Sorry, but Howard knew not what he spake:

THE White House has undermined John Howard's claim that a trailer found in northern Iraq has been confirmed by British and US intelligence agencies as a mobile weapons laboratory.

The White House admitted the trailer Mr Howard cited as evidence of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction was not "irrefutable" proof of the arsenal nominated as the chief reason for war.

George W. Bush's spokesman, Ari Fleischer, said the US believed two trailers found in Iraq were mobile weapons factories but he conceded there was no certain evidence of that.

Has anyone told Fox News yet?

It's fairly obvious what those trucks were meant to be used for.

Then surely we don't need Howard to make the case?

Really, no matter what you're talking about you ought to be nervous when the people most confident in the answer are those the farther removed from it--Bush, Blair and Howard couldn't tell a mobile biological weapons research lab from Luluk Purwanto's Stage Bus.

There's no proof that those trailers were used for WMD, much less have any agents been recovered there or anywhere else, and several analysts give credence to the Iraqi "hydrogen production" claim.

You want to tell the families that this is why a soldier or so is dying every day in Iraq? Even if you can establish without doubt that these trailers could have produced biological weapons, you'll never be able to show that they did.

Actually, the article you cited states that Howard didn't have irrefutable evidence for his claims, which doesn't conflict with the initial blog, that Howard said that the trailers were biological weapons factories and did have evidence to support that assertion. If one truly desires to split hairs, there isn't "irrefutable evidence" that we landed on the moon.

If Howard isn't saying anything in stronger terms than Ari Fleisher, then it isn't news.

Both articles put words into Howard's mouth that may not have been there, so let's hear from the man himself:

"I have been informed as follows: that United States and United Kingdom intelligence agencies have concluded that at least one of the three vehicle trailers found in Iraq is a mobile production, biological weapons production facility."

I'm fairly certain that the highlighted section isn't true. From what I read there's a fair amount of disagreement among intelligence analysts, with (as I noted) skepticism rising proportionally with proximity to the evidence.

I'm not looking for irrefutable proof in the logical, a priori sense of something that just can't be rationally denied. I'd be satisfied with consensus from the analysts on the ground, but not with consensus from the heads of state alone.

Bad italics, bad...