Yeah, about those bio weapons labs…

Just three weeks ago, Bush made international headlines for boasting that U.S. forces had found two trailers that the administration was convinced were used by the Iraqis as mobile biological weapons labs.

Bush even chided his critics after the discovery, saying, “[F]or those who say we haven’t found the banned manufacturing devices or banned weapons, they’re wrong. We found them.”

At the time, many argued that the labs may not be what the administration insisted. Slate’s Fred Kaplan, for example, pointed to a CIA report that suggested those same trailers could have been used to produce hydrogen for artillery weather-balloons.

No, no, the administration said. They have to be bio-weapons labs. Ari Fleischer even said the discovery represented “proof-perfect” that the administration was right about the Iraqi intelligence reports.

Well, over the weekend, London’s Observer reported that a British investigation into the trailers has concluded that they were used for…[drum roll, please] the production of hydrogen for artillery weather-balloons!

A British scientist and biological weapons expert that examined the trailers in Iraq told The Observer last week, “They are not mobile germ warfare laboratories. You could not use them for making biological weapons. They do not even look like them. They are exactly what the Iraqis said they were — facilities for the production of hydrogen gas to fill balloons.”

I should add, however, that I cannot find any independent verification on this in the U.S. press. Some of Bush’s critics have already been burned by misleading reports published in the British press, so I can’t vouch for the authenticity of this investigation.

If the British report is false, and the trailers were used for bio-weapons production, the administration’s claims still seem pretty weak. There were supposed to be an imminent danger posed by massive stockpiles of “the most lethal weapons ever devised.” Two clean trailers don’t seem terribly ominous.

However, if this is accurate and the labs aren’t mobile weapons labs, it would ruin the one piece of evidence administration officials had to bolster their claims about Saddam Hussein’s arsenal.

I’ll let you know when and if this story gets picked up by the domestic press.