Our WMDs Find-Why isn't Administration touting discovery of probable WMDs? The answer is sobering.

FrontPageMagazine.com ^ | May 18, 2004 | Thomas Patrick Carroll

[Sam Cree]

"When Bush finally lays out his hand, libs will be weeping and wailing and gnashing their teeth."

I really hope you're right. But it's a little hard for me to believe that GW is letting all this chaos happen over there just as part of a feint to trick the terrorists or the Dems into upping the ante so they'll get tripped up at the last minute by his secret royal flush, or whatever he's holding.

I more get the impression that everything's getting fubared. I wonder if we have enough folks over there, for instance.

I guess one can hope that the few encouraging reports that reach us are the real indicators, and that the tide is about to turn.

Because success in Iraq would have a far reaching effect on the war on terror.

[NotJustAnotherPrettyFace]

Ping for later read.

[mrtysmm]

"W is building a bigger case than any of us could possibly know."

I sincerely hope you're right. We need to win this war on terror...we need to win this war in Iraq...AND we need to win this war against the lib/dems at home. We need to re-elect George Bush and bring some stability and sanity back to this country.

[mathluv]

bookmark for later

[zook]

I think it's much simpler--they're waiting for final results to make sure this is really what they think it is.

[Reo]

What follows is an excerpt from the Weekly Intelligence Notes published yesterday by the Association of Former Intelligence Officers. It is a summary of unclassified information already in the public domain and is a long but worthwhile read:

EVIDENCE OF SADDAM’S WMD -- No single issue has provoked more controversy about the war in Iraq than Husayn’s missing WMD. It has resulted in accusations that the Bush administration lied. Now, Kenneth R. Timmerman, writing in Insight magazine of 28 April asserts, the United States has indeed found WMD. “Key assertions by the intelligence community that were widely judged in the media and by critics of President George W. Bush as having been false are turning out to have been true after all,” writes Timmerman, a senior writer at the Washington-based weekly. "Where were the missiles? We found them," an un-named senior administration official told Insight. Timmerman, however, does not report just where in Iraq they were found, or what has become of them.

Equipment for uranium-enrichment centrifuges, only useful in manufacturing nuclear weapons, were also found by the Iraq Survey Group, writes Timmerman. Timmerman cites testimony before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence last October by David Kay, then with the ISG. Found in Iraq were:

-- A prison laboratory complex that may have been used for testing biological weapons agents on human beings.

-- Reference strains of a wide variety of BW agents, found beneath the sink in the home of a prominent Iraqi BW scientist.

-- New research on BW-applicable agents, brucella and Congo-Crimean hemorrhagic fever, and continuing work on ricin and aflatoxin.

-- Unmanned aerial vehicles with a range of 500 kilometers (311 miles) that is 350 kms (217 miles) greater than permitted by the United Nations to Iraq.

-- Continuing covert capability to manufacture fuel propellant useful only for prohibited Scud-variant missiles, a capability that was maintained at least until the end of 2001.

-- Plans and advanced design work for new long-range missiles with ranges up to at least 1,000 kilometers (621 miles) - well beyond the 150-kilometer-range limit (93 miles) imposed by the U.N.

-- In addition, through interviews with Iraqi scientists, seized documents and other evidence, the ISG learned the Iraqi government had made clandestine attempts between late 1999 and 2002 to obtain from North Korea technology related to 1,300-kilometer-range (807 miles) ballistic missiles - probably the No Dong - 300-kilometer-range (186 miles) anti-ship cruise missiles and other prohibited military equipment.

In testimony before Congress on 30 March, Charles Duelfer, who had succeeded Kay at the ISG, said evidence had been found of a crash program to construct new plants capable of making chemical and biological warfare agents. In addition, 500 tons of natural uranium was discovered at Iraq's main declared nuclear site south of Baghdad. International Atomic Energy Agency spokesman Mark Gwozdecky told Insight the uranium had been intended for a clandestine nuclear-weapons program.

“What the president's critics and the media widely have portrayed as the most dramatic failure of the U.S. case against Saddam has been the claimed failure to find ‘stockpiles’ of chemical and biological weapons,” Timmerman says. “But in a June 2003 Washington Post op-ed, former chief U.N. weapons inspector Rolf Ekeus called such criticism ‘a distortion and a trivialization of a major threat to international peace and security.’” Timmerman cites Douglas Hanson, who worked with the CPA intelligence unit in Iraq, as saying stockpiles of CW agents have been found. Hanson told Insight that the materials found in the stockpiles looked like pesticides and that, “Pesticides are the key elements in the chemical-agent arena...In fact, the general pesticide chemical formula (organophosphate) is the 'grandfather' of modern-day nerve agents.” “Caches of ‘commercial and agricultural’ chemicals don't match the expectation of ‘stockpiles’ of chemical weapons. But, in fact, that is precisely what they are,” Timmerman says.

Kay and Duelfer told Congress that Saddam had built new facilities and stockpiled the materials to re-launch production of chemical and biological weapons at a moment's notice.

At Karbala, U.S. forces came across 55-gallon drums of pesticides stored in a camouflaged bunker complex that was shown to reporters. As a result, more than a dozen soldiers, a Knight-Ridder reporter, a CNN cameraman, and two Iraqi POWs came down with symptoms consistent with exposure to a nerve agent.

Hanson asked ironically, “One wonders about the advantage an agricultural-commodities business gains by securing drums of pesticide in camouflaged bunkers six feet underground. The 'agricultural site' was also co-located with a military ammunition dump - evidently nothing more than a coincidence in the eyes of the ISG...It seems Iraqi soldiers were obsessed with keeping ammo dumps insect-free, according to the reading of the evidence now enshrined by the conventional wisdom that 'no WMD stockpiles have been discovered.'"

As Timmerman sees it, “The discoveries Hanson describes are not dramatic. And that's the problem: Finding real stockpiles in grubby ammo dumps doesn't fit the image the media and the president's critics carefully have fed to the public of what Iraq's weapons ought to look like.”

Timmerman's argument received some reinforcement on 15 May when an improvised explosive device went off in Baghdad. Made from an artillery shell, it was found to contain the nerve agent Sarin. "Two explosive ordinance team members were treated for minor exposure to a nerve agent as a result of the partial detonation of the round," Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt, chief military spokesman in Baghdad, said on 17 May. "The Iraqi Survey Group confirmed today that a 155 millimetre artillery round containing sarin nerve agent had been found."

The insurgents who planted the roadside bomb appeared to have thought the shell was an ordinary explosive one and to have been unaware it contained Sarin. The incident raised the question of how many more Sarin filled munitions there may be in Iraq.

Sarin is a colourless and odourless gas and is lethal in doses as small as 0.5 milligrams. (Lawrence S., DKR)

[G.Mason]

"Why no real perspective in this whole mess?"

Because the intent is to destroy the United States.

The morays, the sovereignty, the good religions, and the family.

I'm afraid we will be forced to re-live the plight of many past civilizations, which quite simply is to disappear from the face of the earth.

The dark ages approach

[Reo]

"And that's the problem: Finding real stockpiles in grubby ammo dumps doesn't fit the image the media and the president's critics carefully have fed to the public of what Iraq's weapons ought to look like."

In their desire to "get" our President, the Fourth Estate is becoming a Fifth Column.

[Justa]

Things are going well in Iraq. Don't let the communists form your impressions. Everyday we're here is a victory against tyrants and Arab despots. If it was anywhere near as bad as the media portrays it there wouldn't be 2 million immigrants to Iraq in the last year. It's freedom, and for now that's good enough.

[tm22721]

Americans are caught in the spell of big media and there's nothing Bush can do about it except use the bully pulpit to pre-empt bad news.

Which he isn't doing BTW hence the criticism 'where's our leader ?'.

BUMP

[Old Sarge]

You know that.

I know that.

My brethren under arms in the Sandbox know that.

But The Sheep don't. They may not live on bread alone, but on every word out of the mouth of The Left. And they believe - they saw it on TV and in print, therefore it must be true.

And there's more of them, than there are of us.

[tang-soo]

I didn't know there was a market for perfume in Iraq.

[bondjamesbond]

"Of course those bestial guards don’t reflect American values ......."

I have to disagree. We abused those prisoners as a matter of policy. We subjected them to humiliation and psychological pressure in order to extract information. That has been our policy since Kandahar.

We all cheered when Jihad Johnnie was kept in a box for a week. We all thrilled when the Talibunnies were strapped, naked but for a hood, in the holds of our transports and flown to Gitmo. We all applauded when the detainees at Camp X-Ray were denied sleep, kept in dog runs, and harrassed every waking moment.

And now we recoil in horror at what went on in Abu Garhaib.

Get real. If it was wrong to do it in Baghdad, it has been wrong all along.

[G.Mason]

" I have to disagree. "

Excuse my inability to undersand.

Disagree with what?

[jeremiah]

Well said, and true.

[Sabertooth]

On 26 April, a huge explosion rocked the Waziriyah section of Baghdad, killing two American soldiers and leveling an entire building. The Arab Times said authorities thought the building might have contained ‘chemical munitions,’ and that the soldiers were part of an Army team going in to investigate. Some of the local residents, however, said the building had been a perfume factory. I spoke to a U.S. WMD detection team member several days ago about the incident. He thought it was suspicious, to say the least.

First, the building seems to have been booby-trapped with high explosives, enough to raze the whole thing in seconds. (Other theories, e.g., the sudden combustion of chemical fumes, are implausible.) But if it was an HE booby-trap, then clearly the intent was to do more than simply discourage intruders — it was to completely destroy the structure and its contents. Why? What was hidden? And why was obliteration preferable to discovery?

Second, there is the perfume. Perfume can be an excellent mask for chemical weapons. The detection equipment inspectors use can be confused by perfume, making it difficult (often impossible) to detect CW residue in, say, the rubble of a destroyed building.

Third, and most importantly, the technology used to produce aerosolized perfumes has a great deal of crossover with the technology used to produce aerosolized chemical and biological weapons.

I'd like to see if that perfume factory had ever received much in the way of Cab-o-sil or Aer-o-sil, commercial names for colloidal silicon dioxide, which, as most of you know, was used to coat the spores in the anthrax attacks for maximum dispersal.

[Alamo-Girl]

Great question, Sabertooth!

[Travis McGee]

Have you read the new Stratfor analysis and suggestions?

[bondjamesbond]

If the actions of these guards does not reflect American values, then our policy, which these guards were implementing, does not reflect American values. If our policy does not reflect our values, then it is time to throw the bums out and elect a bunch of new bums.

I, on the other hand, think that most Americans support humiliation and psychological pressure on Iraqi and Afghani prisoners in order to extract information. They would just prefer to not have the photographic evidence show up on the front page of the New York Times.

[G.Mason]

In my post #4, I use a quote from the article by Mr. Carroll. ("Of course those bestial guards don’t reflect American values ....... ") and go on to say he (Carroll) is wrong on that premise.

I think if you read that post again you will see we are in agreement on this.