Well, we know by now that they weren't really WMD in Iraq. Today,
WaPo tells us that the Administration knew they weren't, even then:
- On May 29, 2003, 50 days after the fall of Baghdad, President Bush proclaimed a fresh victory for his administration in Iraq: Two small trailers captured by U.S. and Kurdish troops had turned out to be long-sought mobile "biological laboratories." He declared, "We have found the weapons of mass destruction."
The claim, repeated by top administration officials for months afterward, was hailed at the time as a vindication of the decision to go to war. But even as Bush spoke, U.S. intelligence officials possessed powerful evidence that it was not true....A secret fact-finding mission to Iraq — not made public until now — had already concluded that the trailers had nothing to do with biological weapons. Leaders of the Pentagon-sponsored mission transmitted their unanimous findings to Washington in a field report on May 27, 2003, two days before the president's statement.
***
"There was no connection to anything biological," said one expert who studied the trailers. Another recalled an epithet that came to be associated with the trailers: "the biggest sand toilets in the world."
Frustrated? Well, some are. I laughed at
Kevin Drum's response: "Is this ever going to end? How many more deliberate fabrications would we learn about if we could just turn the White House upside down and shake it?"
But I think the Drums of the world need to get a little perspective here. We are learning about confidentiality these days, people, and this DOD report was
secret. Sure, it was distributed several days before Bush declared WMD victory, but how do we know that Bush had declassified the report so that he could read it and learn this little detail? Huh? That's right.
So remember, people. Perspective.
Gattigap
