The Incredible Story of Mahdi Obeidi, Conclusion

Summary: In this series of posts, I examine somefunkiness regarding the story of Mahdi Obeidi, the Iraqi nuclearscientist who claimed to have buried a nuclear centrifuge under hisrose plant. In part one, I lay out a timeline for his story. Parts two and three examine some problems with the materials he turned over. Part four questions the stories Obeidi and Pitzer told about their meeting. Part five looks the WaPo articlethat is a central prop in Obeidi’s story. Part six examines some of the tensions within the intelligenceagencies dealing with Obeidi. This post summarizes the evidence presented in the other posts, then speculates on what may have actually happened.

Finally! My much-delayed conclusion to my series on Mahdi Obeidi. In this post, I’ll review everything I’ve presented before (note, I’m not putting links for stuff covered earlier–if you want a particular link, ask me for it in the comments), then provide two different speculative scenarios for what might really have happened. As I’ve been saying throughout this series, I don’t think I’ve disproven the story of Mahdi Obeidi. I think his story–as told–is possible. But I do think it improbable.

I speculate below that one of two things happened with the Obeidi story. I think it possible that Obeidi had something less spectacular to turn over, and that the CIA simply fluffed up the story to serve their needs. But I also think it possible that the the CIA contacted Obeidi during the war, encouraged him to defect, had him contact Pitzer as his first intelligence contact, then made up the centrifuge and blueprint story out of thin air. If either scenario were true, it would suggest one of the Bush Administration’s biggest pieces of proof of Saddam’s ongoing intent was completely made up. But before I flesh out these scenarios, let me lay out the evidence I’ve given so far.

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More Iran Boogeyman

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The Incredible Story of Mahdi Obeidi, Part Six

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Where Is Abu Zubaydah?

Am I the only one who is disturbed that our government has disappeared all the Al Qaeda leadership rather than dealing with them transparently?

I just finished James Risen’s new book in which Abu Zubaydah features prominently. First there’s the anecdote where, a few days after Abu Zubaydah’s capture and transfer to Thailand, Bush asked Tenet what kind of intelligence they had gotten from Zubaydah. None, Tenet explained, he’s still so doped up for his injuries he can’t talk coherently.

Bush turned to Tenet and asked: "Who authorized putting him on pain medication?" (22)

Then there’s the story near the end of the book about finding–and not pursuing–Zubaydah’s ATM cards. Don’t want to know who’s filling Zubaydah’s bank accounts, you see, for fear you’ll discover it’s your crack oil dealer.

Reading of Zubaydah’s capture made me ask, for the umpteenth time, why haven’t we hard of Zubaydah’s military tribunal and execution? Why are we still holding him in an undisclosed location, almost 4 years after we captured him, and presumably long after he’s been of any intelligence value?

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The Incredible Story of Mahdi Obeidi, Part Five

Summary: In this series of posts, I examine some funkiness regarding the story of Mahdi Obeidi, the Iraqi nuclear scientist who claimed to have buried a nuclear centrifuge under his rose plant. In part one, I lay out a timeline for his story. Parts two and three examine some problems with the materials he turned over. Part four questions the stories Obeidi and Pitzer told about their meeting. In this post, I look at central prop in this story, a WaPo article that provided Obeidi’s motivation for reaching out to Pitzer. The WaPo story doesn’t discredit the story, but it does raise the possibility that Chalabi’s INC was involved in this story.

When faced with the challenge of how to turn over his centrifuge to the Americans without getting arrested, Mahdi Obeidi turned to a WaPo article for inspiration. He explains he was given the Internet printout of the article by a friend. It reminded him of former weapons inspector David Albright, whom Obeidi had met and misinformed in the late 1990s. That reminder gave him the idea to reach out to David Albright to see if he could broker a meeting with the Americans.

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The Incredible Story of Mahdi Obeidi, Part Four

Overview: In this series, I examine some funky aspects of the story of Mahdi Obeidi, the Iraqi scientist who hid nuclear blueprints and centrifuge parts under his rose bush. The first post provides a timeline of Obeidi’s story. The second and third posts raise several problems with Obeidi’s story: the explanation for how the materials were preserved is unlikely, the blueprints don’t match details we know of said blueprints, and the prototype pieces Obeidi says he turned over don’t match the pictures the CIA released of them. In this post, I will look Kurt Pitzer’s role in the early part of the story.

As I’ve shown in the last two posts, there are reasons to doubt the materials Obeidi turned over to the Americans are authentic.These reasons are not enough, IMO, to discount the story entirely. But they raise enough questions to beg an examination of the provenance of the materials. How credible is Obeidi’s story about meeting Kurt Pitzer and through him negotiating a deal with the Americans?

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Risen's Delayed Scoop?

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The New Niger Document

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Why Did We Go to War against Iraq?

According to Atrios’ timeline, we’ve now entered the first phase of a long process that will end in war:

Winter/Spring – The clone army of foreign policy "experts" fromconservative foreign policy outfits nobody ever heard of beforesuddenly appear on all the cable news programs all the time, frowningfuriously and expressing concerns about the "grave threat" that Iranposes. Never before heard of Iranian exile group members startappearing regularly, talking about their role in the nuclear programand talking up Iran’s human rights violations.

Which sounds about right–we may have even entered the Spring/Summer phase of the liberal hawk.

The thing is, though, we have yet to figure out why we fought the last war. It wasn’t the WMDs. It wasn’t an attempt to spread democracy. It certainly wasn’t an attempt to knock off all the dictatorships in the region like dominoes. And it has only inflamed the Islamic fundamentalists in the region.

So before we go off to launch the next war, it’s time we had a really honest discussion about why we launched the last one.

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A Script for the Generals

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