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    psychological weapons..., 2005-11-17 17:29:53 | Main | who influences foreign policy..., 2005-11-21 16:06:34

    "According to U.S. intelligence sources":

    the CIA Counter-Proliferation Division prevented the shipment of binary VX nerve gas from Turkey into Iraq in November 2002. The Brewster Jennings network in Turkey was able to intercept this shipment which was intended to be hidden in Iraq and later used as evidence that Saddam Hussein was in possession of weapons of mass destruction. U.S. intelligence sources revealed that this was a major reason the Bush White House targeted Plame and her network.

    I'm not sure how serious that's supposed to be taken. I would think the administration would have just used the interception of a VX shipment to Iraq in Turkey as a demonstration of Saddam's intent to get wmd, like the yellowcake was.

    update: Finally having a chance to look up clippings from around that time. The WaPo claimed on its front page in December of 2002 that "U.S. Suspects Al Qaeda Got Nerve Agent From Iraqis", a story shortly re-reported elsewhere in the press as a link between Saddam and Bin Laden. The WaPo's sources claimed (after initially naming a Palestinian group in Lebanon not associated with AQ) that VX was smuggled through Turkey to Ansar al-Islam, Zarqawi's group in Northern Iraq that the Bush administration multiple times refused to strike. Why in the world would "Iraqis" smuggle VX through Turkey to a group in Iraq?

    So effectively a ludicrous claim from anonymous sources that never made any sense so far as Bush's war goes was printed as evidence in favor of Bush's war, the original story as printed not being particularly more credible than this Madsen fellow's story, except in his version a leaked story in December 2002 that would then be misreported as a link between Bin Laden and Saddam just as the administration no doubt wanted was the cause of the Administration's outting of Valery Plame in the summer of 2003.


:: posted by buermann @ 2005-11-18 14:26:29 CST | link


    Comments:
      It was a US Intelligence shipment of VX that was stopped,...

      in other words, the CIA Counter-Proliferation Division stopped some other US Intelligence Agency from "planting" evidence.

    posted by jsf @ 2005-11-19 18:32:41 | link

      Madsen makes no such claim as to who was doing the smuggling. Maybe it was the author of the Niger forgeries :P

    posted by buermann @ 2005-11-21 12:28:30 | link




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