Friday, June 30, 2006

Saddam was working on a smallpox weapon

* simon commented on my post about the Senate Democratic Policy Committee Hearing. read his comment - he says "This is powerful stuff, big enough to bring down a government." Simon is smart - and knows his stuff. read his Yearly Lukery introduction here. he has literally worked with nuke-ready jets in the mid-east and so-on - and his knowledge of official reports (ISG, Butler) rivals eriposte and emptywheel.

simon points to a particular Guardian story where Scarlett (head of MI6) wanted the ISG to tell lies (in 2004) - particularly "suggestions that Saddam was working on a smallpox weapon, did have mobile biological laboratories and was developing research equipment for use in nuclear weapons."

one of the big mysteries for me has always been tony blair's insistence through all this period that we really really really would find WMD in iraq. (my sense of the timing is a bit bunk - im not sure when he stopped desperately hanging on to this fantasy) - and here we have scarlett desperately trying to perpetuate the myth of a specific 3-pronged wmd program - in 2004! it's kinda bizarre, right?

were they trying to buy time for the sake of it? or were they of the understanding that they could plant the stuff if only they could buy some more time? given my previous work into the dodgy mobile weapons labs - i can only presume that they really thought they could plant the stuff. I wonder why they couldnt/didnt.

further, given scarlett's three-pronged claims - we kinda know about the plans for the nukes (emptywheel/obedie) and the mobile labs (hatfill) - why was Scarlett talking about smallpox in 2004? what were the plans there?

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Re: planting etc - maybe it hasn't happened yet? Just suppose if Dave Gaubatz has been suckered into identifying sites where WMD will be found (a bit nearer the elections) without DoD oversight?

Anonymous said...

Hmmm. Linkies aren't working very tonite!

Anonymous said...

Double hmmm! My writing and reading skills aren't working very well either!!

lukery said...

"maybe it hasn't happened yet? "
noooooooo! surely not! urgh. my head would explode.

interesting speculation tho. perhaps they tried to plant stuff previously and it failed for one reason or other. and now they are trying again...

it would certainly explain a few odd articles recently - although the recent santorum/hoekstra nonsense obviously isn't part of the script. every time they do something like that they undermine any future announcements...

lukery said...

btw - what is Gaubatz's beef with weldon?

he says "Congressman Weldon kept the intelligence reports for his personal reasons"

(my head starts spinning whenever weldon gets involved in anything)

Anonymous said...

Again from ATS:

ATSNN:

You state on your website that Representative Weldon said he would not pass on the intelligence because he did not want other agencies getting credit for finding WMDs in Iraq. Isn't this a crime?

Gaubatz:

I have requested a Congressional hearing on the entire matter. I do not know if his actions were criminal, but they were not being done for the best interest of the security of America. Congressman Weldon appeared to be very genuine in wanting to have the suspected sites searched; he just wanted to have it done without the assistance of other committee members, the DOD, NRO, or CIA. Specifically he did not want to get any Democratic member involved. Congressman Weldon is a politician and he made some of the following statements directly to me, which I felt very uncomfortable with. During our meeting on 16 Mar 2006, Congressman Weldon said he did not trust the military or NRO...


Is it just me or is the smell getting stronger?

lukery said...

they wouldnt dare, would they?

lukery said...

btw - i checked DG's website. it was established in may06