June 15, 2003 – The British Observer publishes an article titled “Iraqi mobile labs nothing to do with germ warfare, report finds”:

“An official British investigation into two trailers found in northern Iraq has concluded they are not mobile germ warfare labs, as was claimed by Tony Blair and President George Bush, but were for the production of hydrogen to fill artillery balloons, as the Iraqis have continued to insist.

The conclusion by biological weapons experts working for the British Government is an embarrassment for the Prime Minister, who has claimed that the discovery of the labs proved that Iraq retained weapons of mass destruction and justified the case for going to war against Saddam Hussein.

Instead, a British scientist and biological weapons expert, who has examined the trailers in Iraq, told The Observer last week: 'They are not mobile germ warfare laboratories. You could not use them for making biological weapons. They do not even look like them. They are exactly what the Iraqis said they were - facilities for the production of hydrogen gas to fill balloons.'

The conclusion of the investigation ordered by the British Government - and revealed by The Observer last week - is hugely embarrassing for Blair, who had used the discovery of the alleged mobile labs as part of his efforts to silence criticism over the failure of Britain and the US to find any weapons of mass destruction since the invasion of Iraq.”

June 16, 2003 – Former White House counterterrorism aide Rand Beers says in an interview with the Washington Post that he resigned from the administration “disgusted” about the uses of intelligence he considered faulty, for the war.

June 16, 2003 – Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, presses CIA to declassify information provided to United Nations arms inspectors before the war.

House and Senate committees are beginning closed-door hearings into what information the Bush administration had before the war. Levin says that classified information he has reviewed contradicts statements by CIA director George Tenet and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice. Levin says that CIA refuses to declassify all information about suspected weapons sites it was provided by U.N. inspectors.

June 16, 2003 – The U.S. Department of Agriculture claims that maintaining a continuous food supply for the Iraqi people and rebuilding agriculture in Iraq are administration priorities.

June 17, 2003 -- Senator Lincoln Chafee (R-RI) says he is not convinced by the intelligence on Iraq WMD.

June 17, 2003 – The CIA produces a memorandum for Tenet that says, “since learning that the Iraq-Niger uranium deal was based on false documents earlier this spring, we no longer believe that there is sufficient other reporting to conclude that Iraq pursued uranium from abroad.” The memo is not distributed outside the CIA. (SSCI Report, 71)

June 18, 2003 – The Senate and the House both begin closed hearings on administration use of pre-war intelligence in the lead-up to the war.

June 19, 2003 – An article in the New Republic magazine about the “sixteen words” and Iraq WMD also cites Wilson but without naming him.

June 20, 2003 – Bob Woodward of the Washington Post interviews an unnamed administration official and has notes about Wilson’s wife with him.

From the text of Woodward’s statement:

“I testified that on June 20, 2003, I interviewed a second administration official for my book "Plan of Attack" and that one of the lists of questions I believe I brought to the interview included on a single line the phrase "Joe Wilson's wife." I testified that I have no recollection of asking about her, and that the tape-recorded interview contains no indication that the subject arose.”

June 20, 2003 – June 20th is also World Refugee Day. Armitage makes 
public statements for the occasion at a gathering at the National 
Geographic building in Washington, saying that international recognition 
of World Refugee Day June 20 is a celebration of the human spirit and 
“the triumph of hope and that faith in the future that lives inside all of us.”

June 21, 2003 – President Bush makes Iraq the topic of his 
weekly radio address: 

“As we establish order and justice in Iraq, we also continue to pursue Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction. Military and intelligence officials are interviewing scientists with knowledge of Saddam Hussein's weapons programs and are poring over hundreds of thousands of documents.

For more than a decade, Saddam Hussein went to great lengths to hide his weapons from the world. And in the regime's final days, documents and suspected weapons sites were looted and burned. Yet all who know the dictator's history agree that he possessed chemical and biological weapons and that he used chemical weapons in the past.

The intelligence services of many nations concluded that he had illegal weapons and the regime refused to provide evidence they had been destroyed. We are determined to discover the true extent of Saddam Hussein's weapons programs, no matter how long it takes.”

Eventually, of course, the hunt for the missing WMD is discontinued, but not before hundreds of millions of USD have been spent, with resources diverting from both security and humanitarian aid in Iraq.