Uh, what WMDs?

From LGF this story in the New York Sun about a man charged with having in his possession a treasure map of suspected WMD sites in Iraq:

How the classified military documents from Iraq, which named the coordinates of where the Army suspected weapons of mass destruction to be hidden, ended up in an Arabic translator's apartment on Hoyt Street in Brooklyn, is clear.

Oddly, there was no mention in the story about whether all the sites he had information about had already been cleared before he obtained the intelligence. In other words, might something like this possibly explain why nothing was found when the Iraq Survey Group showed up? Just thinking out loud here. Surely somebody knows the answer.

Where has this story been? Well, it's actually been around awhile sans the WMD component. In Googling we find Mr Malki emigrated to Brooklyn about the same time the "Brooklyn cell" was forming. Doesn't mean he was involved back then but after his arrest the FBI surely checked those leads and cleared him, right? One would think that after he was caught lying to gain citizenship they would have pretty much run down all his US contacts:

Defense attorney Mildred Whalen said her client may have lied to became a U.S. citizen but was a patriot who went to Iraq only to help his adopted country.

Hmm, should we give the government a pass on its apparent incompetency in vetting Muslim translators while we're at war with other Muslims who want to kill us in the name of Islam?

Nour has since told the FBI he is a Moroccan named Noureddine Malki, according to the complaint. “We don’t know who the defendant is,” Buretta said.

Ironically, WTC-1 bomber Ramzi Yousef also went by the name Abdul Basit Karim. His sentencing judge made the same comment. Still, it doesn't mean he was anything more than an Arabic-speaking guy who entered the country illegally like millions of others then wanted to help his new country after 9/11. However, when titillating information such as this (taken from his laptop) is considered it certainly casts some doubt:

One picture, which the government submitted to the court, shows an airplane about to strike the World Trade Center. Beneath the image is a logo of a shipping company and a motto: "We fly things straight to your office."

Somehow this mural comes to mind. Again, it doesn't make him a terrorist but it does challenge his loyalty. In fairness, quite a few troops he was embedded with have vouched for him. And perhaps we should consider a wild scenario that saw him contacting the insurgent leaders with the blessings of the Army in hopes to "find" some WMDs? If so, they're letting him twist vigorously in the breeze now. But would a lawyer ignore that, even a public defender? His defense seems to be that he misplaced the information.

In retrospect it's surprising but not shocking this story didn't get more play several years ago. It's doubtful to get much now, either, although the WMD part is eye-catching. Interestingly, one small wild card remains in play for the upcoming presidential election in regards to Iraq. Should some kind of bombshell emerge about Saddam's WMDs it would certainly only hurt one candidate at present. And it would probably help his opponent greatly. Just sayin'.