poultry sheds or scud storage?

rich/ June 24, 2004/ World/

There’s worry here on the farm. It seems that the much-vaunted (ha!) US intelligence system is probably planning to take a closer look at Mossbackistan.

From the LA Times (reg req’d)

–U.S. analysts also erred in their analysis of high-altitude satellite photos, repeatedly confusing Scud missile storage places with the short, half-cylindrical sheds typically used to house poultry in Iraq. As a result, as the war neared, two teams of U.N. weapons experts acting on U.S. intelligence scrambled to search chicken coops for missiles that were not there.

“We inspected a lot of chicken farms,” said a former inspector who asked not to be identified because he now works with U.S. intelligence. His U.N. team printed “Ballistic Chicken Farm Inspection Team” on 20 gray T-shirts to mark the futile hunt. —