From WAPO, via The Huffington Post...

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.

The authors of the reports were nine U.S. and British civilian experts, scientists and engineers with extensive experience in all the technical fields involved in making bioweapons, who were dispatched to Baghdad by the Defense Intelligence Agency for an analysis of the trailers. Their actions and findings were described to a Washington Post reporter in interviews with six government officials and weapons experts who participated in the mission or had direct knowledge of it.

And have you noticed that the Right Wingers have quietly retired the meme about, "recently released declassified documents proving WMD." Look if these people want to keep on deluding themselves, and lying to their readers, that is their perogative, but the truth is, its over, Bush and his administration are a cesspool of lies and manipulation and a disgrace to the offices they hold.

The lies, the manipulation, the dirty politics... It's all coming home to roost. There will be denials, and spinning and as reported yesterday on a number of blogs, Cheney will likely fall on his sword.

From Crooks and Liars:

Robert Sheer:

"On Monday, former Secretary of State Colin Powell told me that he and his department's top experts never believed that Iraq posed an imminent nuclear threat, but that the president followed the misleading advice of Vice President Dick Cheney and the CIA in making the claim.

Probably part of the contingency from the begining.

But there is enough shame to go around.... I have said from day one, that in the age of 24/7 Cable news and Blogs, a lie can not go unexposed forever, and it would appear that despite two years of failed efforts by Progressive Blogs to expose the incredible corruption of this administration, that the truth is finaly starting to seem in with the American People... Thank God.

Update: Why did I just KNOW they would figure out a way to spin this into "Bush Persecution Syndrome, (BPS)"

Either these people are:

a.) Incredibly Naive.
b.) Immoral Liars who will do anything to support thier beliefs and justify them.

or

c.) Just unwilling to accept the fact that they were WRONG.

or perhaps, ALL OF THE ABOVE.

Gandelman says it best in his post on the subject:

In reality, though, the issue here isn't just about intelligence being wrong. It gets back to the issue that has dogged this administration repeatedly — credibility.

Bush's speeches on weapons of mass destruction (as anyone can see by watching old videos of them) were quite explicit in stating their existence. Bush did NOT deliver speeches with any "hedge words." He stated his case as a certain fact.

The questions become (a) if Bush was aware that there had been serious questions before his speeches over the biolabs being a real threat and (b) if he was, why his speeches didn't at least mention that more investigation of them was going to be underway due to some questions raised about the degree of threat.

This will be one more issue where Democrats will shout "aha!" and loyal Republicans will immediately into defense lawyer/go-on-the-offensive mode. But the real significance is that this is one more news story in one more news cycle hitting home the message to many Americans that this administration at worst has a credibility problem and its words cannot be trusted or at best is competency challenged. Some will wonder: if this was out there why didn't the President at least temper his comments? And some may conclude: because it wouldn't have helped his agenda to mention it.

And he is of course right, the Rightwing Blogsphere is doing a much better job at parsing words than Bush did, completely ignoring, as Bush did, anything that does not justify their point.

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