From Captain's Quarters
Joseph Shahda has uncovered another document of interest from the files of intelligence captured by US forces during the fall of Saddam Hussein. This document addresses a still-controversial topic -- the mobile laboratories cited by Colin Powell as one of Saddam's WMD capabilities and discovered during the 2003 invasion. Later investigators determined these trailers to be hydrogen-gas production facilities although some experts still dispute that conclusion.
[...]Nothing in this document says anything explicit about chemical or biological weapons. However, some disquieting indicators exist that tend to argue against the weather-balloon explanation we have so far heard about the trailers. First and foremost, the Military Industrialization Committee was not just an ordinary procurement board for the Saddam regime. It had primary responsibility for the Iraqi WMD program before the Gulf War, and presumably afterwards as well. Its director, Abdul Tawab el-Mullah Howeish held the position of Deputy Prime Minister, a Cabinet-level position.
[...]If that looks strange, then the components of the labs look even more odd. Hydrogen production should not require precise measurements for rotation and vibration or an X-ray tester. It seems even more odd when the cost of these laboratories is considered. In the first place, this order actually refers to both mobile and fixed laboratories, demanding that 178 million Iraqi dinars get spent on enlarging the existing fixed facilities. It then orders the purchase of the mobile laboratories at a cost of 333 million dinars. At the exchange rate set by Saddam, that would have equaled about $1 billion in US dollars. However, the memo appears to acknowledge economic reality by showing an exchange rate of 10 dinar per Euro, which at the time traded close to the US dollar. That puts the mobile labs ordered by the agency responsible for WMD efforts at around $33 million dollars.
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