Misreporting the Duelfer report, again

The Washington Times ^ | April 28, 2005 | Masthead Editorial

[neverdem]

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The Washington Timeswww.washingtontimes.com

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Misreporting the Duelfer report, again

Published April 28, 2005

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The mainstream media is playing another misbegotten round of "gotcha" with President Bush on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. This week, the CIA issued a follow-up to its October 2004 Iraqi Survey Group report, saying its investigations into possible WMD transfers from Iraq to Syria before the war were inconclusive and warranted further investigation. Predictably, the media did not convey that message. Instead, it cherry-picked the findings.

    "Report Finds No Evidence Syria Hid Arms," The Washington Post's headline blared. Actually, the report, by the CIA's chief weapons inspector, Charles A. Duelfer, made no such claim. Here's what the CIA said: It is "unable to rule out the possibility that WMD was evacuated to Syria before the war"; it was "unlikely that an official transfer of WMD material from Iraq to Syria took place"; and it found "no senior policy, program, or intelligence officials who admitted any direct knowledge of such movement of WMD."

    But it said nothing about what Syria did or did not do, as The Post claimed. Instead, the report held out the possibility that an "unofficial" transfer -- that is, a secret one that the Iraqi officials the CIA interviewed didn't know about -- may have taken place.

    In fact, the report says, "there was evidence of a discussion of possible WMD collaboration initiated by a Syrian security officer," and the CIA "received information about movement of material out of Iraq, including the possibility that WMD was involved." These reports "were sufficiently credible to merit further investigation" -- especially "given the insular and compartmented nature of...

[T. Buzzard Trueblood]

Instead, the report held out the possibility that an "unofficial" transfer -- that is, a secret one that the Iraqi officials the CIA interviewed didn't know about -- may have taken place.

If there was a transfer, you had better believe it would have been "unofficial."

Geez, do these idiot liberals think they'll find some Iraqi official's diary entry somewhere reading, "Transferred WMDs to Syria today. Assad looks great, took us all to lunch."

[Waco]

Don't worry, the LIBS won't stoop any lower than treason.

[ex-snook]

Doesn't speak too well about our spy-in-the-sky capabilities to spot movements from where 'we knew they were located'.

[untrained skeptic]

We don't have an infinite number of spy satalites. Most if not all of them are not in geosynchronous orbit. They can't watch everywhere, all the time. The movement of the satalites relative to the earth is not something we can hide. Foreign countries and terrorists know when the satalites can't see them.

We also use planes and UAVs to suppliment our satalites, but those have a possibility of being detected and shot down.

Spy satalites and UAVs are not supsitutes to human intelligence on the ground, which we lacked.

[SuziQ]

"Transferred WMDs to Syria today. Assad looks great, took us all to lunch."

*snort*