Okay, this is an expose on a CIA analyst with a forth coming book about "curveball".
While the administration has repeatedly acknowledged intelligence failures over Iraqi weapons claims that led to war, new accounts by former insiders such as Drumheller shed light on one of the most spectacular failures of all: How U.S. intelligence agencies were eagerly drawn in by reports about a troubled defector's claims of secret germ factories in the Iraqi desert. The mobile labs were never found.
Drumheller, who is writing a book about his experiences, described in extensive interviews repeated attempts to alert top CIA officials to problems with the defector, code-named Curveball, in the days before the Powell speech. Other warnings came prior to President Bush's State of the Union address on Jan. 28, 2003. In the same speech that contained the now famous "16 words" on Iraqi attempts to acquire uranium, Bush spoke in far greater detail about mobile labs "designed to produce germ warfare agents."
Okay, lets pick this apart. Let's look at Powell's speech again:
Although Iraq's mobile production program began in the mid-1990s, U.N. inspectors at the time only had vague hints of such programs. Confirmation came later, in the year 2000.
The source was an eye witness, an Iraqi chemical engineer who supervised one of these facilities. He actually was present during biological agent production runs. He was also at the site when an accident occurred in 1998. Twelve technicians died from exposure to biological agents.
He reported that when UNSCOM was in country and inspecting, the biological weapons agent production always began on Thursdays at midnight because Iraq thought UNSCOM would not inspect on the Muslim Holy Day, Thursday night through Friday. He added that this was important because the units could not be broken down in the middle of a production run, which had to be completed by Friday evening before the inspectors might arrive again.
This defector is currently hiding in another country with the certain knowledge that Saddam Hussein will kill him if he finds him. His eye-witness account of these mobile production facilities has been corroborated by other sources.
A second source, an Iraqi civil engineer in a position to know the details of the program, confirmed the existence of transportable facilities moving on trailers.
A third source, also in a position to know, reported in summer 2002 that Iraq had manufactured mobile production systems mounted on road trailer units and on rail cars.
Finally, a fourth source, an Iraqi major, who defected, confirmed that Iraq has mobile biological research laboratories, in addition to the production facilities I mentioned earlier.
Okay, first off the WP makes one reference in the 4 page article to "curveball" being only one of several sources. The rest of the article is dedicated to Drumheller and his attempt to warn about "curveball"'s credibility. It also states flatly, the mobile labs were never found. As a matter of fact, 2 out of 3 teams of experts indicated that the trailers that were found could have been used for weapons production. You would think that would merit some mention in an honest examination of the facts of this case. But anyway.....
Now let's look at the real intel on the bio trailers.
Powell says firstly, that "U.N. inspectors at the time only had vague hints of such programs."
Well what does that mean? It certainly sounds to me like UN officials were the first to detect this program. That might have been nice to know in the WPs extensive article. Kind of sounds like it wasn't a Bush set up then doesn't it, since this was brought up by the UN in the mid-nineties.....but anyway....
Who else said Saddam had bio trailers? Another engineer, another undisclosed source, and a former Iraqi military officer. Did all their stories fall apart? Were they all lying? What is the deal on these sources? The Washington Post doesn't mention them specifically or the veracity of their claims. They only focus on one informant who's story has fallen apart and tried to discredit the whole administration because of one potentially bad source.
Folks, this is not an isolated incident. When this first started happening, about 2 seconds after Saddam's statue fell, I started to think, wow, Bush and Powell had it all wrong. The more I have investigated these media reports and actually done my homework, the more it becomes clear.
MOST OF THE PRE-WAR INTEL WAS AND IS CORRECT. PERIOD.
Now I really have to say, President Bush has done a horrible disservice to this country, the troops, and the truth by letting the leftist media get away with this, but I think that the appointing of Tony Snow to press secretary heralded a change. I think the Bush administration finally realizes the awful impact of its silence on this matter. The US has been successfully discredited around the world. When the fact is:
MOST OF THE PRE-WAR INTEL WAS AND IS CORRECT. PERIOD.
The leftest media has so thoroughly convinced the moderates that Bush lied, it will be difficult to ever convince the moderates of the truth.
But the American people are not stupid. They know that Saddam was a very bad guy. They know he would hand WMD over to terrorists in a heartbeat. They just didn't know Saddam had them still. They also didn't know whether Saddam was working with terrorists or not. But they were ready to believe it, it just needed to be proved. Now it has been, no thanks to the Bush Administration.
So I offer this as a direct challenge to the Bush Administration. Respond to this article in the WP. Write an editorial and explain that:
1. curveball was not the only source
2. tell them about the other intel
3. explain that more experts than not believe the trailers we captured were for WMD production
4. explain that even if they weren't the weapons trailers, the sourcing was more than enough for intel analysis to conclude they were exstant
5. stand up for yourselves dammit!
6. and stand up for Powell who served this country faithful, for he was mostly correct, don't let this nonsense discredit him in history. Powell is an American hero, a real American hero, he deserves better and so do we.
