For Your Information - Diyala Bridge Documents

Sorry - no $50 million dollar contracts here.

I have long been somewhat conflicted about commenting on this matter as I'm afraid that it could open the floodgates for me to be asked constantly to fact-verify every word on Riverbend's blog. I won't, can't and shouldn't even attempt to do that.

But anyone left following the whole riverSbend affair will know that the site has largely changed its intent from working to underhandedly undermine her message to more explicitly saying she single-handedly invented a false story about an American company getting a bridge contract.

Like I said I am not a fact-checking mechanism for Riverbend's blog, but the reason I have very tentatively dipping my foot into this matter is that Troy and his buddies are apparently working, with stunning ineptitude it must be said, on some kind of dossier of information which will prove once and for all that Riverbend is not who she says she is.

Since the Bending Truth campaign would be an even more staggering waste of time than it is already if it turned out I was wrong and Riverbend really is a student at Berkeley I have something of a stake in undermining Troy and his Keystone Netkops dossier.

We've already had a good laugh at the velocall = California revelation. And the power grid thing raised another couple of chuckles.

They certainly have yet to produce evidence to constitute a lighted matchstick, never mind a smoking gun. But they are trying to get all the traction they can out of the very circumstantial Diyala Bridge contract affair.

Anyway a reader called Alex has put together a blog which explains and examines some documents relating to Bechtel and the bridge. On the subject of smoking guns, this is certainly not a $50M one, but I thought it was interesting.

I say a bit more on the comments on Alex's blog on my opinion of what he's found and I don't want to get into a big "what does this mean?" debate here. But I think it is worth casting an eye over what may have been the seed or seedling from which the mighty oak of the $50M contract grew.