[Wow, almost three years later, the truth becomes a public issue. The White House calls this report "irresponsible", and clings to the incompetence defense.]
Lacking Biolabs, Trailers Carried Case for War
Administration Pushed Notion of Banned Iraqi Weapons Despite Evidence to Contrary
By Joby Warrick
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, April 12, 2006; Page A01
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.
[Sarin Nerve Toxin -- $150B per gallon.]
Tests Confirm Sarin in Iraqi Artillery Shell
FOXNEWS -- May 18, 2004
NEW YORK — Tests on an artillery shell that blew up in Iraq on Saturday confirm that it did contain an estimated three or four liters of the deadly nerve agent sarin (search), Defense Department officials told Fox News Tuesday.
The artillery shell was being used as an improvised roadside bomb, the U.S. military said Monday. The 155-mm shell exploded before it could be rendered inoperable, and two U.S. soldiers were treated for minor exposure to the nerve agent.
Three liters is about three-quarters of a gallon; four liters is a little more than a gallon.
"A little drop on your skin will kill you" in the binary form, said Ret. Air Force Col. Randall Larsen, founder of Homeland Security Associates. "So for those in immediate proximity, three liters is a lot," but he added that from a military standpoint, a barrage of shells with that much sarin in them would more likely be used as a weapon than one single shell.
The soldiers displayed "classic" symptoms of sarin exposure, most notably dilated pupils and nausea, officials said. The symptoms ran their course fairly quickly, however, and as of Tuesday the two had returned to duty.
The munition found was a binary chemical shell, meaning it featured two chambers, each containing separate chemical compounds. Upon impact with the ground after the shell is fired, the barrier between the chambers is broken, the chemicals mix and sarin is created and dispersed.
Intelligence officials stressed that the compounds did not mix effectively on Saturday. Due to the detonation, burn-off and resulting spillage, it was not clear exactly how much harmful material was inside the shell.
A 155-mm shell can hold two to five liters of sarin; three to four liters is likely the right number, intelligence officials said.
Another shell filled with mustard gas (search), possibly also part of an improvised explosive device (IED) was discovered on May 2, Defense Dept. officials said.
The second shell was found by passing soldiers in a median on a thoroughfare west of Baghdad. It probably was simply left there by someone, officials said, and it was unclear whether it was meant to be used as a bomb.
[This article fails to mention that the finding of sarin was only a field test, and that laboratory tests will be required to confirm this finding.
The always predictable NewsMax as a different take ...
WMD Confirmed: Sarin Bomb Explodes
Proof beyond a doubt Saddam had WMD. Iraqi insurgents use chemical weapon and media ignore the story.
]
Shell said to contain sarin poses a dilemma for U.S.
Houston Chronicle -- May 18, 2004
By MICHAEL HEDGES
Copyright 2004 Houston Chronicle Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON -- American officials from Baghdad to Washington scrambled Monday to determine whether the explosion of a shell they said contained poison gas posed a new threat to U.S. soldiers or proved Saddam Hussein's regime kept significant illegal weapons.
Two soldiers were slightly injured when the artillery shell rigged as a roadside bomb exploded Saturday, dispersing a small amount of a chemical agent that experts concluded was sarin, coalition spokesman Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt said Monday from Baghdad.
[Deliberately Misleading???]
Guests: Secretary Colin Powell, Department of State; Senator Joseph Biden, D-DE, Ranking Member, Foreign Relations Committee; Senator John McCain, R-AZ, Armed Services Committee
NBC News' Meet the Press -- May 16, 2004
Russert: Thank you very much, sir. In February of 2003, you put your enormous personal reputation on the line before the United Nations and said that you had solid sources for the case against Saddam Hussein. It now appears that an agent called Curveball had misled the CIA by suggesting that Saddam had trucks and trains that were delivering biological and chemical weapons. How concerned are you that some of the information you shared with the world is now inaccurate and discredited?
Powell: I'm very concerned. When I made that presentation in February 2003, it was based on the best information that the Central Intelligence Agency made available to me. We studied it carefully; we looked at the sourcing in the case of the mobile trucks and trains. There was multiple sourcing for that. Unfortunately, that multiple sourcing over time has turned out to be not accurate. And so I'm deeply disappointed. But I'm also comfortable that at the time that I made the presentation, it reflected the collective judgment, the sound judgment of the intelligence community. But it turned out that the sourcing was inaccurate and wrong and in some cases, deliberately misleading. And for that, I am disappointed and I regret it.
Powell says bad data misled him on Iraq
Los Angeles Times via San Francisco Chronicle -- April 3, 2004
Washington -- Secretary of State Colin Powell directly criticized the intelligence community for the first time Friday for giving him apparently flawed information that he used to justify the U.S. invasion of Iraq.
Powell said the "most dramatic'' of his allegations -- that Saddam Hussein's regime had mobile germ labs -- was based on questionable U.S. intelligence
The allegations were central to the evidence that Powell dramatically presented to the U.N. Security Council on Feb. 5, 2003, as he urged a skeptical world body to confront Hussein.
Powell said that as he prepared for his U.N. presentation, intelligence officials gave him data from four sources on mobile weapons laboratories. He insisted that he had pushed them to make sure their analysis was correct.
"It was presented to me in the preparation of that (portfolio of evidence) as the best information and intelligence that we had," he said. "They certainly indicated to me ... that it was solid.
"Now it appears not to be the case that it was solid,'' he said.
He called on a federal commission investigating prewar intelligence to examine how the data had been gathered.
The comments were an abrupt reversal for Powell, who had acknowledged disagreements among analysts but had not criticized the intelligence agencies.
Curveball
Whiskey Bar -- April 3, 2004
Germans accuse US over Iraq weapons claim
The Guardian -- April 2, 2004
Luke Harding in Berlin
An Iraqi defector nicknamed Curveball who wrongly claimed that Saddam Hussein had mobile chemical weapons factories was last night at the centre of a bitter row between the CIA and Germany's intelligence agency.
German officials said that they had warned American colleagues well before the Iraq war that Curveball's information was not credible - but the warning was ignored.
It was the Iraqi defector's testimony that led the Bush administration to claim that Saddam had built a fleet of trucks and railway wagons to produce anthrax and other deadly germs.
In his presentation to the UN security council in February last year, the US secretary of state, Colin Powell, explicitly used Curveball's now discredited claims as justification for war. The Iraqis were assembling "mobile production facilities for biological agents", Mr Powell said, adding that his information came from "a solid source".
These "killer caravans" allowed Saddam to produce anthrax "on demand", it was claimed. US officials never had direct access to the defector, and have subsequently claimed that the Germans misled them.
Yesterday, however, German agents told Die Zeit newspaper that they had warned the Bush administration long before last year that there were "problems" with Curveball's account. "We gave a clear credibility assessment. On our side at least, there were no tricks before Colin Powell's presentation," one source told the newspaper.
Officially, Germany's intelligence agency, the BND, has refused to comment.
The revelation is embarrassing for the Bush administration and appears to bolster the contention that it used dubious intelligence in a partisan manner in the critical few weeks before the invasion of Iraq.
It has now emerged that Curveball is the brother of a top aide of Ahmad Chalabi, the pro-western Iraqi former exile with links to the Pentagon.
According to the Los Angeles Times, it was UN inspectors who came up with the idea that Saddam might have developed mobile factories to try to evade weapons inspections. They asked Mr Chalabi, a bitter enemy of Saddam, to find evidence to support the theory.
Recently, American officials have admitted that Curveball's information was false. Meanwhile, David Kay, who resigned as head of the Iraqi survey group in January after a fruitless nine-month search for weapons of mass destruction, said in an interview that Curveball had been "absolutely at the heart of the matter", but had turned out to be an "out and out fabricator".
US and British intelligence officials have acknowledged since the war that much of the information supplied by Mr Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress and other Iraqi groups was wrong. Yesterday, German sources said they were bemused by the idea that they had tricked the US. "We ask ourselves, what are they on about?" one said.
© Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004
ASIO erred in ignoring WMD info: Democrat
The Age -- April 2, 2004
By Russell Skelton
Australian Democrats Leader Andrew Bartlett yesterday described ASIO's decision not to interview a top Iraqi scientist about the location of five claimed chemical weapons bunkers as extraordinary and troubling.
"On the evidence available it is strange that they did not investigate his claims further. It doesn't sound at all inspiring," Senator Bartlett said.
He said the scientist's claims should have been thoroughly scrutinised as a matter of routine. "It seems they just followed up one little piece of information and then decided to let the entire matter drop," he said.
The Age revealed yesterday that a top Iraqi scientist, who uses the pseudonym Rashid, offered the Federal Government information purporting to pinpoint the location of five secret bunkers just days before the Iraq war began. The scientist, a key member of Saddam's inner circle of scientific advisers before fleeing to Australia in 1999, offered the information to the assistant director of the Immigration Department's intelligence unit, who found him to be credible and referred the information to ASIO. But a senior ASIO manager subsequently dismissed it as being of "no further interest" and he was never interviewed.
Powell no longer sure Iraqi trailers were weapons labs
AP via Boston Globe -- April 2, 2004
By Barry Schweid
WASHINGTON (AP) Secretary of State Colin Powell conceded Friday evidence he presented to the United Nations that two trailers in Iraq were used for weapons of mass destruction may have been wrong.
Pentagon Prepares for Chemical, Biological Weapons Attack
Global Security Newswire -- October 2, 2002
Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction Programs
CIA --
October 2002
Iraq’s Weapons of Mass Destruction: A Net Assessment
International Institute for Strategic Studies -- September 9, 2002
Baghdad Probably Still Has WMD Delivery Systems, Post Reports
Global Security Newswire -- September 5, 2002
Threat Assessment: States May Help Terrorists Attack U.S., CIA Director Says
Global Security Newswire -- March 20, 2002
U.S. Lacks Evidence of Iraqi Tie to Terrorism
Global Security Newswire -- February 6, 2002
Secretary Colin L. Powell
Remarks at Arrival Ceremony, Kuwait City International Airport
U.S. Department of State -- February 25, 2001
Saddam has nothing but rhetoric and shooting his mouth off.
Secretary Colin L. Powell
Press Briefing Abroad Aircraft En Route to Cairo, Egypt
U.S. Department of State -- February 23, 2001
I think it's important to point out that for the last 10 years, the policy that the United Nations, the United States has been following, has succeeded in keeping Iraq from rebuilding to the level that it was before. It's an army that's only one-third its original size. And even though they may be pursuing weapons of mass destruction of all kinds, it is not clear how successful they have been. So to some extent, I think we ought to declare this a success. We have kept him contained, kept him in his box.
Secretary Colin L. Powell
Press Remarks with Foreign Minister of Egypt Amre Moussa
U.S. Department of State -- February 4, 2001
We had a good discussion, the Foreign Minister and I and the President and I, had a good discussion about the nature of the sanctions -- the fact that the sanctions exist -- not for the purpose of hurting the Iraqi people, but for the purpose of keeping in check Saddam Hussein's ambitions toward developing weapons of mass destruction. ... And frankly they have worked. He has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction. He is unable to project conventional power against his neighbors.
[See also The Memory Hole.]
Bush Ordered Aid To Iraqi Military
Center for Nonproliferation Studies -- August 3, 1992