Growing Fallout from Pentagon announcement -- trouble for Bush?
The fallout intensified after Wednesday's bombshell Pentagon announcement that American forces had discovered a possible mobile biological weapons lab. If further tests bear this out, it would be a huge blow to leading Quagmirist theoreticians, already crippled by a string of humiliating setbacks.
The Associated Press says "It was the first time the Defense Department has announced it might have evidence of the sort of prohibited unconventional weapons programs that it said justified forcibly disarming Saddam Hussein."
"The trailer," Pauline Jelinek reports, "had been taken into custody April 19 at a Kurdish checkpoint in northern Iraq."
But if the White House expected such evidence would assuage angry Quagmirists, still vexed by tumultuously painful losses -- the fall of Baghdad and the ouster of Saddam Hussein chief among them -- it had another thing coming.
Among leading experts, moreover, the mood was more of heightened skepticism -- not many seemed impressed by the latest find, and widespread mistrust is prompting growing concern among senior U.S. officials.
The White House appeared caught off guard yesterday after remarks by noted weapons expert Sean Penn, whose 3-day fact-finding mission to Baghdad December failed to turn up evidence Iraq possessed banned weapons.
The widely respected Penn, whose qualifications in the field include 3 prestigious Oscar nominations, 1 Golden Berlin Bear award and 1997 Best Actor winner for his role in She's So Lovely, said: "There's no way that thing that man showed on TV is a chemical lab. I know it isn't and I ought to know -- been doing chemicals all my life. Half my brain is fried from heroin and stuff, man. Look, if Saddam was cooking meth and speed in that trailer, I'd know. Trust me. And why wage a war on drugs in Iraq anyway? What about Columbia? No oil. That's why."
Penn wasn't alone -- most top experts expressed similar skepticism.
* British specialist and rock guitarist Pete Townshend said he couldn't understand what the brouhaha was about. "What's wrong with doing a little research?" he pointedly asked.
* Oliver Stone called the discovery a joke. "It's obvious the Dallas police, the CIA, the DIA, the FBI and the White House are in on it. Saddam was just a patsy. He was framed. The scene in that picture of the trailer was Dealey Plaza, not Baghdad."
* Barbra Streisand said: "What's a bio lab?"
* James Carville: "Drag a $100 bill through a trailer park in Baghdad and you're bound to catch trailer trash."
* Peter Arnett: "Any fool knows that's a mobile baby milk factory."
On Capitol Hill, skeptics weren't hard to find either.
The Congressional Black Caucus denounced the discovery as racist. One staffer put it this way: "Notice it just so happens they find that thing in northern Iraq? Why not southern Iraq? You know the answer."
Sen. Robert Byrd's office issued a scathing statement: "I am loath to think of a phony bio weapons lab being used as an advertising backdrop for a presidential slogan."
Sen. Ted Kennedy said, "Any fool knows that's a mobile alcohol distillation factory for bootleggers."
On the House side, Rep. Henry Waxman dismissed the lab as a hoax. "In the back of the trailer hangs a Texas tag," he said. He suspects the lab was shipped to Iraq from Bush's ranch in Texas, and called on the General Accounting Office to probe the cost of the stunt to taxpayers.
"A federal judge Wednesday ordered Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein and others to pay nearly $104 million to the families of two Sept. 11 victims, saying there is evidence -- though meager -- that Iraq had a hand in the terrorists attacks," reports the Associated Press
"The closely watched case was the first lawsuit against the terrorists believed responsible for the World Trade Center attack to reach the damages phase."
So, does this mean Saddam's good and decent reputation is now tarnished -- tarnished by association with binny?
Not if Mark Geragos has anything to say about it. This case is taylor-made for him. I can just see it now: Saddam's parents pleading their son's innocence before the cameras as Geragos denounces the Plaintiffs for conducting a voodoo-type investigation and the judge as a right-wing hack.
Underscoring Bush's growing political problems, a new poll shows "Most Americans think winning the war with Iraq helped in the campaign against terrorism and a growing number are optimistic the economy will now improve," reports Will Lester of the Associated Press.
Even more troubling for Bush, "Many Americans today think President Bush will be re-elected to a second term and, in head-to-head matchups, Bush bests the top Democratic contenders," Fox News reports.
While only a itty-bitty, teensy-weensy 61% of the public in Fox's latest Opinion Dynamics poll believe Bush will win a second term, a humungous 20% predict defeat for Bush.
On Bush's re-election prospects, even Republicans appeared deeply divided, with only a slim majority of 85% believing Bush wins a second term.
/sarcasm.
Under the heading, Taliban appears to be regrouped and well funded, the Christian Science Monitor reports that "The Taliban are making a comeback."
Proof? The Taliban are again giving interviews to reporters! Powerful, devastating interviews, too! Not only that, but the Taliban look confident during these interviews. I mean, really, really confident.These interviews -- precision-guided, highly coordinated -- are shock and awing battered/demoralized Coalition forces throughout Afghanistan. The awesome display of interview firepower have thrust the Taliban to the gates of the capital, inflicting massive U.S. casualties, taking huge swaths of territory with every punishing interview the Taliban deliver. These interviews will go down in history as the greatest battlefield success ever.
The Taliban's confident performance in interviews "undercuts recent assertions by U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld that major combat operations in Afghanistan are over, and that the focus will now be on reconstruction," the Monitor chirps.
And what happens if the Taliban actually strikes militarily -- rather than just giving interviews?
"In Zabul province last month...Taliban forces took control of two remote districts near the Pakistani border for nearly a week. Afghan military forces, backed up by U.S. Special Forces and helicopter gunships, eventually dislodged the Taliban fighters."
However, no sign yet that writers for the Christian Science Monitor can be dislodged from the land of wishful thinking.
Anyway, that's...
My two cents...
"JohnHuang2"
