Posted on 06/06/2003 9:14:09 PM PDT by Brian S
If you read all the conspiracy posts on FR you would assume the opposite. According to them, all the US G does is cover up with hundreds (a US Destroyer) in on the cover up. And not one peep from anyone - in this age of cell phones, internet and hungry reporters. I do agree with you. The US would be foolish to try and fake any WMD. Every gov agreed they had them otherwise, why the inspectors? He had years to hide them.
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.
Whatever the roles of these truck trailers turn out to be, this "hydrogen" idea sounds bogus and sounds like more deception. While other processes are being researched; e.g. for fuel cells, most bulk industrial hydrogen is now generally produced in oil refineries, in a fixed plant. Seemed to me like Iraq had some of these...
See http://www.greatachievements.org/greatachievements/ga_17_2.htm:
Since World War II the demand for light products (gasoline, jet, and diesel fuels) has grown, while the requirement for heavy industrial fuel oils has declined. In 1947, a process called "platforming" introduced platinum as a catalyst in the refining process. This resulted in fewer emissions, removed much of the sulfur and other contaminants, and generated significant amounts of hydrogen and other raw materials used to manufacture plastics. The availability of hydrogen was one of the most far-reaching developments of the refining industry in the 1950s. Since 1980, hydrogen processing has become so prominent that many refineries now incorporate hydrogen manufacturing plants in their processing schemes.
They were used to brew fresh beer for the troops at those remote outposts.
(/sarcasm)
I agree. My (admittedly limited) knowledge of the types of microorganisms/fermentations capable of producing hydrogen does not suggest that this is the way a country with major oil production and refining capabilities would choose to produce hydrogen.
So you're admitting that if they had been scrubbed clean with, say, a caustic substance, that the only plausible use for them would be bioweapon plants?
Try as I might, I see no benefit using this route.
Thinking my point through a bit more, doing it as an imaginary debate between competing analysts:
Analyst 1: It was a weapons lab. The hydrogen excuse doesn't work, because the metals in the vehicle show no sign of being exposed to hydrogen for any period of time.My mindset is along that of my fictional analyst 1.Analyst 2: They show no sign of being exposed to biological agents either. Besides, one of the two we have in hand was obviously just constructed, and may not even have been finished. It is possible that these were constructed for the processing of hydrogen for weather balloons, but not yet used.
Analyst 1: That is possible, but it is so unlikely as to defy credulity. The Iraqis did not say they were building these vehicles to process hydrogen, they said that the vehicles they had were used to produce hydrogen for weather balloons. So by their own words, they had been using such vehicles. Where are the vehicles they were using for the purpose of gassing up weather balloons? Why have we not found any of these vehicles showing permeation of the vessels with hydrogen?
Analyst 2: I don't know, but I object to jumping to a conclusion because we have not found counter evidence. I concede we have found no evidence to support the claim they were used to produce hydrogen. But we have found no evidence to support the claim they were used to produce bioweapons.
Analyst 1: The difference is, they have an interest in hiding the vehicles from inspection if they were used for weaponry. No such interest exists if they were used for hydrogen processing. They clearly were not open to letting us inspect the vehicles (and accounting for all of them) prior to the war. And we still have not found any that were used for hydrogen processing. If they were telling the truth, they would be there for us to find. The only explanation that makes sense is that they had them, they were used for evil purposes, and then they either hid them or destroyed them.
Analyst 2: But that isn't the only possibility. As bizarre as it sounds, they may have had them for benign purposes and on principle hid them from us.
You ask where the labs are that show evidence of having been used for weapons. I ask, where are the trucks that show evidence of having been used for hydrogen processing for weather balloons?
I can think of a good reason why we have not found those used on weapons (they hid or destroyed them). I can't think of a good reason why we have not found any used on hydrogen, which tells me that they had none used on hydrogen.
It is assumed that they were scrubbed clean because no credible other use for the vehicle has been presented. The hydrogen excuse is not credible, despite the claims of the people in this article, for the reasons I describe just above.
So if you have these vehicles, and you can't think of a non-weapons use for the vehicles that makes sense, and the Iraqi's explanation for the use of the vehicles is shown to not be the case on the vehicles in hand, and you can't find any vehicles showing evidence of being used the way the Iraqis say they were used, where does that leave you?
Of course, we could have planted it earlier and avoided all of this firestorm. I wonder why we didn't?
A couple of plastic washtubs with holes in them are found in a Maryland pond, and this constitutes 'evidence' Hatfill may have used them to make the postal anthrax.
Two hidden Iraqi tractor trailer trucks - identical to the ones illustrated to the UN by Secretary Powell - with obvious fermenters and other bio-manufacturing gear are found intact in Iraq and unnamed 'skeptics' have 'serious doubts' they were used for what they obviously were intended for.
Only in places like New York Times Alternate Liberal Universe does cooking up such bullshiite come so easily!
That's because you are not looking at the big picture.
The electorate doesn't care. The electorate is damn relieved Saddam is gone -- whether or not they suspect, in the back of their minds, that the last 18 months was always really about Saddam, not bin Laden and his merry men. The electorate is damn happy to see that we liberated Iraq from an evil dictator. The electorate will be even happier when gas prices fall below $1 a gallon in the next few months. And the electorate will be damn satisfied with the job Bush has done on the national security crisis if, as seems likely, the presidential election rolls around without any follow-up to 9/11.
The Democrats will try to make the failure to find WMD an issue. The electorate won't care -- therefore, Bush doesn't care. Further, the Dems need to be careful what they wish for, because Bush has booby-trapped the whole deal. Supposing the Democrats do get a wide-ranging investigation into what we really know about 9-11. Well, congress already tried to get the CIA to cough up, and the CIA balked. You know what the biggest thing they balked on was? Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Can you guess why they balked on the issue of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, and who Khalid Sheikh Mohammed worked for? The Democrats aren't going to like the answer to that, if they ever find it out. Similarly, the question of what "secret intelligence" ultimately motivated Colin Powell to wave that little vial of phony anthrax at the UN is ultimately going to lead back to the question: who sent the anthrax? And, while full disclosure on that might well be embarassing for the administration, it would make the Democrats look much, much worse. Do you see how sweet this setup is?
What about the rest of the world? Don't we need to convince them that we were on the up-and-up when we used WMD to justify attacking Iraq? Not really, provided the issue is spinnable either way -- which it will be. The less we come up with in terms of WMD, the tougher we look. In fact, if we told the real story on WMD, we actually wouldn't look very tough at all. And the question becomes, is it better to be feared or to be loved? And the answer to that question, as Machievelli pointed out in The Prince, is that it is much better to be feared than to be loved.
Great angle. Had not thought of it, but I like it.
But this is the New York Times, and it is utterly untrustworthy. It is possible that Miller and Broad are reporting accurately. It is equally possible that they made it all up. There's simply no way to tell.
The Times should stop reporting any story which relies on the trust of the reader in the honor of the reporters and editors.
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