More About the Iraqi Biolabs

The Washington Post has a front-page story about the Iraqi mobile bio-labs - you all remember SecState Colin Powell's magic moment at the United Nations in February 2003, when he threw up the powerpoint charts showing the illustration of Iraq's mobile wagons of death. One of my very first posts was on this issue, and I've followed the story as it continued. What's interesting about this WaPo article is its details in discussing the story - admittedly years after the Iraq Survey Group basically agreed that there were no mobile Iraqi BW production labs. This timeline, in particular, is very interesting:

• Army finds the two "Iraq mobile BW trailers" in late April 2003.
• Colin Powell says they were "certainly designed and constructed" for BW production on May 22.
• DIA has a technical team studying the trailers in Iraq by May 25.
• DIA team sends a fax back to the Pentagon on May 27 stating that these trailers were not used for BW production and were not designed for that purpose. Final report follows three weeks later (neither report has been released due to classification).
• CIA releases a public statement on May 28 stating that the trailers were BW production labs.
• Pres. Bush tells the world "we found them [WMDs]" on May 29.
• Rumsfeld tells the press that we "have in custody two of the mobile trailers that Secretary Powell talked about" on May 29.
• Wolfowitz says "we... have in fact found some significant evidence to confirm exactly what Secretary Powell said..."
• Colin Powell says the U.S. intel agencies all agree that the trailers were used to make bioweapons on June 27.
• USD(P) Doug Feith highlights that the Iraqi regime had mobile BW labs on July 7.
• VP Dick Cheney calls the trailers "mobile biological facilities" on Meet the Press on September 14.
• David Kay tells Congress that he has not yet been able to verify that the trailers were used as mobile labs on October 2.
• George Tenet says on February 5, 2004, that the mobile lab theory is still possible, though there is "no consensus."
• Powell admits Iraq evidence mistake on April 3, 2004.
• Charles Duelfer tells Congress that the trailers were "almost certainly" intended to produce hydrogen and not biological weapons on September 30, 2004.

Now here's the interesting thing - the final report written and delivered in June 2003 was 19 pages with a 103-page appendix. It was "unequivocal in declaring the trailers unsuitable for weapons production." The details of the team's testings are in the article, and they make a pretty conclusive case for something most of us accepted, oh, for the last two years - that these trailers were indeed hydrogen gas generators used for weather balloons. So, while the right-wing bloggers heads explode over these details, one has to wonder why the Bush administration officials all lied throughout 2003 and 2004 - was it just to cover Bush's exuberant cry of victory on May 29? Protect the boss at all costs?

UPDATE: For James - I present the dispassionate analysis that won't be found on the liberal sites. Why this matters to us experts in the field - as STRATCOM develops its combating WMD mission areas and we start talking WMD interdiction and elimination, we ought to fully understand what the "state of the art" production capabilities of nations and terrorists truly are. If "mobile BW production labs" are in fact not a valid capability, we ought to understand that and clearly articulate what we are really most interested in - true mass casualty capabilities. While small quantities of BW agent may be of interest to terrorists and assassins, we ought not lose sight of the real issue that occupies military analysts' minds - can the deliberate use of CB warfare agents directly impact military operations at the operational and strategic levels of combat? As I noted with Biddle's book, perhaps not, especially if proper force employment tactics are undertaken. But we do need to clearly understand what is a threat and what is not a threat. These "mobile BW production labs" were not a threat. Nor were the dozen or so other mobile analytical laboratories that Saddam had for the purposes of analyzing his food and drink (these were also discovered during 2003).

Comments

[Joseph]

They sure don't look like labrotories, they look like a portable machine shop or something. Right in line with equipment used for weather ballons. Is a mobile lab even possible? I keep thinking of the "Dukes of Hazard" where the casino was in the 18 wheeler.