Joerg,

As you'll see from my response to Joe, I basically agree. Some thoughts:

"Americans would not have supported the war to punish Saddam for violation of UN sanctions and to promote democracy in the ME."

Well, we might have, depending on how it was presented. The intervention in Mogadishu in 1992 was initially popular, based in part on momentum from the successful 1991 Gulf War. We had similar momentum after taking down the Taliban.

Even without momentum, the NATO intervention in former Yugoslavia was popular enough to be approved by Congress.

But I agree, WMD, and specifically, stockpiles, was emphasized. And of course, the Iraq intervention was a much bigger scale, with more lives and treasure at stake, so there would have been more resistance to the idea. But I don't think we can completely rule it out...

Says the LA Times, Curveball "...worked as a technician at Babel, a Baghdad film and TV company that produced adoring documentaries about Hussein"

"In early 2002, a year before the war, he told co-workers at the Burger King that he spied for Iraqi intelligence and would report any fellow Iraqi worker who criticized Hussein's regime."

And in other places in the article, you see that Curveball says he was pro-Saddam. He "applied to join the ruling Baath Party."

If these points, which presumably have been checked and double-checked by the reporters, are true, it makes it unlikely Curveball was part of a false flag operation (i.e. he was probably not a Bush/DOD/MI-6/Mossad/whatever operative posing as an Iraqi defector).

Probably, he was just winging it in order to get attention and money.

This further supports my theory that the WMD fiasco is more properly understood as a catastrophic intelligence failure, rather than an outright fabrication by the Bush administration.

Also, it seems to me this tends to vindicate Ahmed Chalabi. This article proves that Chalabi was NOT Curveball, but a relative of Curveball. Chalabi's longtime position, that he did little other than help confirm Curveball's basic identity, remains unrefuted. Anybody know otherwise?

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"In October 2004, more than a year after the invasion, a CIA-led investigation concluded that Baghdad had abandoned all chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs after the 1991 Persian Gulf War. The germ trucks never existed."

This is very misleading. Baghdad did not abandon all WMD programs immediately after the 1991 war. There were no production facilities, but there were several fully or partially destroyed lab facilities found after the invasion. These facilities had been destroyed recently and in haste.

The Iraq Survey Group's final report in 2004 found that "Saddam had the capability to start anthrax production within one week of making the decision to do so, and thereafter to produce more than 10 tons of weaponized anthrax a year."

Also I believe trucks matching Curveball's description were in fact found, however they were probably designed to produce helium or hydrogen gas as part of a military weather balloon system.

Joerg,

Of course, anthrax was just one component of the programs Saddam had lying dormant at the time of the 2003 invasion. There was sarin, VX, and misc other stuff. The only thing he had truly given up was a nuclear bomb (meaning we found misc equipment but not enough for experiments, and certainly not production).

What is "weaponized"? Fair question. Shortly after the 1991 attack, we found and destroyed military-grade, weaponized biological and chemical weapons. Some of them, however, were in parts of the country we didn't have access to in 1991. They would have been easily deployable on the battlefield, but even when brand new were probably not as effective as the "ideal" weapons which are very pure, have well-engineered and tested delivery and dispersal media, are properly stored, etc.

Some 500 of these weapons were only recovered in 2004; they were severely degraded, but still lethal against an unprepared target under the right conditions (i.e. terrorism). Ironically, it seems that the Iraqi forces were so disorganized, they may not have known these weapons still existed!

Even the best chemical and biological weapons are not very effective on the battlefield against a modern, well-equipped army such as the coalition. The threat was that he would use them against rag-tag, conscripted, middle eastern armies, insurgents, civilians, and even as a psychological terror weapon similar to the anthrax letters. For these purposes, high- or even military-quality weapons were beside the point -- all you need is a fresh source, a modest amount of the stuff, and the will to use it. All of which he had demonstrated in the past, time and time again.

So to answer your question, the "one week" weapons the article I cited would presumably have been effective for terrorism, or for genocide against Iraqi civilians or insurgents; it may have taken longer to make them into medium-grade military weapons, as he had done in the past. Or perhaps military-grade weapons would have been impossible, if all the real experts were dead or gone.

There is still no evidence as to the ultimate origin of the 2001 anthrax letters. Dr. Steven Hatfill, the main "person of interest" for a time, has also been vindicated as far as I can tell.

Personally, I doubt Saddam was behind them or the 9/11 attacks; Iraqi intelligence may have provided some incidental support (passports, cover stories, etc) but it is unlikely they knew what it was for, other than general anti-Western activities. Under US organized crime laws that long predate the Patriot act, proof that Iraqi intelligence had done this would make them co-conspirators; however, the possible Iraq/9-11 connection is at best only a peripheral element of the case for the war.

Remaining anthrax attack theories (in no particular order, this is all speculation) include:

• 1) al-Quaeda, as part of a coordinated attack;
  
• 2) a sympathetic attack by an Islamist entity not connected to al-Q;
  
• 3) an opportunistic attack by a non-Islamist entity (far right? far left? disgruntled individual?) that saw a chance a) to help push the US over the edge into collapse, or b) to see if he could get away with something and have it blamed on someone else, or c) make al-Q appear even more a threat than it was;