Saturday, April 21, 2007

WMDs In Iraq

Yes, apparently they were there.

It’s a fair bet that you have never heard of a guy called Dave Gaubatz. It’s also a fair bet that you think the hunt for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq has found absolutely nothing, nada, zilch; and that therefore there never were any WMD programmes in Saddam’s Iraq to justify the war ostensibly waged to protect the world from Saddam’s use of nuclear, biological or chemical weapons.

Dave Gaubatz, however, says that you could not be more wrong. Saddam’s WMD did exist. He should know, because he found the sites where he is certain they were stored. And the reason you don’t know about this is that the American administration failed to act on his information, ‘lost’ his classified reports and is now doing everything it can to prevent disclosure of the terrible fact that, through its own incompetence, it allowed Saddam’s WMD to end up in the hands of the very terrorist states against whom it is so controversially at war.

You may be tempted to dismiss this as yet another dodgy claim from a warmongering lackey of the world Zionist neocon conspiracy giving credence to yet another crank pushing US propaganda. If so, perhaps you might pause before throwing this article at the cat. Mr Gaubatz is not some marginal figure. He’s pretty well as near to the horse’s mouth as you can get.

Having served for 12 years as an agent in the US Air Force’s Office of Special Investigations, Mr Gaubatz, a trained Arabic speaker, was hand-picked for postings in 2003, first in Saudi Arabia and then in Nasariyah in Iraq. His mission was to locate suspect WMD sites, discover threats against US forces in the area and find Saddam loyalists, and then send such intelligence to the Iraq Survey Group and other agencies.

Between March and July 2003, he says, he was taken to four sites in southern Iraq — two within Nasariyah, one 20 miles south and one near Basra — which, he was told by numerous Iraqi sources, contained biological and chemical weapons, material for a nuclear programme and UN-proscribed missiles. He was, he says, in no doubt whatever that this was true.

This has to be a quandry for liberals.  Do you discount the story because it would undermine your belief BUSH LIED, or do you accept the story as confirmation that the Bush Administration is incompetent?  Choices, choices…

Hat tip Pat McIlheran.

(12) Comments
Posted by Owen at 1133 hrs
Foreign Affairs + Military + Politics + Politics - General

  1. They’re burying it, partly because they can’t link President Bush or Vice President Cheney personally to the incompetency angle but mainly because they’re so beholden to Mama Moonbat and the KOSsacks they can never admit to being so damn wrong.

    BTW, it is nice to see that P-Mac has an RSS feed, even if it is the JSOnline bastardized implementation.

    Posted by steveegg on April 21, 2007 at 1549 hrs


  2. So you’re proud of a story that says there’s one guy who thinks there were WMDs—he didn’t actually see them or anything, but he’s pretty darn certain—yet the Bush administration is so inept that for various reasons it can’t let this crucial piece of knowledge become public?

    I like the author’s conclusion best: “Of course, we don’t know whether any of this is true.”

    Exactly.

    Posted by (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on April 21, 2007 at 1637 hrs


  3. he was told by numerous Iraqi sources, contained biological and chemical weapons, material for a nuclear programme and UN-proscribed missiles. He was, he says, in no doubt whatever that this was true.

    Sounds official to me. How ccould any one doubt that?

    Any other evidence? A neighbors brothers uncles wifes cousin said they saw something that might have been a WMD but they weren’t sure?

    Pretty iffy evidence. I’m sticking with the Bush Lied conclusion until I get a little better confirmation.

    Posted by (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on April 21, 2007 at 1705 hrs


  4. It’s America.  We don’t have to chose.  Bush lied.  His administration is incompetent.  Best of all worlds.

    Posted by (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on April 21, 2007 at 1720 hrs


  5. Owen, Google the guy.

    For that matter, Google the woman who wrote the Spectator article.

    Neither has much credibility.

    But do your homework, and then we’ll talk.

    Posted by folkbum on April 21, 2007 at 2216 hrs


  6. Owen -

    Here’s some help for you and the other flat-earthers out there (h/t to Stephen King and “The Mist” for the expression)

    http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2007/04/21/wm d_conspiracy/index.html

    Here’s another -

    http://highclearing.com/index.php/archives/2007/04/21/6275

    How about this one?

    “It is our task to conduct an extensive mapping of all the Islamic day schools, mosques, and other identifiable organizations in the US and to determine which ones teach or preach Islamic law, Shari’a. Further, the mapping will scale the Shari’a threat by identifying to which school of jurisprudence it belongs, its historical and contemporary call for Jihad, and whether the Jihad includes violent Jihad against non-believers.”

    Your boy Dave’s words.  Nothing like a little racial and ideological profiling to get one’s day off to a rousing start!  Let’s hear it for Dave Gaubatz’s America!

    Owen - Have you ever heard the expression “look before you leap?”

    Posted by (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on April 22, 2007 at 0105 hrs


  7. I am not placing any bets.  There is still the nast little thing about those convoys going into Seria which have not been authenticated or disproved.  Anybody got any followup?

    Posted by (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on April 22, 2007 at 2127 hrs


  8. oops- “nasty”

    Posted by (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on April 22, 2007 at 2128 hrs


  9. Also Syria

    Posted by (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on April 22, 2007 at 2217 hrs


  10. Hey kr!  You can be my “spellcheck”  Good eyes.  Glad I got that really big one(authenticated) right.  Getting late, time to sign off and do wish you well.

    Posted by (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on April 22, 2007 at 2240 hrs


  11. Hey atar, “Our boy Dave’s” words don’t sound so nutty to me.  When faced with a global movement of killers based upon a particular religion, it’s only natural to keep a close eye on such institutions to glean which ones are more “Religion of Peace” & which ones lean toward “Oh Muslim, there is a Jew behind me; come and kill him.”

    Posted by Cal on April 23, 2007 at 0851 hrs


  12. I hate to resort to name-calling or personal insults, but I want to say this in terms that reflect the strength of my feelings on the matter: anyone who clings like this to the utterly unsupported notion that Iraq had WMD sufficient to even remotely justify an invasion of their country is pretty divorced from reality and needs to turn off their computer, go sit under a tree, and take a few deep breaths.  Owen, I’m looking at you, man.

    Posted by scott on April 26, 2007 at 1918 hrs


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