Something Said's Been Said Before

There are good lies and bad lies...

The administration and its apologists have gone to great lengths to spin everything this administration does that is questionable. (And as time goes on there is nothing that isn't!). After taking a tough stance on leaks in his administration, we then find out that it was the Commander in Chief who leaked information in the Plame affair -- for the public good, of course. The liar in chief and his cohorts and supporters spin it all as "Well, there are good leaks and bad leaks. Of course, this was a good leak." The article in today's Washington Post will no doubt lead to another defense of the indefensible -- "There are good lies and bad lies....."

Lacking Biolabs, Trailers Carried Case for War
Administration Pushed Notion of Banned Iraqi Weapons Despite Evidence to Contrary

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.

A secret fact-finding mission to Iraq -- not made public until now -- had already concluded that the trailers had nothing to do with biological weapons. Leaders of the Pentagon-sponsored mission transmitted their unanimous findings to Washington in a field report on May 27, 2003, two days before the president's statement.

The three-page field report and a 122-page final report three weeks later were stamped "secret" and shelved. Meanwhile, for nearly a year, administration and intelligence officials continued to publicly assert that the trailers were weapons factories.

posted by Mr. mXp @ 9:15 AM