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It's Chalabi's fault. Partly anyhow. So many of the disasters of the US war and post-war in Iraq -- including apparently al Qaqaa getting crossed off the US's priority list -- originate with Chalabi and go through Feith's office to the White House, it defies plausibility even by Hollywood standards. He's like a comic book villain. This from Knight-Ridder's Jonathan Landay:
Al Qaqaa was on a classified list of Iraqi weapons facilities that the CIA provided to Pentagon and military officials before the invasion, said the U.S. intelligence official.
But when the Pentagon and U.S. Central Command produced their own list of sites that a limited number of U.S. "exploitation teams" should search, priority was given to those identified by exiled Iraqi opposition groups, he said. Al Qaqaa wasn't one of them.
"The top of the list was dominated by nuclear facilities and places where we expected to find chemical and biological weapons," he said. "Iraqi exiles had a very heavy hand in determining which places got looked at first."
When can this guy be put on trial? The fraud he perpetrated on America and Iraq is certainly criminal. The best thing that ever happened and still only a partially told story is whatever happened in the US administration that finally had the US dump Chalabi last spring. If Bob Blackwill is to thank for this, he deserves a major award.