About those biolabs…

April 12, 2006

At a certain point, one starts to wonder if anything Bush has said about Iraq is true. The latest:

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.

As the WaPo explained, the Pentagon launched a secret fact-finding mission to Iraq to investigate the trailers and — surprise, surprise — found that they had nothing to do with biological weapons. Apparently, it wasn’t a particularly tough call. “Within the first four hours,” said one team member, “it was clear to everyone that these were not biological labs.”

The team completed a unanimous report and sent their findings to Washington on May 27, 2003 — two days before the president’s statement. The field report with the facts was then shelved while the president and other administration officials — for nearly a year — routinely pointed to these trailers as weapons factories.

So, were the trailers related to weapons at all? Not so much.

“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.”

They lied. They knew they were lying. They lied anyway.

April 12, 2006 at 9:17 am

They lied, they lie, they will continue to lie. And 30 some odd percent of the country still support them. Saw in the paper this morning that Iran claims to have enriched uranium. I say we are bombing them before summer. If that happens, I fear what this time next year will be like.

SURPRISE, SURPRISE, SURPRISE!

Now I have to go off to Googleland and figure out what a sand toilet is.

Saw in the paper this morning that Iran claims to have enriched uranium. I say we are bombing them before summer.

A month ago I thought Iran was a foregone conclusion; anytime BushCo actually responds to rumors-and especially when their response is vehement denial-it means “yes, we are going to do that, but tough.” But now I’m wondering if they can do anything anymore. As these issues pile up, we’re getting to “indict or impeach” land, and that’s when even crazies like Cheney have to back off. No one robs a bank when the cops are watching you from the last time.

Just another case of the Bushies not listening to contradictory intelligence and analysis.

They wanted their war. They couldn’t get Congress and the American people to go along. They ginned up false intelligence to support their case for war. They lied when the intelligence was called false. They destroyed a CIA operative’s career to attack a critic of their war claims. They still claim even to this day that what they presented as a case for war is what they thought was true back then. They lie about their lies.

Bushies, they lie about their lies!

Never concede anything.

Nope eadie, I don’t think anything will stop Bush and Cheney from bombing Iran if they feel like it. To their bubble-boy preceptions, being ‘tough’ (that would be being a bully to the rest of us) with Iran will win them the November elections. Timing is everything, however, so watch closely as they move towards a third war.

But as I was telling my lovely bride last night, Iraq borders Iran which borders Afghanistan, so instead of having two single country wars, Bush will claim he now has one big regional war.

See, he is just reducing the number of wars we are fighting 😉

And you are right that claiming there is no plan to bomb Iran is tantimount to ordering the B2’s in.

They lied, but maybe Bush didnt. He could have been out of the loop yet again and was just using the prepared script he re-memorized from a week earlier.

Maybe like many other times, he wasn’t on the ball that day. Sometimes he’s just plain incompetant. Other times maybe a different conclusion.

Like his father before – don’t blame him, he was out of the loop.

Dangerous Incompetence is the theme of the week.

if he does that thing (another war), then he must be driven from office (forced to resign along with cheney) and brought to trial as a war criminal. the republics reputation cannot afford the blood stain of more innocents.

in france they had a general strike, it may be the only recourse given the timerity of the democrats. at some point we become complicit.

Amazing.

But this has no effect on media reporting. The only conclusion one can draw is that the mainstream media on all levels is entirely complicit with this administration. They have to report just enough truth so they do not lose all credibility, but they will faithfully report a lie as long as they think they can get away with it in the short-term. But even now they are so bought that credibility has no added value. Consider how the Washington Post rewrote the story of Cheney being booed at the Nationals game.

An easily debunked lie. But they did it anyway.

Just like with the Bush administration.

How did the media cover Bush’s BioLab claim in real time? Here is the WaPo article. And here and here are some analyses from around that time of whether Bush was lying. Note the benefit of the doubt which was accorded Bush. A benefit he should not longer be given.

Another issue for the mid-terms; another nail in the GOP coffin. Take evryone’s voting record, and isolate those who steadfastly march in lockstep with Kid George. “Red-Hand” these idiots along the lines of MoveOn’s campaign. Tag each and every one of them as being “a part of the problem.”

Tough on security? The Republikanners are not “tough” on security, because “the house” of security requires “a foundation” of honesty and integrity. They’ve got a foundation that wouldn’t pass a building inspection. What was that old proverb about “building a house on a rock, instead of the sand?” Good grief—even their precious “religion” indicts them—LITERALLY….

As someone who’s job involves microbiology and biochemistry, this whole idea of mobile labs never made any sense to me at all. It is pretty amazing that the MSM did not poll the major figures in microbiology and chemical engineering in this country and find out what they thought. There are also a number of former bio-weaponeers from Russia working in various institutions in this country. They also would have had valid opinions. There could have been dozens of sceptical articles for days on end about this during the run up to the war. Working with these sorts of pathogens requires controlled conditions unless you want everyone working on the project to die all the time over and over. Maybe it is possible for a leader to be that callous, but it would be pretty inefficient for the progress of the program.

Typical Bush-think. They’re in trouble, on the run, and the public isn’t buying their garbage anymore.

The answer: Assume that everybody has forgotten the truth about the trailers (it was so long ago, after all) and parade them before the public again. Problem solved!!

Problem is, nobody has forgotten the truth about the trailers and massive amounts of unspinnable proof is readily available to everyone on the planet.

End result: Bush and his co-conspirators look like even bigger fools than they did before, and they have nothing else to say that will help.

Poor George.

Here is the official M.O. for this type of propaganda

1) Decide what you want to find and claim to the public in order to manipulate opinion
2) Send loyal team to confirm beliefs and report back on the “findings”
3) Make findings official and part of the record
4) Delay actual analysis and fact finding mission until after official report is filed.
5) Bury results of reality based analysis and subsequent conclusions
6) Publicly announce original findings, and downplay any dissent as if it didnt exist
7) Once expert analysis is revealed fully to public, object strenuously to vile attacks by anti american, pro-terrorist conspirators. Label experts findings as preliminary and unofficial.
8) Assail reporters of said story as “reckless and irresponsible” projecting your own character qualities onto them
9) Stonewall.
10) Repeat

Are we not sick of this yet?

Of course, the administration’s hotly denying this. But their counter argument is just pathetic. It’s one thing to cherry pick the evidence – it is another to disingenuously have crack teams of loyalists be part of the fact finding missions in the first place.

The real problem is that we are allowing hacks to go and cook up evidence which in fact is nothing of the sort. It’s produced specifically for the purpose of being able to point at it as official, when in reality, the only evidence that really matters is that of a wide range of experts. To say as the right-wing spinmeisters are saying that “two teams found evidence” of biological labs, while “one team didnt find evidence” is an unfair comparison.

Imagine you sent 100 teams of 5th graders looking for what you want to find, they come back and find it. Then you send one expert team of PhDs from a relevant field of study, who find something 100% opposed to the 5th graders. Do you then go out and say, 100 teams believe it but 1 dissenting team doesnt??? This is ludicrous.

In the end, though, nobody cares what these
bastards do. It’s just fine with everybody. Sure,
the American people express some dissatisfaction
with Bush in the polls, but when it comes to
impeachment? Hell no! By a whopping 2-1
margin. Not even a slap on the wrist censure
gets a majority.

hark #15, I share your angst. All this going down and only two Senators have the courage(?) to sign on as co-sponsors for Feingold’s cenusre – not even impeachment – measure. This country’s not really worth worrying about anymore.

Ed & Hark,
I’m starting to agree with you. By the time these guys are out, America will be an impoverished backwater.

Hark & Ed,

This country’s not really worth worrying about anymore.

Faint heart never won fair lady, right? Our country is worth worrying about. Please don’t give up hope. We got through the Gilded Age, we got through the Great Depression, we got through McCarthyism and the red scare, we got through Nixon, we got through Disco. Yes, each provided its own challenges and scars, but we did muddle our way through. Courage.

in france they had a general strike, it may be the only recourse given the timerity of the democrats. at some point we become complicit.—- Dee

Who would do that? Our only hope is the immigrant population. They seem to be the only ones who understand how the game works. I’m not sure about the rest of us. Perhaps we are getting what we deserve.

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