Secretive Military Unit Attempted to Solve Political Problems in Iraq

Raw Story is reporting that the Pentagon civilian leadership “may have used an off-book quasi-military team to address political issues” in Iraq, including locating fallen Navy pilot Scott Speicher, who Ahmed Chalabi claimed had been held as a POW in Iraq since 1991, unearthing WMD, and finding Saddam Hussein, and that these concerns were given a higher priority than securing the region.

Read the whole thing, but of particular interest to me is the claim that on of these “off-book” missions was tasked with finding WMDs to solve the president’s political problems regarding his case for war—and was allegedly asking Iraqi intelligence and former intelligence officers to help them plant something, since there was nothing to be found.

“They come in the summer of 2003, bringing in Iraqis, interviewing them,” the UN source said. “Then they start talking about WMD and they say to [these Iraqi intelligence officers] that ‘Our President is in trouble. He went to war saying there are WMD and there are no WMD. What can we do? Can you help us?’”

The source said intelligence officers understood quickly what they were being asked to do and that the assumption was they were being asked to provide WMD in order for coalition forces to find them.

“But the guys were thinking this is absurd because anything put down would not pass the smell test and could be shown to be not of Iraqi origin and not using Iraqi methodology,” the source added.

This is, of course, not the first time it has been suggested that the White House tried to arrange to have WMDs planted. One theory asserts that the outing of CIA operative Valerie Plame, who was working on weapons proliferation, was not just a reprisal for her husband’s Times column, but a retaliatory tactic for having uncovered attempts to plant WMDs.