Bush Pushed Discredited Iraqi Weapons Trailers Claim

Even as the president claimed the two small trailers found after the invasion of Iraq vindicated his claim of banned WMDs, intelligence officials had already concluded that the trailers were bogus. The Washington Post has the scoop.

Washington Post:

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

By Joby Warrick Washington Post Staff Writer Wednesday, April 12, 2006; A01

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.

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