On Mon, 10 Apr 2006 18:35:40 -0500, Denys Beauchemin <[log in to unmask]> 
wrote:

>It's time for honesty.  I didn't really read Wirt's post; it's just
>too predictable.  Whatever is bad, W is responsible for it.

Denys,

yes it is about time ;->

US shelved evidence discounting Iraq's WMD: report Wed Apr 12, 1:41 AM ET
 
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Bush administration publicly asserted that two 
trailers captured by U.S. troops in Iraq in May 2003 were 
mobile "biological laboratories" even after U.S. intelligence officials had 
evidence that it was not true, The Washington Post reported on Wednesday. 

On May 29, 2003, President George W. Bush hailed the capture of the 
trailers, declaring "We have found the weapons of mass destruction."

But a Pentagon-sponsored fact-finding mission had already concluded that 
the trailers had nothing to do with biological weapons, the Post reported, 
citing government officials and weapons experts who participated in the 
secret mission or had direct knowledge of it.

The Post said the group's unanimous findings had been sent to the Pentagon 
in a field report, two days before the president's statement.

Bush cited the threat posed by weapons of mass destruction as the prime 
justification for invading Iraq. No such weapons ever were found.

A U.S. intelligence official, speaking to Reuters on condition of anonymity 
confirmed the existence of the field report but said it was a preliminary 
finding that had to be evaluated.

"You don't change a report that has been coordinated in the (intelligence) 
community based on a field report," the official said. "It's a preliminary 
report. No matter how strongly the individual may feel about the subject 
matter."

The three-page field report and a 122-page final report three weeks later 
were classified and shelved, The Washington Post reported. It added that 
for nearly a year after that, the Bush administration continued to public 
assert that the trailers were biological weapons factories.

The authors of the reports -- nine U.S. and British civilian experts -- 
were sent to Baghdad by the Defense Intelligence Agency, or DIA, the 
newspaper said.

A DIA spokesman told the paper that the team's findings were neither 
ignored nor suppressed, but were incorporated in the work of the Iraqi 
Survey Group, which led the official search for Iraqi weapons of mass 
destruction.

The team's work remains classified. But the newspaper said interviews 
revealed that the team was unequivocal in its conclusion that the trailers 
were not intended to manufacture biological weapons.

"There was no connection to anything biological," one expert who studied 
the trailers was quoted as saying. 

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