Is anyone really surprised by this? Not exactly. Emphasis mine. So our government is either incompetent or lying or both. Yeah, I'm thinking both. What's particularly sickening, from my point of view, is Colin Powell's role in this.
Re: The mobile bio labs that weren't. Not sickening. Sad. The human mind is remarkable for its ability to compartmentalize and self-deceive. Beyond that, Powell probably thought he was being a good soldier and doing the right thing.
Re: The mobile bio labs that weren't. Well, it's sickening to me, personally, because I thought he had more integrity than that. His public statements were my only consolation that maybe invading Iraq wasn't the most mind-bogglingly stupid thing we could be doing. I honestly thought that if he was on board then maybe there was something to all of the administration claims about the danger Iraq posed. I was an idiot.
Questions regarding the mobile labs aren't new. This "existence" of them was actually revealed by everyone's favorite douchebag, Chalabi. The New Yorker had a story about this a couple of years ago. When intelligence experts realized that Chalabi seemed like he was telling the US what it wanted to hear, they pretended that they had heard about mobile weapons labs in Iraq, thinking that the notion was so preposterous that Chalabi wouldn't take the bait. But take the bait he did: he returned to their next meeting with "proof" that these labs existed. The weapons inspectors knew that this was bad intelligence, but the Bush administration cherry-picked it anyway.
It's the first I've heard about the report that despite having in their posession, Bushco. issued statements in direct contradiction of.
I think most Americans just don't hear this stuff because Cheney grunts so loudly while he rapes them.
This is one of those things were you just shake your head and say, "why?" Considering the bigger expense, and the potential for harm from accidents or sabbotage, why on earth would you create a "mobile" lab to make small pox and anthrax? Wouldn't you just create multiple, small, well-hidden labs? They would obviously be effective as we haven't found any of those either. It seems to me that if you put these things on wheels and drive them around the desert, there will be a greater chance of detection. This reminds me of the batshit crazy 9/11 conspiracy theorists that claim that the government dressed up drones to look like commercial airliners and then flew them into buildings while hijacking commercial jets and "disposing" of them somewhere else. Wouldn't it be simpler to just hijack the planes and ram them into the buildings?
Out of ignorance, what would be possible purposes of a truck diagrammed in Barbara's post with the equipment listed?
In Barbara's post, an investigator said the trailers were "almost certainly" for the production of hydrogen. Beyond reading what's in the post, I have no more knowledge or information than you.
oh cool, my friend flew one of these out of country. this is funny cause he was swearing up and down that we were right after he had seen them. funny.
The WP article today says that they were almost certainly for the production of hydrogen for weather balloons.
What's also remarkable is Colin Powell's awesome ability to separate perception of himself from his actual behavior. Powell, from his own hand: Powell, who on CNN's Lary King Live submitted that he joined the very unit that committed the My Lai massacre (after it happened - this interview is highly iluminating in a number of ways...), was directed to investigate a letter from a 21-year old kid named Tom Glen. a soldier of the 11th Light Infantry (The Butcher's Brigade), Glen accused not only the Americal Division within the 11th, but other entire units of the U.S. military (not just individuals, but a systemic charge, not unlike the systemic torture charges leveled at this Executive today) of routine brutality against Vietnamese civilians; the letter was detailed, its allegations horrifying, and its contents echoed complaints received from other soldiers. Powell, then a young US Army Major, was charged with investigating the letter, which did not specifically reference My Lai (Glen had no knowledge of the events there). What did Powell do? What he always has done; he provided the best possible outcome for superiors not interested in the truth, but in a manageable result. Powell gave them that then, he gave them that at the UN, and he should never be expected to give the American people anything different.* Back then, Powell wrote: "In direct refutation of this portrayal is the fact that relations between American soldiers and the Vietnamese people are excellent," and went on to criticise Glen for his whistle-blowing. At the UN, Powell went on to make a case for war that, 24 hours earlier he had largely refuted, along with Jack Straw, in declaring Scooter Libby's draft of that speech "bullshit" that he would not say. He's always known; known what the truth was, and known that the American people trusted him (without really knowing him). And he's still betrayed you, and me, and every other citizen and sufferer of this lie of a conflict. But we should have KNOWN better. When e produce government by us, of us, for us and abandon government by, of and for a few of us, we WILL know better.
Oh my God! Saddam had the capability of producing Hydrogen! We were all surely dead men and women walking without the heroic actions of president bush. He could have made our whole damn country lighter than air with those mobile trucks, and then . . . . . . . . . . well I don't have to remind you of the fate of the Hindenburg! Or worse, much like the ill-fated turkeys jettisoned from the WKRP helicopter, we all surely would have been hitting the ground like bags of wet cement. Oh, the humanity!
As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly. The analogy about a frog in a pan of hot water gets more and more appropriate. We've become so desensitized to this crap that we don't even raise an eyebrow anymore.
Question - if the admin comes out says, "yeah, they were making hydrogen, putting us at risk of a hydrogen bomb" - would the media buy it? Would they repeat the admin's remarks without immediately following them with "which is such a retarded idea as anyone who passed high school science knows making hydrogen is completely unrelated to a hydrogen bomb"?
Other specialists have speculated that this is for the creation of hydrogen, as the off-gas collector suggests. On the other hand, mobile labs like this can do loads of different chemistries. Before the Iraq war, i attended a trade show where one company was hyping their "Mobile Chemistry Plant", which was, suprisingly, 1-2 trailers - where a company could run experiments or make products without requiring the investment in a permanent facility. The slides of their mobile trailers were almost identical to those that Colin Powell showed - so much so that I had to go back and confirm that Bushco didn't plagiarize the private company's slides. http://www.bhrgroup.co.uk/press/prp210202.htm