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Laboratories of Mass Deception
April 13, 2006
“The White House is not the intelligence-gathering agency.”
White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan, April 12, 2006
Clearly. It isn’t big on taking responsibility either. The Washington Post revealed yesterday that two days before President Bush declared to the world on May 29, 2003, that two trailers found in Iraq were the long-sought weapons of mass destruction producing biological laboratories, a technical team commissioned by the Pentagon reported back that the supposed bio labs were not WMD production facilities at all. And yet, President Bush, Vice President Cheney, and other high-level administration officials repeatedly peddled false claims about Iraq’s biological weapons labs for months after this report was sent to the Defense Intelligence Agency. President Bush, whose credibility is seemingly damaged (PDF) more and more on a daily basis, must again confront the question of what did he know and when did he know it.
- The Bush Administration continued to peddle the myth that that these trailers were WMD biological laboratories, long after the Pentagon had evidence to the contrary. The Post reported that a special Pentagon-commissioned technical team of experts, composed of scientists and engineers, concluded that the trailers had nothing to do with biological weapons and “transmitted their unanimous findings to Washington in a field report on May 27, 2003.” Over the next few months, Bush, Cheney, Powell, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Rice, and others continued to peddle the discounted claim that Iraq possessed biological weapons labs. These administration figures never indicated there were doubts about the laboratories. Powell said, “There is no question in our mind what their purpose was. Nobody has come up with an alternative purpose that makes sense.” But in fact, the technical team unequivocally reported its conclusion that the trailers were not intended to manufacture biological weapons. There was no connection to anything biological," said one expert who studied the trailers. Still, as late as September 2003, Cheney declared, “We’ve, since the war, found two [laboratories]…that can be used to make anthrax or smallpox….”
- Once again, the White House refuses to take any responsibility for the error but blames the CIA and Pentagon. McClellan tried to defend administration officials by stating, “The White House is not the intelligence-gathering agency.” He argued that when public statements were made claiming that WMD production facilities had been found in Iraq, they were relying on the assessment of the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). The CIA and DIA did falsely report (PDF) on May 28, 2003, that bio weapons labs had been found in Iraq. But, a week before this report was published, the White House was already stating its belief that the trailers were in fact bio labs. White House spokeswoman Claire Buchan stated on May 21 that, “In fact, we have already found at least two mobile labs.”
- History is repeating itself. The administration selectively culled and pushed intelligence in the lead up to the war; now we learn that this manipulation continued after the invasion as well. Here are some examples of how the administration misused the Iraq intelligence: The administration claimed an al Qaeda prisoner reported that Saddam had trained al Qaeda in bomb-making, but the Defense Intelligence Agency reported before the war that the prisoner was “intentionally misleading the debriefers”; the administration claimed aluminum tubes in Iraq were irrefutable evidence that Saddam had a nuclear program, but the experts at the State and Energy Departments dissented from that view; the administration claimed that Iraqi drones capable of delivering WMD could attack the U.S., but the experts at the Air Force dissented (PDF) from the view. More examples can be found here (PDF) and here. Add this to the list of missteps President Bush has yet to answer for.
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