Mobile Weapons Labs Another in Long Line of Falsities?

posted by treeman in another thread:
There. Now none of you has any excuse. Read it. Look at the pictures. It is not a mobile medlab. It is not a chemical analysis lab. If you still arrive at a different conclusion than the CIA did... Well, then you are quite an imaginative person.

from those slides you posted, thosed mobile "labs" look like a hydrogen production system to fill artillery balloons. but that's probably just my imagination.....

 

If anyone had actually bothered reading the CIA report then they would have noticed that the analysts considered and discarded this possibility, as Iraq did not have many such balloons to fill, rarely if ever actually used any, and there would be no need to have a mobile hydrogen production facility - a stationary one would have sufficed, and been much more efficient and cheaper. The Iraqis claimed that this was the purpose, but the concept makes no sense in their case. Of course, I'm sure that those of you who do not want us to actually find anything there will choose to believe the Iraqis and a couple of British reporters over the CIA, but that's fine. Whatever makes you happy, we are all free to believe whatever bullsh*t we want to believe.

Nice try though.

Incidentally, I do not think I have ever seen so much spin and outright incorrect information in a single article, at least not one that was supposed to be nonfiction. I wonder if the writers actually read the CIA report? It doesn't sound like it.

 

tree...have you read the statements of those within the intel community, who have examined the vans, and neither agree with the assesment given, and cite 'political pressures' to conclude that they were for WMD? This article was written after those came to light...yeah, the original CIA report 'considered' the other options...but that very report has been reconsidered by some who contributed to it, and others who are more senoir, and had their 1st look at the vans after the original report, and found it's conclusions off.

 

None are more senior than Colin Powell and he says they are full of BS. He has publicly reconfirmed the trucks were for WMDs.

 

Why should we believe him now?

 

Colin Powell,for all of his many strengths, is NOT an intel analyst, on-site weapons inspector, or authority on Chemical weaponry labratory components.

Colin Powell, as much as I like him, is also the guy who claimed the uranium finds were legit. He is a very bright guy, but in this area he, like the rest of us, is limited by virute of what he is told. If that intel is flawed, wrong, or faked, so too will be his assessment of situations built on same.

 

Really dont think hes trying to convince you..You probably represent the view of about 10% of Americans. And you are probably right about 1% of the time. Your time will come. Every hundred years or so.

 

Those numbers you came up with are quite interesting....and wrong.

 

If you're going to go out of your way to be a jerk, at least have an argument. You don't have to agree with me. Far from it -- there are many people on this board who don't agree with me and we still manage to have thoughtful, respectful discussions. I haven't said or done anything on this board to earn your shallow, hollow insults. Moreover, they're boring and they waste server space.

 

I dont mind being called a jerk , but I do mind Colin Powell being called a liar. He would be president if he wanted, but declined because of the hatred between political parties, and other goofy hacks. I dont know him personally but I know many just like him.. Hes just a guy serving his country, not for fame, fortune or power.. its just what hes always done.
Hes not some polititian whos job relys on the economy and he wouldnt lie to keep a job.
So its OK to call me a jerk, but its not O.K. to call him a liar.

 

Well Collin Powell doesn't have to be a liar, he could just be wrong. He certainly was about the uranium deal, or he was lying.

My own opinion is that Powell argued for the truth all along, when the administration and the defense dept. didn't side with his arguments, then he being the loyal person that he is, did the will of his president in trying to make the arguments the president wanted made.

 

Treeman, your holy grail of a CIA web page is what is currently under scrutiny in yesterday's papers:

June 7, 2003
Some Analysts of Iraq Trailers Reject Germ Use
By JUDITH MILLER and WILLIAM J. BROAD



American and British intelligence analysts with direct access to the evidence are disputing claims that the mysterious trailers found in Iraq were for making deadly germs. In interviews over the last week, they said the mobile units were more likely intended for other purposes and charged that the evaluation process had been damaged by a rush to judgment.

"Everyone has wanted to find the 'smoking gun' so much that they may have wanted to have reached this conclusion," said one intelligence expert who has seen the trailers and, like some others, spoke on condition that he not be identified. He added, "I am very upset with the process."

The Bush administration has said the two trailers, which allied forces found in Iraq in April and May, are evidence that Saddam Hussein was hiding a program for biological warfare. In a white paper last week, it publicly detailed its case, even while conceding discrepancies in the evidence and a lack of hard proof.

Now, intelligence analysts stationed in the Middle East, as well as in the United States and Britain, are disclosing serious doubts about the administration's conclusions in what appears to be a bitter debate within the intelligence community. Skeptics said their initial judgments of a weapon application for the trailers had faltered as new evidence came to light.

Bill Harlow, a spokesman for the Central Intelligence Agency, said the dissenters "are entitled to their opinion, of course, but we stand behind the assertions in the white paper."

In all, at least three teams of Western experts have now examined the trailers and evidence from them. While the first two groups to see the trailers were largely convinced that the vehicles were intended for the purpose of making germ agents, the third group of more senior analysts divided sharply over the function of the trailers, with several members expressing strong skepticism, some of the dissenters said.

In effect, early conclusions by agents on the ground that the trailers were indeed mobile units to produce germs for weapons have since been challenged.

"I have no great confidence that it's a fermenter," a senior analyst with long experience in unconventional arms said of a tank for multiplying seed germs into lethal swarms. The government's public report, he added, "was a rushed job and looks political." This analyst had not seen the trailers himself, but reviewed evidence from them.

The skeptical experts said the mobile plants lacked gear for steam sterilization, normally a prerequisite for any kind of biological production, peaceful or otherwise. Its lack of availability between production runs would threaten to let in germ contaminants, resulting in failed weapons.

Second, if this shortcoming were somehow circumvented, each unit would still produce only a relatively small amount of germ-laden liquid, which would have to undergo further processing at some other factory unit to make it concentrated and prepare it for use as a weapon.

Finally, they said, the trailers have no easy way for technicians to remove germ fluids from the processing tank.

Senior intelligence officials in Washington rebutted the skeptics, saying, for instance, that the Iraqis might have obtained the needed steam for sterilization from a separate supply truck.

The skeptics noted further that the mobile plants had a means of easily extracting gas. Iraqi scientists have said the trailers were used to produce hydrogen for weather balloons. While the white paper dismisses that as a cover story, some analysts see the Iraqi explanation as potentially credible.

A senior administration official conceded that "some analysts give the hydrogen claim more credence." But he asserted that the majority still linked the Iraqi trailers to germ weapons.

The depth of dissent is hard to gauge. Even if it turns out to be a minority view, which seems likely, the skepticism is significant given the image of consensus that Washington has projected and the political reliance the administration has come to place on the mobile units. At the recent summit meeting with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, President Bush cited the trailers as evidence of illegal Iraqi arms.

Critics seem likely to cite the internal dispute as further reason for an independent evaluation of the Iraqi trailers. Since the war's end, the White House has come under heavy political pressure because American soldiers have found no unconventional arms, a main rationale for the invasion of Iraq.

Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain, who also used Iraqi illicit weapons as a chief justification of the war, has been repeatedly attacked on this question in Parliament and outside it.

Experts described the debate as intense despite the American intelligence agencies' release last week of the nuanced, carefully qualified white paper concluding that the mobile units were most likely part of Iraq's biowarfare program. It was posted May 28 on the Internet at www.cia.gov.

"We are in full agreement on it," an official said of the Central Intelligence Agency and the Defense Intelligence Agency at a briefing on the white paper.

The six-page report, "Iraqi Mobile Biological Warfare Agent Production Plants," called discovery of the trailers "the strongest evidence to date that Iraq was hiding a biological warfare program."

A senior administration official said the White House had not put pressure on the intelligence community in any way on the content of its white paper, or on the timing of its release.

In interviews, the intelligence analysts disputing its conclusions focused on the lack of steam sterilization gear for the central processing tank, which the white paper calls a fermenter for germ multiplication.

In theory, the dissenting analysts added, the Iraqis could have sterilized the tank with harsh chemicals rather than steam. But they said that would require a heavy wash afterward with sterile water to remove any chemical residue - a feat judged difficult for a mobile unit presumably situated somewhere in the Iraqi desert.

William C. Patrick III, a senior official in the germ warfare program that Washington renounced in 1969, said the lack of steam sterilization had caused him to question the germ-plant theory that he had once tentatively endorsed. "That's a huge minus," he said. "I don't see how you can clean those tanks chemically."

Three senior intelligence officials in Washington, responding to the criticisms during a group interview on Tuesday, said the Iraqis could have used a separate mobile unit to supply steam to the trailer. Some Iraqi decontamination units, they said, have such steam generators.

The officials also said some types of chemical sterilization were feasible without drastic follow-up actions.

Finally, they proposed that the Iraqis might have engineered anthrax or other killer germs for immunity to antibiotics, and then riddled germ food in the trailers with such potent drugs. That, they said, would be a clever way to grow lethal bacteria and selectively decontaminate the equipment at the same time - though the officials conceded that they had no evidence the Iraqis had used such advanced techniques.

On the second issue, the officials disputed the claim that the mobile units could make only small amounts of germ-laden liquids. If the trailers brewed up germs in high concentrations, they said, every month one truck could make enough raw material to fill five R-400 bombs.

Finally, the officials countered the claim that the trailers had no easy way for technicians to drain germ concoctions from the processing tank. The fluids could go down a pipe at its bottom, they said. While the pipe is small in diameter - too small to work effectively, some analysts hold - the officials said high pressure from an air compressor on the trailer could force the tank to drain in 10 or 20 minutes.

A senior official said "we've considered these objections" and dismissed them as having no bearing on the overall conclusions of the white paper. He added that Iraq, which declared several classes of mobile vehicles to the United Nations, never said anything about hydrogen factories.

Some doubters noted that the intelligence community was still scrambling to analyze the trailers, suggesting that the white paper may have been premature. They said laboratories in the Middle East and the United States were now analyzing more than 100 samples from the trailers to verify the intelligence findings. Allied forces, they noted, have so far failed to find any of the envisioned support vehicles that the trailers would need to produce biological weapons.

One skeptic questioned the practicality of some of the conjectural steps the Iraqis are envisioned as having taken to adapt the trailers to the job of making deadly germs.

"It's not built and designed as a standard fermenter," he said of the central tank. "Certainly, if you modify it enough you could use it. But that's true of any tin can."


The reporting for this article was carried out by Judith Miller in Iraq and Kuwait and by William Broad in New York. Her agreement with the Pentagon, for an "embedded" assignment, allowed the military to review her copy to prevent breaches of troop protection and security. No changes were made in the review.



Copyright 2003 The New York Times

 

Can someone explain the last part of this to me?

Also, i don't get why anyone would trust the CIA as a truthful source of information. The whole organization is based upon deception and the ends justifying the means. Not that that's necesarily a bad thing in all cases mind you, I'm just saying they're not exactly a neutral party in this case.

 

Right. How dare I, right?

I know it's okay to call you a jerk. You go out of your way to prove yourself one. But whether you like it or not, it's also okay to question Powell since he's been wrong on this exact subject before. Now you guys can decide if he was lying or naive or was just following orders. Your call. But don't ask me to take him at his word. He's been wrong on the most serious of things too many times before. If you find that offensive, that's just kinda too damn bad. I feel the same way about just about every simple minded thing you post. And mostly I just ignore it. But tonight I'm not. So if you're offended, okay. That'd make us even.

 

Thats a pretty weak response, typical of one who has an even weaker argument, your wreckless assertions about Colin Powell betray your deep contempt for the US.
Folks who smugly contend that their posts have great value and others have none are usually wrong..In your case, Im sure of it.

 

As you are on a daily basis, but we still read your posts.



DD

 

MacBeth:

I have heard absolutely nothing (nothing reliable, at least) about any of the analysts stating that the trailers were not actually BW production labs, or that they were pressured into that analysis. Nada.

Why haven't the networks picked up this "falsity"? If it really is a "falsity", and those trailers really were used to fuel hydrogen balloons (unlikely, as none of the chemicals used in that process were found - the trailers were scrubbed clean for some odd reason), then the networks would be all over it. Also, curiously, your "source" failed to mention the fact that the trailers have a production date of 2002, but the Iraqi army has not used such balloons for over a decade... Nada.

This is simply more smoke and another attempt at deception by those who want nothing to be found and want the administration to be embarrassed for any "mistake" or "lie" that they can conjure up. Nada there.

Until the CIA puts out a retraction of its initial assessment and report, then I will assume that their assessment is correct, as I still think that it is obvious to any honest fool that it was, and all we have is the Iraqis' word - which is less than worthless - that they were used for that purpose. You still have nada.

 

Do you even read the articles that people post here?:

Let me guess, you don't find it "reliable" because it doesn't support the conclusion you decided on 11 months ago.

 

Do you read them?

While the first two groups to see the trailers were largely convinced that the vehicles were intended for the purpose of making germ agents

Two out of three... plus the CIA.

And even I can tell that there are friggen fermenters there.

And no, I do not regard the Observer as a reliable source. It has frequently presented biased articles in the past which turned out to be false. When the networks support its claims, and ther is actually some evidence, and not just "well, I know this expert who thinks differently", and when the CIA retracts its assessment, then you will have something. Until then, you're just believing what you want to believe. Smoke.