Morning News Roundup (12 Apr)

Before we get to the flash news round this morning here's a little something from the memory hole. Remember those mobile biological production facilities touted by Colin Powell during his presentation to the UN in the run up to the Iraq War:

One of the most worrisome things that emerges from the thick intelligence file we have on Iraq's biological weapons is the existence of mobile production facilities used to make biological agents.

And remember that shortly after the fall of Baghdad, in May of 2003, a couple of "mobile labs" were discovered, giving proof to Powell's presentation and BushCo's assertion that Iraq was indeed concocting WMD. It was announced by President Bush on May 29, 2003, and was kept in the administration's PR for months thereafter to help quiet any dissent. Well, the WaPo today tells a different story:

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.

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.
[...]
"There was no connection to anything biological," said one expert who studied the trailers. Another recalled an epithet that came to be associated with the trailers: "the biggest sand toilets in the world."

Salon's War Room offers two examples of the administration, and Big Time in particular, touting these "mobile labs" long after they were debunked:

It's not clear when, if ever, Bush saw the report from the group the Defense Intelligence Agency dispatched to examine the trailers. What is clear is that members of the Bush administration continued to use the supposed discovery of mobile weapons labs as a justification for war long after somebody should have stopped them.

[T]here was Dick Cheney on "Meet the Press" three months later, saying: "We had intelligence reporting before the war that there were at least seven of these mobile labs that he had gone out and acquired. We've, since the war, found two of them. They're in our possession today, mobile biological facilities that can be used to produce anthrax or smallpox or whatever else you wanted to use during the course of developing the capacity for an attack." Cheney seemed to back down a little in a January 2004 interview with National Public Radio, saying that while "we believe" the two trailers "were, in fact, part of" Saddam Hussein's biological weapons program, "it's not clear at this stage whether or not he used any of that to produce or whether he was simply getting ready for the next war."

Can the BushCo Gang be trusted to tell the truth in any circumstance? Can they understand why public trust in them diminishes unabated?

Alright, onto the rest of the news:

• 33: Number of American troops who have died in Iraq so far this month, exceeding the 31 killed in all of March. [via ThinkProgress' ThinkFast]
  
  
• WaPo blogger/columnist William Arkin has a series of posts up this week (here and here) on the land war contingency plans being written up by the military:
  

  The public needs to know first, that this planning includes preemptive plans that the President could approve and implement with 12 hours notice. Congress should take notice of the fact that there is a real war plan -- CONPLAN 8022 -- and it could be implemented tomorrow.

  
  
• And Jefferson Morley (in his World Opinion Roundup) has a wrap-up of reaction in Europe to yesterday's Iranian revelation that they've successfully enriched uranium.
  
  
• Iraq's interior minister, Bayan Jabr Solagh, has acknowledged the existence of so-called death squads within certain security forces but denied any link with his own ministry."We have to make clear that there are some forces out of order, not under our control and not under the control of the ministry of defence," he said. [Agence France Presse]
  
  
• Tens of thousands have fled their homes or the country since the bombing of the Shia shrine in Samarra Feb. 23. At least 30,000 Iraqis have been displaced from their homes since then, the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) says. [IFP]
  
  
• A Spanish judge indicted 29 people on Tuesday in connection with the Madrid train bombings two years ago, suggesting that the group attacked Spain for its support of the American-led invasion of Iraq and for its increasingly aggressive police investigations of Islamic radical groups. [NYTimes]
  
  
• House Speaker Dennis Hastert of Illinois and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist of Tennessee, confronted with internal party divisions as well as large public demonstrations, said Tuesday they intend to pass immigration legislation that does not subject illegal immigrants to prosecution as felons. [Boston Globe]
  
  
• Francine Busby didn't get the 50% needed in yesterday's vote to avoid a run-off election this summer--she got 43.9%, with the closest Republican getting 15.2% (Hotline).
  
  
• Mrs. F and I are heading over to AdRov and J-Co's homestead to partake in the seder ritual tonight--and we're bringing our traditional leek-and-cheese Matzoh pie. (We're still looking for some non-Manischewitz kosher wine.)
  
  
• And for a moment, when I saw this headline--Gyllenhaal, Sarsgaard Engaged--I thought that Brokeback Mountain had really made an impact on Jake. But no--it's his sister, Maggie, who's engaged to Peter Sarsgaard (Jake's co-star in Jarhead, which is coming soon on my Netflix queue).