Today's Bullshit

Concerns the mobile labs.

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.

The three-page field report and a 122-page final report three weeks later were stamped "secret" and shelved. Meanwhile, for nearly a year, administration and intelligence officials continued to publicly assert that the trailers were weapons factories.

Howard Dean is asking for the report. It's another case of "What did the President know and when did he know it?" If he knew about the secret report before he made the "We found the weapons of mass destruction" pronouncement... well, then just throw another lie on the fire.

In this incredible moment of deja vu, a time when the statements about Iran are curiously reminiscent of those about Iraq, when just today there's a claim that Iran can build a bomb in 16 days made by the same guy who pushed the 16 words on Iraq and uranium and Niger into the State of the Union address, I hope somebody is making a catalog all of this stuff. These guys have no credibility on Iran. None. They squandered it by continually misleading on Iraq.