Aussies Get Confirmation of Zarqawi Missed Hit

Thanks to the Washington Monthly's Kevin Drum, who has regularly been tracking the story first reported by NBC more than two years ago "that long before the war the Bush administration had several chances to wipe out [Abu Musab Zarqawi's] terrorist operation and perhaps kill Zarqawi himself -- but never pulled the trigger."

In June 2002, U.S. officials say intelligence had revealed that Zarqawi and members of al-Qaida had set up a weapons lab at Kirma, in northern Iraq, producing deadly ricin and cyanide. The Pentagon quickly drafted plans to attack the camp with cruise missiles and airstrikes and sent it to the White House, where, according to U.S. government sources, the plan was debated to death in the National Security Council.

More Zarqawi-related intelligence surfaced, and the Pentagon drew up a second, then a third plan of attack, "and for the third time, the National Security Council killed it. Military officials insist their case for attacking Zarqawi's operation was airtight, but the administration feared destroying the terrorist camp in Iraq could undercut its case for war against Saddam."

Even during the 2004 election, the story didn't get a lot of play, hampered as it was by anonymous sources. But in a profile of Zarqawi on Australian TV new show Four Corners (full transcript here), Michael Scheuer, former head of the CIA's Osama bin Laden Unit, confirmed the story about passing up opportunities to take out the training camps before the war.

Almost every day we sent a package to the White House that had overhead imagery of the house he was staying in. It was a terrorist training camp . . . experimenting with ricin and anthrax . . . any collateral damage there would have been terrorists.

The Age and other Australian newspapers jumped up the story; stateside, only the UPI has picked it up thus far. (For a full transcript of Scheuer's interview with "Four Corners," go here.)