Except they're not.
[T]he United States task force seeking suspected weapons of mass destruction is beginning to wind down its work, having found no such arms, and might leave as early as next month, The Washington Post reported. President Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain had cited such weapons as a central reason for invading Iraq.
Hey but here's a lead!
While no banned weapons have been found, American experts have found mobile laboratories they say might be able to produce biological weapons. But searches of dozens of sites, including those thought most likely to produce results, have proved fruitless.
Labs that might be able? This is the best we got? The article talks about how some parties are concerned that special units "in hiding" may have these weapons of something something that I've heard so much about. It's all the kids talk about these days. Okay then, I'll wait. Let's see if these hidden units appear. Nick Kristof is hopeful.
I rejoice in the newfound freedoms in Iraq. But there are indications that the U.S. government souped up intelligence, leaned on spooks to change their conclusions and concealed contrary information to deceive people at home and around the world.
Let's fervently hope that tomorrow we find an Iraqi superdome filled with 500 tons of mustard gas and nerve gas, 25,000 liters of anthrax, 38,000 liters of botulinum toxin, 29,984 prohibited munitions capable of delivering chemical agents, several dozen Scud missiles, gas centrifuges to enrich uranium, 18 mobile biological warfare factories, long-range unmanned aerial vehicles to dispense anthrax, and proof of close ties with Al Qaeda. Those are the things that President Bush or his aides suggested Iraq might have, and I don't want to believe that top administration officials tried to win support for the war with a campaign of wholesale deceit.
Consider the now-disproved claims by President Bush and Colin Powell that Iraq tried to buy uranium from Niger so it could build nuclear weapons. As Seymour Hersh noted in The New Yorker, the claims were based on documents that had been forged so amateurishly that they should never have been taken seriously.
Oh right...that Colin Powell presentation that certain war supporters hailed as "brilliant," I remember that. Wait, it turned out that that was horseshit? Hold on a second here.... Are you saying that we were lied to?
Top British and American officials kept citing information from Mr. Kamel as evidence of a huge secret Iraqi program, even though Mr. Kamel had actually emphasized that Iraq had mostly given up its W.M.D. program in the early 1990's. Glen Rangwala, a British Iraq expert, says the transcript of Mr. Kamel's debriefing was leaked because insiders resented the way politicians were misleading the public.
Patrick Lang, a former head of Middle Eastern affairs in the Defense Intelligence Agency, says that he hears from those still in the intelligence world that when experts wrote reports that were skeptical about Iraq's W.M.D., "they were encouraged to think it over again."
"In this administration, the pressure to get product `right' is coming out of O.S.D. [the Office of the Secretary of Defense]," Mr. Lang said. He added that intelligence experts had cautioned that Iraqis would not necessarily line up to cheer U.S. troops and that the Shiite clergy could be a problem. "The guys who tried to tell them that came to understand that this advice was not welcome," he said.
Really? O.S.D. was making shit up as well? And all this time I thought that these W.M.D. were a top concern. After all, Bush said TIME AND TIME AGAIN that these weapons threatened the United States. (No, not the region or allies or something like that, the mainland US.) I guess W.M.D. weren't a big deal though, since according to the first article:
According to opinion polls, Americans, generally pleased with the notion of liberating Iraqis from a repressive and possibly threatening government, would not be upset if no weapons of mass destruction are found.
Does anyone else get the feeling that this country has the attention span of a gnat with ADD? But that's excuseable, since I guess we have other important things to worry about, like who's going to get booted off American Idol. Who has time for these kinds of technicalities? So before we all get back to watching celebrities eat monkey penises and rodent sperm on Fear Factor, let me pass on that I heard Burkina Faso may be stockpiling plutonium. Better watch out! You know them Burkina Fassans......uh...Burkina Fassonians...er, I mean...ah fuck it. I bet they're near Iraq and that Osama's got a beach house there. Besides, Bush is an honest man and knows what he's doing.
Fuck this primate and all his zookeepers.
Posted by mike at May 11, 2003 07:11 PM