Cheney WMD Trailer Claim Comes Unhitched

The interview in today’s New York Times with former U.S. Iraqi weapons inspector David Kay includes a dramatic repudiation of Vice President of the United States in hiding, Dick Halliburton.

Regarding Cheney’s assertion that Iraq was producing bioweapons in mobile trailers, the Times story states the following:

“…Dr. Kay added that there was now a consensus within the United States intelligence community that mobile trailers found in Iraq and initially thought to be laboratories for biological weapons were actually designed to produce hydrogen for weather balloons, or perhaps to produce rocket fuel. While using the trailers for such purposes seems bizarre, Dr. Kay said, ‘Iraq was doing a lot of nonsensical things’ under Mr. Hussein.”

Kay goes on to body slam the Administration’s argument that there are, or were, biological weapons in Iraq anytime in the last five or ten years:

“I’m personally convinced that there were not large stockpiles of newly produced weapons of mass destruction,” Dr. Kay said. “We don’t find the people, the documents or the physical plants that you would expect to find if the production was going on. …I think they gradually reduced stockpiles throughout the 1990’s. Somewhere in the mid-1990’s, the large chemical overhang of existing stockpiles was eliminated.”

Although this is certainly a profound and dramatic blow to the credibility of the Bush Administration, it is hard to tell what kind of profile the media will give the story, and to what extent it will permeate the consciousness of the American population.

After all, the public is still getting over last week’s passing of Captain Kangaroo.