the review.
Search, Reborn and other in left field souls. I sinisterly hope that the other so called "pro war" folk such as myself took my advice and have been fishing motorcycling four wheeling and have been having fun with family and friends. This side of you all and JWD is a complete waste of time. I have taken people to my sweetholes who have not been fishing in 20 years. My son is a "fisherman" as he calls himself now. We just finished a steak and fish feed tonight. (A party) I have been offroading of late and just brought out the chris craft cleaned in off and fired it up. It will go into the drink next week. I have taken a few friends up to the shooting range and taught them how to use a .45 and other weapons. I am going to take up another guy next week. That I am not going to hash this nonsense over with you yet again and you take that as being right shows how desperate you are to be right. I feel sorry for you all; Like I do others trapped in the need to be right. Simon, don't worry someday Bush will not be the US president in power. Someday, but not today. Love you guys but I have to go do some work and then try to sleep. There is much motorcycling to do tomorrow. (My son loves getting a ride to school on it. VERY COOL)
I'm sorry you now feel it is such an unimportant issue. Would you honestly be so keen to drop the subject if weapons had been found (and if they still are)?
It may be a waste of time for you to discuss this issue (and I agree with you, it would be) but it's perhaps the most important thing that has happened to the world in several years which is why so many people are so keen to debate the rights and wrongs of it.
I was watching the News this morning and one Senator said, intelligence is subject to MISTAKES, yet says, give us more TIME!
I'm glad to know that more people are speaking out, this is not what the politicians want. It needs repetition just as the words, terrorists and terrorism is constantly in the news a brainwashing technique.
My contention is still, if Saddam had them, why didn't he use them since he supposedly used them on his 'other' enemies?
Guest 77
Wheels Fall Off Iraq
WMD 'Mobile Labs' Story
By Raymond Whitaker, Paul Lashmar & Andrew Buncombe
|
pleasuredome,
great article!
here is another one from The Independent:
08 June 2003
Intelligence officers are holding a "smoking gun" which proves that they were subjected to a series of demands by Tony Blair's staff in the run-up to the Iraq war.
The officers are furious about the accusation levelled by the Leader of the Commons, John Reid, that "rogue elements" are at work in the security services. They fear they are being lined up to take the blame for faulty intelligence used to justify the Iraq war.
The intelligence services were so concerned about demands made by Downing Street for evidence to use against Iraq that extensive files have been built up detailing communications with Mr Blair's staff.
Stung by Dr Reid's accusations about misinformation over Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction, intelligence officials have given veiled warnings about what may emerge in the two official inquiries into the affair.
"A smoking gun may well exist over WMDs, but it may not be to the Government's liking," said one senior source. "Minuted details will show exactly what went on. Because of the frequency and, at times, unusual nature of the demands from Downing Street, people have made sure records were kept. There is a certain amount of self-preservation in this, of course."
It is believed some of the minutes relate to conversations involving the Joint Intelligence Committee, Alastair Campbell, the Prime Minister's communications director, Jonathan Powell, Mr Blair's chief of staff, and Sir David Omand, the Government's security and intelligence co-ordinator. However, records had also been made, it is claimed, by individual officers in communications within the intelligence services.
The intelligence services are also seething about Dr Reid's claims of spies trying to undermine an elected government. Although the Prime Minister and the Cabinet have been careful not to repeat the allegations, some security officials feel Dr Reid should apologise. "I don't know about the other [intelligence] services, but he certainly has not apologised to the chief of defence intelligence," said a Ministry of Defence official.
"The mood is very fractious at the moment. Intelligence officials are keen that the inquiries should establish the demarcation between what was supplied to Downing Street by them, and what it received from the Americans."
Mr Blair has defended the failure to uncover weapons of mass destruction in Iraq by saying that the occupying authorities have a more urgent task in bringing security and humanitarian aid to the country. "In Northern Ireland we were searching for IRA weapons for the best part of 40 years and that is a tiny country. Iraq is almost the size of France," he said yesterday.
The failure to uncover WMDs in Iraq is costing Mr Blair political support even among Labour and Conservative MPs who backed the war but are angry at the possibility that MPs may have been misled. Michael Portillo, the former Tory Cabinet minister who effusively praised the Prime Minister in March for renouncing spin to fight for what he believed to be right, has now changed his mind.
Writing in today's Independent on Sunday, Mr Portillo said: "How could I have been so naive? Spin is the making of Blair, and it will be his demise. He's given his opponents a dream slogan - 'You can't believe a word he says'. But that may not worry the Prime Minister.
"The opposition has never shown self-discipline, so maybe he'll give them the slip again."
Other MPs who backed the war have warned that the issue could blow up very quickly into a major constitutional row between the Government and the House of Commons if, as expected, Tony Blair and senior officials refuse a request to give evidence to a committee of MPs.
The Labour chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, Donald Anderson, has written to a number of senior politicians and civil servants, warning them that they may be called before committee hearings later this month.
Unlike the Intelligence and Security Committee - a group of MPs appointed by Mr Blair, which meets secretly - the Foreign Affairs Committee will hold its hearings in public and intends to publish its findings before MPs break up for the summer.
A number of the intended witnesses, including Tony Blair himself and some senior figures in the intelligence community, are likely to refuse to appear. The committee could then appeal for support to the House of Commons, forcing a highly embarrassing vote which the Government might lose.
Andrew Mackinlay, a Labour member of the committee who backed the Iraq war, predicted: "They will say they can't give evidence on matters affecting the security services, then either the committee will buckle or - more likely - there will be a major confrontation."
John Maples, a Tory member of the committee who also backed the war, warned: "It would be very embarrassing for the Prime Minister to be taking on a Commons committee, because people would ask, 'What has the Government got to hide?' and second, they might not win a vote."
The continuing instability in Iraq was brought home yesterday when an American solider was killed and four others wounded in a skirmish involving grenades and small arms fire in Saddam Hussein's home town of Tikrit.
Printable version 
Controversy over Iraq's alleged WMD rages on
Evidence has been distorted and the public has really been misled on issues that helped inform the decision about war and peace 
Greg Thielman