Free Republic

The White House on Wednesday hit back at The Washington Post for its front-page story this morning which suggested President Bush in 2003 cited the discovery of mobile biological weapons labs in Iraq as "weapons of mass destruction" just after the Pentagon received a top-level report revealing this was not true. Press Secretary Scott McClellan called the account "reckless reporting" and asked media outlets who carried it to apologize. He said Bush made his statement based on multiple sources. Appearing on MSNBC Wednesday night, the Post reporter who wrote the piece, Joby Warrick, stood by the reporting, and said he...

... "The lead suggested that what the president was saying was based on something that had been debunked, and that is not true," McClellan said. "In fact, the president was saying something that was based on what the intelligence community - through the CIA and DIA - were saying." ...

Tularemia Outbreak in Russia – Might Have Been Natural A recent outbreak –over 400 cases of Tularemia – occurred in Russia during July and August. The sheer number of cases – as compared to prior years – seemed alarming ; as did the proximity of the cases to Russian biowarfare research facilities. (There were even cases in Sverdlosk – site of an Anthrax accident many years ago. ) It is well to be suspicious of coincidence ; but equally important to make sure all facts are in hand before drawing conclusions. In researching Tularemia “episodes” a few days ago, I...

The report offered new details about the al-Qaeda-Iraq relationship and the commission also backtracked somewhat from an earlier staff report, which found no evidence of a "collaborative relationship." In the final report, the phrase was modified to say, "no collaborative operational relationship." Adding the word "operational" was an important shift. The panel found no proof that Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden's organization worked together to attack their common enemy, the United States. But the commission did find that the two had frequent contacts and a fairly well-developed relationship. There were Iraq-al-Qaeda ties. Bush looked at the evidence of links...

<p>May 8, 2003 -- WASHINGTON - A suspected mobile germ warfare factory has been seized by the U.S. military in northern Iraq - the first solid evidence that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction, the Pentagon said yesterday.</p> <p>American forces in Iraq are conducting a battery of tests on what they believe is a mobile biological-weapons lab that is similar to the descriptions of vehicles provided to U.S. intelligence agencies by Iraqi defectors before the war.</p>