McClellan: "I hope that ABC would apologize" for no WMDs

[kurth]

White House hotly denies report on Iraq WMD

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The White House on Wednesday angrily denied a newspaper report that suggested President George W. Bush in 2003 declared the existence of biological weapons laboratories in Iraq while knowing it was not true. On May 29, 2003, Bush hailed the capture of two trailers in Iraq as mobile biological laboratories and declared, "We have found the weapons of mass destruction."

The report in The Washington Post said a Pentagon-sponsored fact-finding mission had already concluded that the trailers had nothing to do with biological weapons. The newspaper cited government officials and weapons experts who participated in the secret mission or had direct knowledge of it. The Post said the group's unanimous findings had been sent to the Pentagon in a field report, two days before the president's statement.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan called the account "reckless reporting" and said Bush made his statement based on the intelligence assessment of the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), an arm of the Pentagon. Bush cited the threat posed by weapons of mass destruction as the prime justification for invading Iraq. No such weapons were found. A U.S. intelligence official, speaking to Reuters on condition of anonymity, confirmed the existence of the field report cited by the Post...

When an ABC reporter pressed McClellan on the subject at his morning briefing, McClellan upbraided the network for picking up on the report. "This is reckless reporting and for you all to go on the air this morning and make such a charge is irresponsible, and I hope that ABC would apologize for it and make a correction on the air," he said...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/12/AR2006041201059.html

[magellan]

1. The proper reply should be

[Amonester]

2. McLeLiar order$ the Pre$$ to compLie...

or Bu$t (?) :grr:

[madame defarge]

3. And I hope...

that Scottie would tell the truth and actually answer a damn question without the words "ongoing investigation..."

(I also hope for world peace, an end to poverty, and that my wrinkles & fat will magically disappear...)

[wallwriter]

5. I call bulls***

If Scottie had real proof, there would be a lawsuit or some other tangible and punitive action.

[baldguy]

4. "I lied to you, but you should apologize for exposing my lies."

[otohara]

6. upbraid yourself Snotty

ohhh...going after the press again, talk about rehashing

[helderheid]

7. "Damnit! If you keep talking about what happened it won't go away!"

[DBoon]

8. Minitrue says there WERE WMD

any news report otherwise is untrue and must be sent into the memory hole!

[w13rd0]

9. Bush Lied...

...to the American People, to Congress, and to the UN. He knew he was lying, but he did it anyway. He didn't read the reports or didn't care to listen to what they had to say, concerning 9/11, concerning Iraq. He's incompetent, evil, negligent or all of the above. So shut the fuck up Scottie.

[Left Is Write]

14. That's the best advice I've heard all week.

"So shut the fuck up Scottie."

[sinkingfeeling]

10. And Scotty, why doesn't the president and VP and you and all of

this so-called administration apologize to both the American and Iraqi people for your 'reckless' war mongering?

[Dhalgren]

11. So is Scotty saying that the Dictator did not read the report that

said the trailers were NOT WMD factories? And that, therefore, he was going with the best intel he had at the time? Is that it? Well, where is a copy of the report he read where it said that they were WMD factories? Let's see the report where he got his lie...er..misinformation?

[Roland99]

12. They obviously kept him "out of the loop"

Maybe he was off cycling somewhere.

[The White Tree]

13. Scottie talkin out his ass, details:

Here are some highlights from another article about this:

Bush Statement on Iraq WMD Later Debunked
<http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060412/ap_on_go_pr_wh/bush_iraq_2;_ylt=Ap9efthzy_mJXPIfDqq65sob.3QA;_ylu=X3oDMTA2ZGZwam4yBHNlYwNmYw-->

...The Washington Post reported Wednesday that experts on a Pentagon-sponsored mission who examined the trailers concluded that they had nothing to do with biological weapons and sent their findings to Washington in a classified field report on May 27, 2003.

One day later, the CIA and DIA publicly issued an assessment saying the opposite — that U.S. officials were confident that the trailers were used to produce biological weapons. The assessment said the mobile facilities represented "the strongest evidence to date that Iraq was hiding a biological warfare program."

The very next day, Bush declared in a Polish television interview, "We have found the weapons of mass destruction. We found biological laboratories."

McClellan said information for public reports from the CIA comes from many sources and takes time to vet....

So information from the CIA takes time to vet. Fair enough. If that is the case then why was it, the day after the report that supported their conclusion about WMDs was completed, Bush, who was in Poland at the time mind you, already knew about it. Yet the information that came out 2 days earlier needed time to vet.

Doesn't that make the presidents statement about WMDs being found at the very least irresponsable?
Were the CIA and DIA reports vetted? How could they be if the Pentagon was the one with the experts looking at the trailers? Should those reports have been held to include that. Did the CIA and DIA do their own investigation of the trailers or did they just draw their own conclusions. And what did they base those conclusions on?

So many questions.