Silly me, I actually thought that some of the bias would be gone once Raines left.
I was dreaming.
Heh. This could be the janitor, for all anyone knows ;).
Pending instructions to the contrary, at least.
Okay, you are the President of the United States, responsible for the national security of a nation of 280 million in the post 9/11 world. Saddam and his regime are pyschopaths, they are a terrorist organization, they support other terrorist organizations, they have developed and used WMDs before, they are suspected of attempting to acquire and use these weapons again, and they failed to cooperate fully and proactively with Resolution 1441 even though their very survival was at stake.
Given these circumstances, do you give Saddam the benefit of the doubt, thus assuming the risk of a future WMD attack if you happen to be wrong? Or do you assume the worst unless and until proven otherwise, with the side effects of of a "mistake" nevertheless including (1) eliminating said psycopaths with extreme prejudice, (2) enforcing the Bush Doctrine (and sending a message to other wannabe rouge states who support terrorism, such as Syria and Iran), (3) eliminating the underlying threat of WMDs, and (4) liberating a nation of over 24 million people?
This one should be a no-brainer. In fact, it was.
Get a team of experts in anthrax production to go there and make anthrax with the equipment on that truck. If they can do so, then there you have it.
One of these two photographs depicts an elaborate piece of stagecraft featuring an actor playing the role of his life in an extraordinary charade calculated to distract a gullible public from the embarassing reality of a catastrophic failure in national defense planning. The other is a picture of Saddam Hussein.
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.
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.
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!