Now, to dredge up an episode from the war that I noted at the time but which has been flushed down the memory hole.
During the invasion, thanks to the embedded reporters, we knew that the troops had captured a factory that manufactured nerve agent. The plant manager was an Iraqi general and the plant was secured by Iraqi infantry. It was not on any UN maps, it had been kept secret from the UN inspectors.
Then after a couple of days they announced that no, come to find out, it wasn’t nerve agent at all, it was agricultural pesticide. Then they found barrels of the stuff in Iraqi army ammo dumps and again, after a couple of days, it was announced that it was agricultural pesticide, again, after all.
This happened at least three times; in one occasion the reporters at the scene got sick.
Nerve agent, diluted and spread on fields is agricultural pesticide and agricultural pesticide, at full strength and spread on Iranians, is nerve agent. Manufactured by the Iraqi Army and stored in Iraqi Army ammo dumps it is clearly nerve agent.
So, in other words, we found the WMD and then re-defined it out of existence. Considering that Bush very nearly lost his presidency over the issue, I wondered then who had the power to bury the find that confirmed everything they had said going in. It would probably be the same people who denied the fact that Saddam had sent his agents to Niger in search of yellow cake, and the same people who denied that Iran was developing nuclear weapons. And, now we know, denied the same thing with respect to Syria.
They need to be in prison right alongside Aldrich Ames. For life.
Ever hear of Dale Stoffel?
If agents and former agents start singing about this under subpoena, I wonder if Joe "mint tea" Wilson and Valerie "Mata Hari of the typing pool" Plame will be tragically implicated.
“Nerve agent, diluted and spread on fields is agricultural pesticide and agricultural pesticide, at full strength and spread on Iranians, is nerve agent. “
That’s really what it is. Bug spray for humans.
Your statements are not lost in my memory hole. I as you remember very well those thousands of communications that we all participated in those first four years or so regarding Iraq. I only wish that this site could have retained in full the whole thousand posts or so many of us had discussed in often detail. And that goes for what Steven Hayes could have donated to this site as well.
Great post, your memory serves you well. I’ve wondered about the same thing.
I’ve thought about this myself. I think some inspectors on the ground in Iraq didn’t want to find anything.
Does anyone know where the results of the lab tests of the “pesticides” could be found?