'No blister agent' in Iraq shells

Three dozen mortar shells uncovered in Iraq earlier this month had no chemical agents, the Danish army says. It is not clear why initial tests first showed they could contain blister gas, the Danish army said in a statement carried by the AP news agency.

The 36 shells were found in southern Iraq buried among building equipment, even though they appeared to have been abandoned for at least 10 years.

I took a look at the document you cited. Unfortunately, you missed the part where Secretary Powell says that when the inspectors got to the site, they found nothing. Contrary to your claim, I don't find anything in the article to indicate that our satellites gave us information where we could just go in after the war and find specific weapons. In fact, it is clear that the analysis took considerable time, and we did find some of the missile parts and UAVs, as I recall.

I see no evidence of deliberate deception on the part of the Bush administration. Yes, they may have misinterpreted intelligence, but the mistakes were made by numerous other analysts as well, and were mistakes that any rational person could make.

The following continues your example and shows what you left off.

Let's look at one. This one is about a weapons munition facility, a facility that holds ammunition at a place called Taji. This is one of about 65 such facilities in Iraq. We know that this one has housed chemical munitions. In fact, this is where the Iraqis recently came up with the additional four chemical weapons shells.

Here you see 15 munitions bunkers in yellow and red outlines. The four that are in red squares represent active chemical munitions bunkers.

How do I know that? How can I say that? Let me give you a closer look. Look at the image on the left. On the left is a close-up of one of the four chemical bunkers. The two arrows indicate the presence of sure signs that the bunkers are storing chemical munitions. The arrow at the top that says "security" points to a facility that is a signature item for this kind of bunker. Inside that facility are special guards and special equipment to monitor any leakage that might come out of the bunker. The truck you also see is a signature item. It's a decontamination vehicle in case something goes wrong. This is characteristic of those four bunkers. The special security facility and the decontamination vehicle will be in the area, if not at any one of them or one of the other, it is moving around those four and it moves as needed to move as people are working in the different bunkers.

Now look at the picture on the right. You are now looking at two of those sanitized bunkers. The signature vehicles are gone, the tents are gone. It's been cleaned up. And it was done on the 22nd of December as the UN inspection team is arriving, and you can see the inspection vehicles arriving in the lower portion of the picture on the right.

The bunkers are clean when the inspectors get there. They found nothing.

Thank you for the example. You did the work to back up your statement, but I think that it does not convince that the administration was involved in deliberate deception. Of course, intention is difficult to know, but the article cited shows me all the reasons that the Bush administration had to believe that WMD existed in Iraq and were being hidden from inspectors.

Were they deceived by a combination of poor human intelligence on the ground and stupid miscalculations by Saddam? Probably. But it almost certainly was an honest mistake in the correct direction, as shown by Colonel Kaddafi's willingness to give up his nuclear program just recently.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.