UPDATED - ColdType

She said that most of the folks in the streets of
Baghdad she talked with believe he is alive.
Many are apparently pissed at him NOT because
of all of the dreadful things about his regime that
bombard us daily but because he did not, as
promised, defend the capital and them.
More ‘revelations’ debunked
SECRETARY of Defense Rumsfeld, who was not
“inclined” to tell reporters at a briefing last week
where he was going, has showed up to thank his
military forces for a job well done. The President
will offer a more subdued victory statement later
in the week. Meanwhile four more U.S. soldiers
were wounded in another sniping incident as
General Jay Garner begins his democracy building-reconstruction
exercise. There has been
more debunking of false stories in the media.
The Mail and Guardian reports: “Western intelligence
officials are playing down the significance
of documents appearing to show that Saddam
Hussein’s regime met an al-Qaeda envoy in
Baghdad in 1998 and sought to arrange a meeting
with Osama bin Laden.”
Also, a bunch of barrels widely reported as
having chemical weapons now apparently, on
closer inspection, did not. One thousand more
“experts” are on the way to join the elusive
weapons hunt. (My suggestion: send in the DEA,
they always find the illicit substances–one way or
another.)
Weapons search a mess
EMBEDDED: WEAPONS OF MASS DECEPTION
THE Times is reporting that the search for
weapons, the nominal purpose of the war, is
righteously screwed up. “Disorganization, delays
222
and faulty intelligence have hampered the Pentagon-led
search for Saddam Hussein’s suspected
weapons of mass destruction, causing
growing concern about one of the most sensitive
and secretive operations in postwar Iraq, according
to U.S. officials and outside experts familiar
with the effort.
“The slow start has created so many interagency
squabbles that a National Security Council
military staffer at the White House has been
assigned to mediate among the Defense Intelligence
Agency, the Defense Threat Reduction
Agency, the CIA, the Energy Department, and
other government agencies involved in the hunt.
“And some weapons experts warn that the
lapses have even raised the threat of arms proliferation
from Iraq.”
“Selective use of intellligence,
exaggeration”
THE Independent on Sunday yesterday said that
intelligence agencies in the U.S. and Britain are
now saying (where were they before the war?)
that their findings were misrepresented. Raymond
Whitaker reported: “The case for invading
Iraq to remove its weapons of mass destruction
was based on selective use of intelligence, exaggeration,
use of sources known to be discredited
and outright fabrication.
“A high-level UK source said last night that
intelligence agencies on both sides of the
Atlantic were furious that briefings they gave
political leaders were distorted in the rush to
war with Iraq. ‘They ignored intelligence assessments
which said Iraq was not a threat,’ the
source said. Quoting an editorial in a Middle East
newspaper which said, ‘Washington has to prove