Vorkosigan

Intelligence analysts dispute that trailers really are WMD related

• 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."

You know, as much as the intelligence community is doing CYA on this, you have to admit that the analysts are really acquitting themselves well.

Vorkosigan

Jat

With the incompetence agencies like the CIA have shown over the past few years maybe it is time that they be disbanned and something completely new, free from politicial influence, and competent take their place.

variable

the cia is only incompetant if competance is based on serving the will of the public. but of course, that is not who writes their report card.

John Hancock

MORE?
The report concedes that U.S. officials found no traces of any bioweapons agent inside the trailers. "We suspect," it states, "that the Iraqis thoroughly decontaminated the vehicle to remove evidence." That's possible.

The report also notes that, in order to produce biological weapons, each trailer would have to be accompanied by a second and possibly a third trailer, specially designed to grow, process, sterilize, and dry the bacteria. Such trailers would "have equipment such as mixing tanks, centrifuges, and spray dryers"�none of which were spotted in the trailers that were found. The problem, the CIA acknowledges, is that "we have not yet found" these post-production trailers.

Question: Is it that they haven't been found�or that they don't exist?

It could well be that the CIA is right about its inferences. Either way, these trailers�simply by being capable of producing biotoxins�constituted violations of U.N. Security Council resolutions barring such technology. However, we're beyond U.N. resolutions at this point. We're looking for evidence that Iraq actually did produce such weapons. From what we know so far, the trailers constitute less than airtight proof.

Sounds like bullshit to me!

Martin Buber

Loren Pechtel

To me the trailers are the equivalent of possession of burglary tools. That will get a guy with a record of burglary in a lot of trouble.

Zimyatin

Just loving the irony of it all. Before this unnecessary war Iraq was a theat to nobody. But thanks to hyped up weapons charges, we've destroyed the secular government and now anti-American fundamentalist in Iraq can train to kill us. Boy, isn't that just grand?

Vorkosigan

But Loren, the whole point is that they are not burglary tools. They are just ordinary tools that the Admin has pressured the intelligence community into claiming are burglary tools.

Vorkosigan

Loren Pechtel

They make more sense as part of a mobile bioweapon factory than as anything else I've seen suggested. For someone who we *KNOW* has made bioweapons before this looks awfully damning.

RED DAVE

From Loren Pechtel:

Loren, your willingness to engage in mental gymnastics to justify the work of the ruling class constantly amazes me. 10,000+ people, many of them children, just died for two fucking trucks?

RED DAVE

Mike S.

Did you even read the article Loren? It seems like the entire point of the article was to state that while they could possibly be mobile labs the functionality and efficiency of such a lab is highly suspect given what is known about bio-weapon manufacturing and that the pressure to find ANYTHING caused the junior inspectors to jump to a hasty conclusion.

This piece is best summed up in this quote:

To go back to your burglar analogy if you widen your definition of burglary tools to be anything that could possibly be used in a burglary then any search will find "burglary tools". A bar of soap is suddenly a key-duplicating device, a burlap sack with two potatoes in it becomes a devilishly clever black-jack, etc. and so forth.

A truly impartial investigation into these two trailers would find that they were in all likelihood used to produce hydrogen for artillery measuring balloons. You know, the purpose the British designed them do when they sold them to Saddam in 1987. Why is the actual role they were developed to fill by the British engineers implausable to you?

Saddam did have artillery and it seems pretty reasonable that he would want to test it so these trailers do serve a legitimate believable purpose if you are willing to remove the blinders Bush and Co. have placed on you. A purpose that everyone who knows about the use of these trucks has corroborated despite the fact that their lives would be much easier if they just told the US what they wanted to hear.