Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: [Irak] Iraqi Trailers Said to Make Hydrogen, Not Biological Arms

Iraqi Trailers Said to Make Hydrogen, Not Biological Arms
By DOUGLAS JEHL
NYT
ASHINGTON, Aug. 8 - Engineering experts from the Defense Intelligence
Agency have come to believe that the most likely use for two
mysterious trailers found in Iraq was to produce hydrogen for weather
balloons rather than to make biological weapons, government officials
say.
The classified findings by a majority of the engineering experts
differ from the view put forward in a white paper made public on May
28 by the C.I.A. and the Defense Intelligence Agency, which said that
the trailers were for making biological weapons. 
That report had dismissed as a "cover story" claims by senior Iraqi
scientists that the trailers were used to make hydrogen for the
weather balloons that were then used in artillery practice. 
A Defense Department official said the alternative views expressed by
members of the engineering team, not yet spelled out in a formal
report, had prompted the Defense Intelligence Agency to "pursue
additional information" to determine whether those Iraqi claims were
indeed accurate.
Officials at the C.I.A. and the Defense Department said today that the
two intelligence agencies still stood by the May 28 finding, which
President Bush has cited as evidence that Iraq had a biological
weapons program. The engineering teams' findings, which officials from
the Defense Department and other agencies would discuss only on the
condition of anonymity, add a new layer to disputes within the
intelligence community about the trailers found by allied forces in
Iraq in April and May. 
The State Department's intelligence branch, which was not invited to
take part in the initial review, disputed the findings in a memorandum
on June 2. The fact that American and British intelligence analysts
with direct access to the evidence were disputing the claims included
in the C.I.A. white paper was first reported in June, along with the
analysts' concern that the evaluation of the mobile units had been
marred by a rush to judgment.
But it had not previously been known that a majority of the Defense
Intelligence Agency's engineering team had come to disagree with the
central finding of the white paper: that the trailers were used for
making biological weapons. 
"The team has decided that in their minds, there could be another use,
for inefficient hydrogen production, most likely for balloons," a
Defense Department official said.
The Defense Intelligence Agency's engineering teams had not concluded
their work in Iraq at the time the white paper was drafted, and so
their views were not taken into account at that time, the government
officials said. They said the engineering teams had discussed their
findings in meetings in Washington in June and again last month. 
"We stand by the white paper," the Defense Department official said.
"But based on the assessment of the engineering team, it has caused us
to pursue additional information about possible alternative uses for
the trailers." 
A C.I.A. official who spoke on the condition of anonymity said the
agency was "continuing to gather more information about the labs, but
we stand behind the white paper."
Since the white paper was made public in May, new information
suggesting that the trailers might have been used for making hydrogen
has come from Iraqi officials interrogated by American military
officers in Iraq, a military officer said today. Those Iraqi officials
have repeated the claims of Iraqi scientists that the trailers were
used to fill weather balloons, said the officer, who spoke on the
condition of anonymity.
Another government official from a different agency said the issue of
the trailers had prompted deep divisions within the Defense
Intelligence Agency. The official said members of the engineering team
had been angry that the agency issued the joint white paper with the
C.I.A. before their own work was completed. 
The official said the question of how that had happened was being
examined by the defense agency's inspector general as part of a
broader inquiry that began in June.
A spokesman for the intelligence agency, Don Black, said he could not
comment on the work of the inspector general.
The Bush administration has said the two trailers are evidence that
Saddam Hussein was hiding a program for biological warfare. In the
white paper made public in May, it detailed its case even while
conceding discrepancies in the evidence and a lack of hard proof. 
Senior administration officials have acknowledged that the United
States has found neither biological agents nor undisputed evidence
that the trailers were used to make such arms. They have said that
intelligence analysts in Washington and Baghdad reached their
conclusion about the trailers after analyzing, and rejecting,
alternative theories of how they could have been used.
That view, described as a consensus of opinion with the C.I.A. and the
Defense Intelligence Agency, was presented to the White House before
it was made public.
At that time, a senior official who examined the evidence in detail
and concluded that the trailers were used for biological weapons said,
"The experts who have crawled over this again and again can come up
with no other plausible legitimate use." 
That official said the agencies had rejected the theory put forward by
Iraqi scientists who said one of the units was used to produce
hydrogen.
Today, a Defense Department official said of Iraq, "There is not doubt
in our minds that they had mobile biological weapons trailers." But
the official said there was disagreement within the Defense
Intelligence Agency about whether those found so far were used to
produce biological weapons or hydrogen.
The engineering team that has come to believe the trailers were used
to produce hydrogen includes experts whose task was to assess the
trailers from a purely technical standpoint, as opposed to one based
on other sources of intelligence. Skeptical experts had previously
cited a lack of equipment in the trailers for steam sterilization,
normally a prerequisite for any kind of biological production. 
Bush administration officials have said the most compelling
information that the trailers were used for making biological weapons
has come from a human source, an Iraqi scientist who described the
trailers and what he said was their weapon-making role to American
experts months before the trailers were discovered.
The six-page report that was made public in May, "Iraqi Mobile
Biological Warfare Agent Production Plants," called discovery of the
trailers "the strongest evidence to date that Iraq was hiding a
biological warfare program."
Senior administration officials have said repeatedly that the White
House has not put pressure on the intelligence community in any way on
the content of its white paper, or on the timing of its release.
Socio del Luigino Fans Club. Tessera n° 0094.

 hydrogen.
E l'altra unita' cosa produceva? Ossigeno per chi aveva problemi
respiratori durante le esercitazioni con i palloni aereostatici? :)
*LOL*
-Stefano

Quindi non si sa se esiste o meno :)
se ha parlato significa che esiste


 ha scritto nel messaggio
news:flncjvk2qfh2mvrgd...@4ax.com...

Che io ho killato de cesari sono due anni e non mi pento
perchè non provi a seguire il mio esempio ?
ne trovera un alleggerimento tutta la comunità
Credo che non farei bella figura killando anche te
Pomero

Credo che non farei bella figura killando anche te
basta filtrare i tread i cui rispondo al Sdc....


se ha parlato significa che esiste
Hai prove che "ha parlato"? :))
*LOL*
-Stefano