Second, it's AMD-Marconi that built the trailers sent to Iraq, not Monsanto.

Right you are Tom, I do that sometimes with names (especially names that are uncommon to me). Thanks for the correction.

Note that my correction was not meant to be a cheap shot. It is not uncommon to make such verbal mistakes, and unlike some media people, I don't consider them a sign of idiocy, or seize on them as a method to invalidate entire arguments. For example, I thought that Dean's reference to a present-day "Soviet Union" in an interview was irrelevant, although some on the right crowed endlessly about it.

"The hydrogen trailers they do manufacture look nothing whatsoever like what was found in Iraq"

That they are not hydrogen gas generators does not add supprt to the claim that they were WMD manufacturing plants. Its like me pointing to a blip in the sky again and saying "that's not a plane, so it must be alien visitors".

If you point to a object with lights on it maneuvering across the sky and can prove it's not an airplane, or not a rocket, this does leave you in an uncomfortable position. The other functions proposed for the trailers don't hold up a lot better than the hydrogen factory idea. Again, I wish I could get at some original classified documentation here. The public interim Kay report and how it was presented in the press were like night and day, and access to the original was priceless.

And since those trailers were shipped in the Thatcher era, I assume you are comparing them to trailers manufactured BEFORE or DURING that time period? Are you?

Another way to put this: Are the trailers being manufactured now, and shown in the brochures I have linked to, similar to the trailers shipped during the Thatcher era? Is it possible the older trailers in fact did look like the ones found in Iraq?

If one really wants to be thorough and honest about this investigation, that is a $64,000 question, and I busted my hump trying to locate shots of the original units, designated AMETS (the current unit is designated "BMETS." There were no shots of the AMETS on the Marconi site. I followed a tiny lead to old versions of Jane's Defense Weekly that might have answers, but they weren't on line. I got no response to e-mails to Marconi, and that's as far as I can take it. One would like to think one of the hundreds of reporters interested in this could have gone to Marconi in person and sorted this out, or coughed up big money for the Janes reference. Nobody has. Why? Marconi could have piped up anywhere in this controversy and settled the question. They didn't. Why?

Its been a long time since we actually researched this topic. My links are gone to the wind. Do you still have yours?

Wish I did. Killed some time last night plowing back through the CE files, and found nothing. I am going to have to be more diligent about bookmarking old posts.

And what is your evidence that it boils down to just one man over in Brit Intel. And if that is your refutation, why do you still believe all the claims concerning terrorists and WMD in Iraq that boil down to single sources?

Remember, I am talking only about the British input on this. Obviously, there was a lot of other input from our own side of the pond that was not from that particular expert. The article in the Observer is the prime source from the British end, and a single expert is the one quoted on the hydrogen scenario. The Observer reporters seem to be the ones making the claim that the trailers are the ones Thatcher shipped, but they do not show their work. I have found almost no references to that have not boiled back to that article.

"Again, had those trailers actually been of their manufacture, this could have been cleared up in thirty minutes of a reporter's time."

I see, so because the UFOlogists are still going on about Area 51, it means that it is NOT just a military airbase? So the persistence of allegations from a small band of hardcore believers means that 'there must be something there'?

There are good reasons the military is tight-lipped about bases like Area 51, allowing UFO nuts to speculate wildly without response. While there are no flying saucers there, a lot of top-secret real work goes on in the area. The Marconi trailers are not classified material. Unlike the classified research work going on at military bases, there is no reason for Marconi not to come forward with this information, or for a reporter to ask them these questions.

This story was not investigated as well as it should have been.