Hey, I'm back -- tanned, rested, and still disgruntled. Had a nice time, but I missed this....

Oh, where to start? Maybe the land of Lucianne.

Today one of her "Must Reads of the Day" is "Iraq Had Secret Labs, Officer Says" from the L.A. Times. Here's the part of the story that gets posted at the top of the thread on her site:

BAGHDAD -- Saddam Hussein's intelligence services set up a network of clandestine cells and small laboratories after 1996 with the goal of someday rebuilding illicit chemical and biological weapons, according to a former senior Iraqi intelligence officer. The officer, who held the rank of brigadier general, said each closely guarded weapons team had three or four scientists and other experts who were unknown to U.N. inspectors...

Smoking gun? High fives in Bush country? Humiliation for liberal skeptics? Er, not quite. Here are a couple of paragraphs from the original story that Lucianne.com chose not to excerpt:

The officer, who held the rank of brigadier general, ... insisted they did not produce any illegal arms and that none now exist in Iraq. But he said the teams met regularly and put plans on paper to quickly develop weapons of mass destruction if U.N. sanctions against Iraq were lifted.

"We could start again anytime," said the officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he said he fears for his life. "It's very easy. Especially biological."

"The point was, the Iraqis kept the knowledge," he explained during a lengthy interview Friday in which he offered tantalizing details of secret programs. But U.S. weapons hunters "will never find anything here. Only oil."

...He said that U.N. sanctions and inspections in the 1990s crippled Iraq's ability to build illegal weapons and that Hussein's chemical, biological and nuclear programs were effectively eliminated in the mid-1990s....

The Iraqi intelligence officer said that the secret weapons groups were created in late 1996 and 1997 because the regime's unconventional arms programs had been dismantled or destroyed by then and that U.N. inspectors knew most of those who had worked in them....

Kind of a comedown, no? The right was so ready to wave huge stockpiles of WMDs in our faces, and now they're crowing because one Iraqi says there used to be WMDs in Iraq -- and that the sanctions we said were an effective deterrent actually were an effective deterrent.

(If you can't read the story, use "clipjoint" as both member name and password.)

Oh, and, by the way, this guy might not even be telling the truth:

It's possible that the officer's story contains falsehoods meant to deceive or confuse U.S. investigators. He refused to show the documents he said he had saved or to take a Los Angeles Times reporter to any of the safe houses where he said the weapons teams had operated....

The Iraqi officer agreed to speak to two reporters because he said he wanted them to provide a satellite telephone that would not be tapped by U.S. intelligence so he could call Iraqi spies hiding overseas.

He said he also wanted to see if he could gain access to $600,000 he said is in a Chase Manhattan Bank account. The reporters refused....

A real Boy Scout, this one.

Look, I don't think Saddam was a nice guy. As I said last month, I think it's quite plausible that Saddam had a WMD program and abandoned it in an attempt to get sanctions lifted -- and if that's what was going on, it means the sanctions were a very effective anti-proliferation tool. I think this source is telling a story that's reasonably close to the truth -- even if he's just making stuff up.

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Meanwhile, Judith Miller took a small taste of crow yesterday, coauthoring this story:

Some Analysts of Iraq Trailers Reject Germ Use

American and British intelligence analysts with direct access to the evidence are disputing claims that the mysterious trailers found in Iraq were for making deadly germs. In interviews over the last week, they said the mobile units were more likely intended for other purposes and charged that the evaluation process had been damaged by a rush to judgment.

"Everyone has wanted to find the 'smoking gun' so much that they may have wanted to have reached this conclusion," said one intelligence expert who has seen the trailers and, like some others, spoke on condition that he not be identified. He added, "I am very upset with the process." ...

The skeptical experts said the mobile plants lacked gear for steam sterilization, normally a prerequisite for any kind of biological production, peaceful or otherwise. Its lack of availability between production runs would threaten to let in germ contaminants, resulting in failed weapons.

Second, if this shortcoming were somehow circumvented, each unit would still produce only a relatively small amount of germ-laden liquid, which would have to undergo further processing at some other factory unit to make it concentrated and prepare it for use as a weapon.

Finally, they said, the trailers have no easy way for technicians to remove germ fluids from the processing tank....

One more story embarrassing to the administration that, alas, conveniently winds up in the Saturday paper....