Those "Weather Balloon" Labs ... Again

Remember those mobile labs? The ones that Secretary of State Powell said were mobile weapons labs? The ones that the MSM later said were used to make hydrogen for weather balloons?

No, we’re not going to let that one go. How stupid are the MSM pundits? Apparently the story was to good not to print.

From Captain's Quarters:

On the question of the mobile labs in particular, that question hardly seem closed. As shown here five weeks ago, the Iraqis themselves apparently thought that these mobile labs served a military purpose, belying the common wisdom that they amounted to nothing more than hydrogen generators for weather balloons. The Iraqi document translated by Joseph Shahda and confirmed by two independent translators was addressed to the Military Industrialization Commission, the Iraqi bureau tasked with managing their WMD programs, and discussed an order for two of the labs in late 2002, when Iraq was busily preparing for the impending American invasion.

The key portion of the memo deals with the payment for the two labs:

1. Develop and enlarge existing laboratories, 178,000,000 Dinars
2. Prepare MOBILE LABORATORIES , In Iraqi Dinar 128,413,00 + 273,445 Euros with 10 Dinar/Euro, 27,344,500, 155,757,500 Dinars.

Total 333,757,500 Dinars


Twenty-seven million Euros at that time equalled roughly $33 million per laboratory. Given that the MIC had to be rather occupied with fighting the Americans and that the MIC would have little to do with Iraqi weather observation, having them spend $33 million on two devices for hydrogen production seems highly suspicious. No one has ever explained a need for mobile hydrogen production in Iraq, either. Iraqi oil production would naturally produce plenty of hydrogen, certainly more than enough for any weather balloons -- and it would be much less expensive to transport hydrogen in tanks than to produce it in mobile laboratories. Hydrogen production does not require precision rotation or vibration, nor does it need an X-ray tester, all of which are listed in the memo as components of the labs.

In order to believe that these facilities were meant for peaceful purposes, we have to believe that the bureau that ran the Iraqi WMD program suddenly concerned itself with weather observation to such an extent that it spent $66 million for two trailers, for the sole purpose of producing hydrogen locally when it could easily and cheaply been transported in tanks from its oil refineries, all while the Iraqi command watched the Americans debate an invasion of Iraq all summer long. The alternative to this scenario is that the US hid that memo in a stash of captured documents, sat on them for over three years, had to release them untranslated only after Congress forced them to do so, and then hoped that some civilian might get around to reading it in a document dump of thousands of such documents, in the off chance that they could then finally use that false information to bolster their WMD argument.

Can anyone buy that with a straight face? Apparently Drumheller can, and the rest of the WMD deniers.