The hits [lies] just keep on comin'

[Couldn't get this one finished before the indefatigable Walldon got his post (More Lies Proven) out. I have reduced what I'd intended to write to complement him.]

Thanks to a lead from Atrios, check out this WaPo story about the official reports on those supposed "mobile biological weapon labs" found in Iraq. It bookends the business about the claims that Iraq was purchasing uranium and pursuing nuclear weapons.

Walldon has given the gist of the story. But what it reveals of The Regime's modus operandi is also interesting. Start here:

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.

But it gets better (remember the date, May 27, 2003):

The technical team's findings had no apparent impact on the intelligence agencies' public statements on the trailers. A day after the team's report was transmitted to Washington -- May 28, 2003 -- the CIA publicly released its first formal assessment of the trailers, reflecting the views of its Washington analysts. That white paper, which also bore the DIA seal, contended that U.S. officials were "confident" that the trailers were used for "mobile biological weapons production."

Throughout the summer and fall of 2003, the trailers became simply "mobile biological laboratories" in speeches and press statements by administration officials. In late June, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell declared that the "confidence level is increasing" that the trailers were intended for biowarfare. In September, Vice President Cheney pronounced the trailers to be "mobile biological facilities," and said they could have been used to produce anthrax or smallpox.

Got that? Late May, official, authoritative, and investigative report says X is not true; late June, Colin Powell says X!; September, Dick Cheney says X with added detail!

And, last but not least, back to the discovery of the trailers and the team that analyzed them:

The technical team went to work under a blistering sun in 110-degree temperatures. [snip] By the end of their first day, team members still had differing views about what the trailers were. But they agreed about what the trailers were not.

"Within the first four hours," said one team member, who like the others spoke on the condition he not be named, "it was clear to everyone that these were not biological labs."

News of the team's early impressions leaped across the Atlantic well ahead of the technical report. Over the next two days, a stream of anxious e-mails and phone calls from Washington pressed for details and clarifications.

The reason for the nervousness was soon obvious: In Washington, a CIA analyst had written a draft white paper on the trailers, an official assessment that would also reflect the views of the DIA. The white paper described the trailers as "the strongest evidence to date that Iraq was hiding a biological warfare program." . . . But the technical team's preliminary report, written in a tent in Baghdad and approved by each team member, reached a conclusion opposite from that of the white paper.

So. Washington did not want those trailers to be what they were. Thus, despite the utter lack of ambiguity,

At several points, members were questioned about revising their conclusions. . . . Could the report's conclusions be softened, to leave open a possibility that the trailers might have been intended for weapons?

Please, pretty please, can we change the truth for something that fits the preferred story line? How could one litttle anthrax thingie (that's BushSpeak for bacterium) hurt?

Got that? Try to change the truth to your purposes. If that fails, hide it, ignore it and just say what you want anyway.

Now, does anybody really believe anything they tell us about Iran, or their plans in regarding it? How do you define madness?