Neocons Considered Planting WMD Evidence in Iraq?

[kpete]

Neocons Considered Planting WMD Evidence in Iraq?
by Gary Leupp
www.dissidentvoice.org
January 9, 2006


A recent Raw Story report by Larissa Alexandrovna suggests that the notorious Office of Special Plans didn’t just stovepipe cherry-picked “intelligence” to the White House and press. It also sent teams into Iraq after the invasion began, which, after it became apparent that there were no abundant WMDs, examined the possibility of planting such weapons in order to help the resident avoid embarrassment.

Citing “hree U.S. intelligence sources and a source close to the United Nations Security Council,” Alexandrovna indicates that the OSP planned “off book” missions that were dispatched by Stephen Cambone, Defense Department intelligence chief, from March 2003. (Cambone now occupies the # 3 post in the Defense Department.) Teams sent to Iraq included “CIA, FBI, Green Berets, Delta Force operators, and commandos from the Navy’s Special Warfare Development Group.” Their first priority was to investigate an allegation made by disinformation master Ahmad Chalabi that a USN pilot shot down in 1991 and proclaimed KIA soon afterwards was being held as a POW in Iraq. (That was bogus.) The second was to deal with the WMD issue. The third was to get Saddam.

During the summer and fall of 2004, one unnamed team, according to the UN source, interviewed many Iraqi intelligence officers, telling them, “Our President is in trouble. He went to war saying there are WMD and there are no WMD. What can we do? Can you help us?” The Iraqis understood they were being asked to cooperate with a deception. “But,” the UN source continues, “ the guys were thinking this is absurd because anything put down would not pass the smell test and could be shown to be not of Iraqi origin and not using Iraqi methodology.”

http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Jan06/Leupp09.htm
via:http://www.juancole.com/

[rodeodance]

1. this issue keeps cropping up every few weeks. I am leary of that it

happened. But, so much goes on that I do not know about.

[Peace Patriot]

2. I don't know. This story has a faintly ridiculous sound to it, and I'm...

...wondering if it's deliberate misdirection. The time frame for this--for US intel saying to Iraqi intel, "Our President is in trouble...there were no WMD. What can we do?"--is "summer and fall of 2004." If the Bushites had a scheme to plant WMDs in Iraq--which I think highly likely--they wouldn't have waited around until almost the election to implement it. It would have been implemented a year before, just after the invasion, in spring/summer '03, around the same time that Plame and Brewster Jennings were outed, and David Kelly was found dead. Also, it doesn't seem likely that US intel would put this general proposition to "many Iraqi intelligence officers," but would have long since put together a black ops team or teams to get the weapons into Iraq and positioned for a "find" (say, by the US troops who were "hunting" for the WMDs in spring '03, accompanied by the oh-so-eager Judith Miller). The logical planning group for such an operation would have been the "Rome group" whom many suspect of having cooked up the fake Niger forgeries, and whose members included Manucher Ghorbanifar (the notorious Iranian arms dealer). The news stories from Islamic sources put the timeframe for what may have been two efforts to plant WMDs in Iraq as March '03, weeks after the invasion. (--at the Basra port, in a shipment with false Red Cross labels, and at an unnamed location where a US group transporting covert WMDs met with "friendly fire.")

IF Treasongate is about the coverup of that failed scheme (to plant WMDs in Iraq), then I doubt that the Bush junta would be broadcasting their deceitful intentions all over Iraqidom a year later. It's possible, I suppose. They may have been desperate at that point for a WMD "find" (if several efforts had been foiled). It just seems a highly unlikely way to get such a goal accomplished.

If this OP is disinformation, it may be aimed at putting off suspicion (off the Treasongate perps) by having the Iraqis saying "this is absurd," and that such a plant "would not pass the smell test." In reality, of course, a) would independent experts ever have gotten near such a "find"? (The junta had ousted the UN weapons inspectors prior to the invasion); b) who's to say that Ghorbanifar, the "Rome group," or some other junta group, with unlimited funding, couldn't arrange for Iraqi-smelling WMDs?; and c) Karl Rove operates best in situations where the evidence is against him but he has the lapdog press by the balls.

I do NOT suspect Larissa Alexandrovna of planting disinformation. But it's certainly possible that, in the extraordinarily poisonous atmosphere of Bushworld, somebody is working her. And all I'm saying here is that the story sounds a bit smelly. I'm still in the early stages of absorbing it, and trying to figure out if it fits at all with other information and with good working theories (like the WMD-planting theory of Treasongate). And it doesn't fit very well with anything, except for the widespread suspicion that the junta must have tried to plant WMDs in Iraq.

[ohio_liberal]

3. I always wondered why they didn't

I'm sure some fools out there would've bought it.