Harmony

by tristero

Via The Daou Report, I learned that courageous investigative journalist and Bush-fluffer Stephen Hayes is trying to obtain access to documents in Harmony, a database of purported Saddam-era documents from Iraq that was developed by the Pentagon. The documents have some very intriguing titles as they appear to be evidence of efforts by Saddam to hide wmd before the Bush invasion. Here are a few, according the intrepid Mr. Hayes:

Possible al Qaeda Terror Members in Iraq
Money Transfers from Iraq to Afghanistan
Iraqi Intel report on Kurdish Activities: Mention of Kurdish Report on al Qaeda–reference to al Qaeda presence in Salman Pak
Locations of Weapons/Ammunition Storage (with map)
Iraqi Effort to Cooperate with Saudi Opposition Groups and Individuals
Formulas and information about Iraq’s Chemical Weapons Agents
Denial and Deception of WMD and Killing of POWs
Fedayeen Saddam Responds to IIS regarding rumors of citizens aiding Afghanistan
Document from Uday Hussein regarding Taliban activity
Chemical Gear for Fedayeen Saddam
Memo from the IIS to Hide Information from a U.N. Inspection team (1997)
Chemical Agent Purchase Orders (Dec. 2001)
Correspondence between various Iraq organizations giving instructions to hide chemicals and equipment
Cleaning chemical suits and how to hide chemicals
Secret Meeting with Taliban Group Member and Iraqi Government (Nov. 2000)

Now, I know, folks, you think this is just moonbat nonsense. We’d have heard of this stuff by now if there was any there there and even Hayes admits that “most” of the documents retrieved in Iraq were forgeries. And I’ll bet some of you are even thinking, “Don’t let Hayes pollute the discourse any more than it’s already been by reprinting this trash.”

But I agree with Hayes for once, especially since most of these docs, he says, are unclassified. Let’s see them, all of them. Let’s see the originals. All the originals.

Now I’m not saying we will find copies of the Niger forgeries among these documents – I frankly doubt it. Nor am I saying that the Harmony database is evidence of a conspiracy to forge massive documentation to “prove” the Bush case for war, documentation which was never, or only partly, deployed. Or that Harmony was simply an organized campaign of disinformation. Or that the name of the collection supports that kind of interpretation as it sounds like one of those spy jokes: documents in “harmony” with the “case for war.”

But I wouldn’t dream of distrusting my Pentagon that much. I’d just like to see exactly what’s in Harmony. And if it turns out they are a collection of Pentagon forgeries – or more likely, simply category titles with no or little reliable or interesting documentation collected under them, I expect Stephen to tell us in the Weekly Standard loudly and clearly. And long before the next election.

Good luck, Stephen. Keep us posted. Oh, and if you come to New York, I’d love to take you on a tour of Times Square. We can play the shell game. You can make a fortune if you guess right!

UPDATE: Stephen Hayes has now been correctly credited with the information about Harmony.