[Lunatic Fringe]

Powell made these concessions when the trailers showed up at the Texas Motor Speedway on Friday.

[Support Free Republic]

---

Sit Down Hillary .. You're blocking the TV
	Donate Here By Secure Server Or mail checks to FreeRepublic , LLC PO BOX 9771 FRESNO, CA 93794 or you can use PayPal at Jimrob@psnw.com
STOP BY AND BUMP THE FUNDRAISER THREAD- It is in the breaking news sidebar!

[Pan_Yans Wife]

ping

[DentsRun]

I remember reading that Powell, just before his U.N. presentation, threw his speech up in the air in frustration, saying "This is all bullsh*t" (or words to that effect). He knew his speech was horse puckey. He can't pretend now he never had a clue.

[sharktrager]

Has anyone ever explained why the Iraqis buried trailers that were just used to produce hydrogen for weathe balloons?

[GraniteStateConservative]

WASHINGTON (AFP) - US Secretary of State Colin Powell has acknowledged that pre-war information he gave the United Nations on Iraq's mobile chemical and biological weapons laboratories to justify the US-led war on Iraq was not "solid."

Before the US-led war on Iraq, Powell had presented the UN with data proclaiming to prove that Iraq was engaged in the development of weapons of mass destruction.

"Now it appears not to be the case, that it was that solid," Powell told reporters on the plane taking him back to Washington from a trip to Brussels.

"But at the time I was preparing that presentation it was presented to me as being solid," he said.

Powell said that before his February 5 2003 speech to the UN he had asked the CIA for data that would show the danger of the weapons of mass destruction Iraq was supposedly developing, and which have never been found in Iraq.

The presence of mobile labs capable of escaping the notice of international inspectors was "the most dramatic" element of his presentation to the UN, he said, "and I made sure it was multi-sourced."

"Now, if the sources fell apart, then we need to find out how we've gotten ourselves in that position," he said. "I've had discussions about it with the CIA."

[xzins]

not sure they were labs

Incorrect title, imo. It should read, not sure they were biological weapons labs.

They're sure they were labs that were used to produce hydrogen.

see the link, Laughably, Iraqi Trailers Said to (Inefficiently) Make Hydrogen via BIOLOGICAL PROCESSES, Not Biological Arms

[Jorge]

The trailers were the only discovery the administration had cited as evidence of an illicit Iraqi weapons program.

Huh? What about the photos of entire Kurdish towns wiped out by Saddam's WMDs? Women and children laying in the streets?

Since when are the "trailers" the only evidence?

[kcvl]

Thursday, June 26, 2003

WASHINGTON — The White House said Thursday that the discovery of documents and parts from Iraq's pre-1991 nuclear weapons efforts supported the Bush administration's contention that Saddam Hussein's (search) government had concealed weapons programs.

The U.N. nuclear watchdog agency interpreted the find as proof that Iraq's nuclear weapons effort had never been revived.

Starting in May, a former Iraqi nuclear scientist, Mahdi Shukur Obeidi, provided parts and documents to CIA (search) officers in Baghdad, U.S. officials said.

He said he kept them buried in his backyard, on the orders of Saddam's government, as "part of a high-level plan to reconstitute the nuclear weapons program once sanctions were ended," said White House spokesman Ari Fleischer.

Fleischer, confirming reports by U.S. intelligence officials, said that Obeidi claimed the parts and documents "represented a complete set of what would be needed to rebuild a centrifuge uranium enrichment program."

Obeidi turned over a two-foot-tall stack of documents that includes detailed designs for centrifuges, intelligence officials said. Obeidi told intelligence officials the parts from his garden were among the more difficult-to-produce components of a centrifuge.

"What's notable in that this case illustrates the extreme challenge that the world community faces in Iraq as we search for evidence of WMD programs that were designed to elude detection by international inspectors," Fleischer said. "Throughout the entire inspection process, Iraqis were scared to death to talk because they would die if they would."

Separately, CIA officials said Thursday they stood by their findings that two truck trailers recovered in Iraq in the war's aftermath were mobile biological weapons laboratories. U.S. officials acknowledged that some analyst's in the State Department's intelligence bureau had sent a June 2 memo casting doubt on those conclusions.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,90440,00.html

[kcvl]

Chasing Saddam's Weapons

Interview with David Kay...


You've talked about the necessity to speak to Iraqis. Have you had problems there? What has happened to some of the individuals who have come forward and spoken to you?

A number of Iraqis report that they're under threat. The two cases that disturb us the most are two Iraqis who-- One of whom was killed right after being talked to by us. He was shot in the back of his head. Now it's possible it's a robbery, but my familiarity with robberies is usually they steal something, and they just don't shoot you. In his case, nothing was stolen. Another very important source to us on the biological program, took six bullets to his body, and it's only by the grace of God that he's still alive. Others report routinely that they're under threats, and we're trying to deal with that.


David Kay...

No one doubts that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction pre-1991. But 13 years of U.N. activity, including Dr. Blix, was unable to confirm that the Iraqis had actually gotten rid of all those weapons as they claim. So even if there is just the remotest possibility that some of those weapons still remain, don't we owe an obligation to the Iraqi citizenry, now that we're controlling the country, to ensure that those weapons are not used by one political faction or the other against them? Don't we have an obligation to surrounding countries in this region to see that those weapons don't leak and move to other countries and be used by one group or the other there?

So that's the pressure that drives us. The pressure to find out the truth has absolutely nothing to do with whether one or the other dossier or briefing was right or wrong in trying to prove or disprove that. We need to know what the situation was here.

I genuinely believe that 60, 70, maybe 100 years from now, people will still be finding things in this country that we didn't know related to the Saddam empire. He buried a tremendous amount of stuff. He hid stuff. It's a huge country with a relatively small population in a central area. So I think people will be digging things up.

So we won't have the 100 percent solution. We will have an understanding. I think we'll have the evidence, so independent people, including journalists, can examine it and say, "Yes, that evidence supports that conclusion," or "Does it?" That's our objective -- to get in the public domain, at the end of the day, the full record of Saddam's WMD program.

[Enduring Freedom]

Who cares?

This is not about WMD. It is about meeting the challenge of War by the Islamoterrorists.

Any man I see out there, I'm gonna shoot him. Any sumbitch takes a shot at me, I'm not only gonna kill him, but I'm gonna kill his wife. All his friends. Burn his damn house down.

America is too metrosexual right now to get the reality of what we are facing. Thanks to Bill Clinton and Socialism, we think we are going to bullshit our way out of war.

The Russians have just forced the surrender of key Chechnyan terrorists by kidnapping their relatives.

Releasing the Bin Laden family was inept, naive and incompetent.

We can thank terrorism czar Richard Ashol Clarke for that.

[ex-snook]

After the aspirin factory bombing and the yellow cake forgery from Africa, it was obvious that the 'intelligence' community was passing along false information. Since no one has been ousted it follows that the 'intelligence' was made to order. Powell drank the hemlock as a truth-telling spokesman for the US. He might as well resign and write a book.

[Merdoug]

"They difinitely DID have weapons of mass destruction! I mean, I'm PRETTY SURE they had WMD,.......uh,...I think they had WMD,.......ummmmmm,.....maybe the DIDN'T have WMD,.....but THAT DOESN'T MATTER! That's NOT why we went into Iraq! We went into Iraq to,.....ummm,....free the people from a dictator! YEAH! That's it! Free them from a dictator! That's the ticket!"
I believe this is called "rationalization".
I was not for the war. I did not see a reason for it. We invaded a soverign nation. Saddam was scum, but not any more than half a dozen OTHER dictators around the world. WHY DID WE INVADE IRAQ? Come on, Folks. Face the truth. Bush WANTED to invade Iraq. I bet he planned to invade Iraq before 9/11 even HAPPENED. I don't know why. I DON'T believe it was for "the oil", but it certainely wasn't for the reason they have given us.
One more thing: it really GALLS me when, just because a person is against a war, they are AUTOMATICALLY labeled as being against the men and women fighting in that war. NO ONE supports the troops more than me, even if I don't think this war is just. I am proud of every one of them.

[VRWC For Truth]

I smell disinformation and they are trying to smoke someone out. If I had to bet, it is Wilson. The next 'Rat book of the month club due to come out.