AP: Iraqi Trailers Are Re-Examined

[Barrett808]

...

Kay said an investigation of the trailers has "yielded a number of explanations including hydrogen, missile propellant and BW production but technical limitations would prevent any of these processes from being ideally suited to these trailers."

Military scientists who analyzed the pair of trailers during the summer doubted they were designed to function as mobile laboratories, according to the three military officers involved in the weapons hunt.

"There were some people who really believed they were for making hydrogen for weather balloons. Almost no one was certain they were biological weapons," said one senior-ranking military commander involved in the search. "The trailers are great examples of dual-use but that's about it," the commander said.

Dual-use items, which could have either military or civilian applications, long troubled U.N. weapons inspectors who tagged most such equipment and kept it under monitoring while they were in Iraq. Defense officials in Baghdad and Washington have said much of what weapons inspectors have found so far is equipment and facilities with dual-use capabilities. There is no indication that any of those materials or places are new or were unknown to U.N. inspectors.

One of the U.S. scientists involved in the hunt, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said some conducting the search believe the Iraqis could have tried to produce biological warfare agents inside the trailers but not very well.

Also, it would have been hard, if not impossible, to hide the evidence. No traces of anthrax or any other warfare agent have been found during more than a half-dozen tests on the trailers.

Last month, Vice President Dick Cheney repeated the claim that the two trailers were "mobile biological facilities" that could have been used to make several biological agents, including smallpox.

(more)


http://www.ledger-enquirer.com/mld/ledgerenquirer/news/politics/6922739.htm

[OldSoldier]

1. "Dual-use" is a load of crap

That is because anything can be tagged "dual use."

The computer you're reading this on now? It's more powerful than the computers the Army uses to calculate artillery missions.

An SUV? Great military jeep.

Your cookware? Not only can you feed the troops with food cooked in those pans, you can make biological weapons in them--especially if you think dishwashing liquid is too expensive this week.

Your shoes. Your steak knives. Especially your target pistol. All have dual use.

Even lipstick has dual use. Put some on and make bambi eyes at the gate guard while your accomplice slips behind him and throws a hand grenade into your guard shack. The Red Army Faction did this so often that the European armies have all gone to female gate guards.

[damnraddem]

12. But that proves it. Don't you see?

The whole damn country is filled with WMDs, including all of the people. Sure is a good thing we've stuck 140,000 or so U.S. troops in there among those WMDs, isn't it?

Now, just wait till we go on beyond dual use and get to (shudder) triple threat.

[trogdor]

16. baseball bat - sports equipment or deadly weapon?

Depends on what you're about to do?

[dwckabal]

2. A desperate attempt

to find anything that could be labelled WMD

[gratuitous]

3. Oh yeah? You scoff!

But, but, but, what if Saddam had gotten a whole shitload of guys to ride on these trailers, paddle their way down the Tigris river, through the Persian Gulf and Gulf of Oman, out the Arabian Sea, around the Cape of Good Hope, across the Atlantic Ocean, north to New York City, and then they did a group moon of the Statue of Liberty? Boy, you'd all be sorry then, boy!

It's a great thing that our Dear Leader killed Iraq, because Saddam was a bad, bad man. Did you know that many of Jeffrey Dahmer's victims suffered from acne? None of them do anymore!

[underpants]

4. I'm even getting confused following this

I know there are no WMD now or at least not near the level they projected but this "It is" followed by "It isn't" in the same article is dizzying.

[damnraddem]

13. Now, now, don't get your undies in a knot!

Say, are those dual-use underpants? Yikes!

[underpants]

19. Yeah just turn them inside out

:bounce:

[TacticalPeek]

23. LOL!

:)

[DoYouEverWonder]

26. I bet after a dual use of your undies

They might even qualify has toxic waste?

[Flying_Pig]

5. This is a setup. They had Kay announce he found no weapons, and

made an effort to make him look reasonable and honest. Now, he'll "find" something, and he'll seem more credible because of his "low key" performance in yesterday's announcements. The cabal is laying the ground for the discovery of "planted" WMD's. Stay tuned.

At this point, Bush knows the only thing that might save his ass, is "discovery". Had the public quietly accepted his "war", he would have no need to further "sex up" the evidence, but now, the need has become imperative. I am sure they figure they're playing for "all the marbles", and will now do whatever necessary to insure their survival, political, and otherwise.

[DemoVet]

6. By the "dual use" standard...

my bathtub and kitchen sink could be considered 'dual use', able to be converted to making chemical or biological weapons. And lets not even talk about my refrigerator...

[damnraddem]

15. OK, that's it! Now we mean business!

Immediately turn in all your basins, everything but the kitchen sink -- oops, turn that in too! You will be asked to prove that you do not possess a refrigerator. Remmember, comply and you may not need to be sent to Gitmo. We'll decide that on a case-by-case basis once we've confiscated all dual-use items.

[MrBenchley]

7. By the way, click on this link

http://apnews.excite.com/article/20031003/D7TUMHD00.html

for the same story and check out the photo...

The disgusted GI in the foreground sure looks worried that the trailer has smallpox or anthrax, doesn't he? And look at all his protective equipment....

[damnraddem]

17. Hey, give the Bushistas some credit for originality:

instead of grasping at straws, they're grasping at ... semis!

Now for the real stupidity: what if a cache of WMDs (all ready for use on troops, or for transport to foreign harbors for release) were now legitimately turned up somewhere in Iraq? No one other than Administration dittoheads would believe it -- not after all of this nonsense on top of the previous nonsense.

[seasat]

8. The thing that drives me nuts about these trailers...

Is their canvas cloth sides. How can you culture biological organisms in an environment where your culture can be so easily contaminated? I'm not a microbiologist but have a take a few microbiology courses and cultured marine algae for my oceanographic work. We had to go through great lengths using a laminar flow hood, a clean room, and sterile techniques. We still had other organisms contaminate our algal cultures. I pretty sure that even anthrax can be displaced by some other organism if you haven't got a method of limiting the exposure of your culture to the environment. If they were mobile biological labs, why not go through just a slight more expense and at least enclose them.

[MrBenchley]

9. For that matter...

You're working on insanely dangeous anthrax, and the trailer hits a pothole....pow...everybody in the trailer is dead or dying...

This always seemed to me the height of desperation by the Bushistas..."yeah, the inspectors can't find the bioweapons laboratories because...because they're being moved around in trailers...yeah, by Morgan Fairchild...who I've seen naked...that's the ticket."

[LevChernyi]

25. The best desperation..

was the supposed train cars moving around which disappeared into Syria with all the bad stuff in it.

This was floated around ad nauseum until someone finally showed those fools a map of the train tracks in Iraq that completely lacked any route to Syria.

In other words, they just completely made it up.

[TacticalPeek]

10. I'm beyond nuts about the Fn trailers . . . and the Fn press 'coverage'.

I expect crap out the maladmin mouth.

But a rookie feature writer could expose this junk:

- they were purchased from a Brit mil supplier in the '80s, part of an artillery package for hydrogen production for ballons used for wind current data, so there are documents, catalog pictures, sales brouchures, etc., and are completely unmodified.

- they are TOTALLY USELESS as bio labs, TOTALLY, even if you had a kamikaze crew to use them.

- "One of the U.S. scientists involved in the hunt, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said some conducting the search believe the Iraqis could have tried to produce biological warfare agents inside the trailers but not very well." Note the scientist does not say this, but "some conducting the search", which means the political managers of this debacle, who can say whatever their bosses want to hear. If they ever cite a scientist or engineer, it will be one of the dozen or two dead guys who worked in microbio/WMD etc.

The Winnebagos of Death are totally debunked, and have been for months. This is a plain display of the awesome power of the owners of the media, the dripping mendacity of Powell, cheney, et al., which see:



http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=109&topic_id=1937

:mad:

[damnraddem]

11. Oh, on re-examination, we've found the trailers to be crawling with ...

biological-warfare agents. Don't know how we missed that the first time around. Go figure!

Uh-huh!

[gratuitous]

14. Oh wait, that's not a biological warfare agent

I think that's where Charlie spilled some of his egg salad sandwich. Things go real bad real fast in this heat.

[TacticalPeek]

21. Mixed with a little E. Coli from that Conagra meat

that Rummy got such a good deal on.

Now where's that Halliburton cleanup crew? We'll need to get this as clean as those antrax post offices that took months and millions.

[LanternWaste]

18. I wish...

I wish this administration would make up my mind for me and tell me once and for all whether Iraq was, or wasn't about WMD's...sheesh!

[lumpy]

20. Kay should really find something golden for the price

he is reaping for his archeological digs. He has already gone through 600 million and asking for 300 million more to examine the garbage left over from previous examinations by IATEC that debunked the idea that the leftovers were part of an ongoing scheme to develop MWDs. The legitimate atomic energy guys have stated that they only needed 60 million per year to pursue the same WMD searches. Kay's expediton amounts to US treasury rape.

[TacticalPeek]

22. Just use the Texas repuke approach: "relax and enjoy it".

[Ilsa]

24. Courtesy of Clayton Williams!

Good memory!

[DoYouEverWonder]

27. Let the UN Inspectors back in

Let them finish their job.

Why are we reinventing the wheel? We could have easily resumed UN weapons inspections and they would have paid for the whole thing.