The Captain is on a roll

While George W. Bush and Karl Rove do not seem to be interested in giving the 'Bush Lied Crowd' the time of day, the blogosphere has been left to answer them. The problem with leaving such serious charges unanswered is that people tend to start believing things after they are stated as fact a few thousand times; even if stated without support. So now we have many thinking it true that Bush lied and similarly that we have been suffering through a poor economy. I cannot give a good answer why the Bush administration refuses to stick up for itself. Sometimes it is downright frustrating.

The blogosphere like time and tide wait for no man. Such is the case with Captain Ed of Captain's Quarters Blog. This last week the Captain has been verbally assaulting the notion that there was no WMD program in place in Iraq. First, the Captain has several posts regarding the mobile chemical labs written by a reader with very high qualifications in the field of Chemistry. He is given the alias Chemical Consultant. The CIA determined that these mobile chemical labs were used to produce hydrogen for weather balloons and not for the production of WMD.

The Captain points out that according to a translated document these labs were purchased for $33 million in September 2002 (right about the time the US was deciding to take military action. The Captain also points out that the oil refining process produces plenty of hydrogen that could be easily stored for this purpose. Chemical Consultant then takes over and discusses why the mobile labs could not have produced hydrogen. These posts are very scientific and the comments section has some lively debate and rebuttal. The posts are Mobile Labs Could Not
Have Produced Hydrogen as Described - Prologue, Part I, Part II, Part III.


The Captain proceeds with his run on WMD and other Iraq related posts. Most are based on one or more of the DocEx documents that have been captured in Iraq and released to the public for translation due to the sheer volume of documents. He posts about a translated document that seems to link Iraq to Afghanistan before 9/11 showing the provision of training manuals and guidance on avoiding intelligence leaks.

Another post by the Captain describes a translated document containing end of year bonuses being paid out at the end of 2002 (a few months before the invasion). This roster for the Finance Department: Missles Branch provides the names and sub-department names of those receiving bonuses. While many of the department names seem benign, among the list are: Biology, Nuclear, and Chemical. The Captain asks "One has to wonder why they worked three shifts and paid bonuses for programs that people still insist did not exist."

Another post translates a document describing the funding of a sodium carbonate project. He wonders "$18 million for a sodium carbonate project seems very high".

Another post refers to the Anthrax Operations Room

Another post reveals that "Dr. Rehab Rasheed Taha, otherwise known as Dr. Germ, prepared an analysis in 2002

of how to spread biological weapons material using an aircraft as the medium, and how far they had advanced on the application"

This post refers to a translated document that describes how Iraq "re-started its processing of castor-bean extraction, from which ricin can be developed -- and that UNMOVIC discovered it in December 2002." The Captain summarizes:

"So here we have confirmation that Iraq continued to work on WMD, and that the new UNMOVIC inspections verified that. We had previously heard from the mainstream media that UNMOVIC only found that the Iraqis still refused to cooperate fully with the inspections, but this puts a little different light on the situation as the UN found it as they debated how to deal with Iraq. Even with Saddam actively pursuing WMD, as it turns out, they refused to take any action except to propose extended inspections."

While there continues to be no smoking gun, the DocEx documents continue to produce interesting information that points to Saddam's WMD. We have an Iraqi General's statement that the WMD were moved out of Iraq before the war began. The slowness of the UN to act combined with preparation time for the US to attack certainly left plenty of time to do this. While the news media continues to virtually ignore DocEx, bloggers like the Captain pick up their slack as they are reluctant to cover any material outside of their template. Kudos to Captain Ed for this fantastic work.