New evidence

An article in the Washington Post this morning reports on a secret investigation of Iraq’s mobile weapons labs cited in Powell’s presentation to the UN and in multiple statements made by the administration after the invasion. The unequivocal conclusion of the investigation was that those labs could not have been intended for producing WMD. The revelation is the timing of a report previously unknown to the public—not the knowledge that these trailers were not used for weapon manufacturing.

The secret investigation’s conclusions discredited Bush’s major evidence for going to war prior to CIA reports to Congress and prior to President Bush’s claim on May 24^th, 2003 that two small trailers captured by U.S. and Kurdish troops had turned out to be long-sought mobile "biological laboratories" and that “we have found the weapons of mass destruction." I said prior. Worse, it appears that members of the secret investigation team were asked if they could soften their conclusions to leave open the possibility that the trailers could be used for weapon manufacturing, even though one member of the Iraqi Survey Group is on record for saying that “it would be easier to start all over with just a bucket.”

In a previous topic on this blog, I said I would wait until Congress finished investigating before emphasizing that Bush intentionally misled Americans about the case for war. I couldn’t have been more naïve. It appears no thorough investigation by Congress on this matter will happen anytime soon. But what I didn’t count on was the freedom of speech exercised by the secret investigating team. Clearly someone on the team was upset that the report was ignored by the administration and couldn’t live with the fact that it was setting on a shelf marked classified. Kudos to our brave investigators for using the press as an alternative for truth telling.

The article ran this morning and has yet to be picked up by the major news bodies. I saw a quick clip on CNN summarizing the article, but it was buried. I’ll give it a day before I complain too much about news coverage. I’m not optimistic though. There’s too much going on (the Moussaoui Trial, immigration, and Iran to name a few). If it gets enough coverage, I believe this may be the last straw for many.

Let’s be clear: Bush’s people knew experts opposed using these trailers as evidence prior to making multiple statements to the public that these labs supported invading Iraq. Prior.