Pentagon Ousts Official Who Tied Russia, Iraq Arms

The Washington Times ^ | December 30, 2004 | Bill Gertz

[Domestic Church]

"why the US refuses to "out" Syria in this whole thing, I do not know, perhaps
its because we aren't prepared to do anything about them."

Timing is everything in poker and war.

[oceanview]

you mean those Russian "diplomats"? yes, I remember that.

[GarySpFc]

We are entitled to point out that these are not the actions of any kind of friend of the USA.

Joe, believe me when I say we take actions in our self interest, which the Russians can interpret as not those of a friend. Friendship has to be a two way street. Hopefully as Bush and Putin develop trust with each other this will become more of a reality.

[piasa]

Two things serve our national interests, though they do not benefit the US administration politically : First, any WMD that Russia removed before the war, benefitted us by removing WMD that could have been used against US troops in the invasion when it came.

That benefit outweighs the political "show and tell" benefit of finding WMD in Iraq.

Second, the UN sanctions on Iraq remain in pace until such time as Iraq is certified "free of WMD" by UN inspectors- last I heard we still aren't letting the UN inspectors in. The UN is not cooperating with the establishment of new government in Iraq, it is instead holding the new government to standards it was willing to ignore for the old government, because UN officials aren't concerned about Iraq's welfare, they are miffed about being cut off from the oil for food gravy train. The reconstruction of Iraq is very difficult with trading limited and made more difficult by sanctions- and the UN - particularly the French- is playing political games at Iraq's expense. Whether they can still justify sanctions once there are free elections, I don't know- but they can do so now.

What this means is that even if the US finds WMD in Iraq, it is better for us to remove them or have them removed quietly and secured or destroyed so that when the UN inspectors have their final look-see, there will be nothing for them to find to justify maintaining sanctions. Politically it may be damaging to us to not find them, but our goals appear to be better served if we don't.

Just a note for people to chew on: the US has been destroying its own nerve gas supplies during the time period we were occupying Iraq's chemical weapons sites. It would provie cover for destroying Iraq's as well.

We have also been quick to very openly remove Libya's uranium to the US- Libya's uranium came from Niger, the country we were assured by the left and by the IAEA could not have been seling uranium on the sly to Iraq. It would not be difficult for us to include any unaccounted for Iraqi uranium in the supplies shipped to the US as "Libyan" either, leaving Iraq clean as a whistle for sanctions-lifting purposes.

Just a theory.

[piasa]

AlQaQaa - Photos of trucks at site

[Bloody Sam Roberts]

Just a theory.

And a good one.
It only remains to be determined if the current Administration would do the obvious or would they do the expedient when WMD are found.

The fact that they were/are there and no big announcement about it has been forthcoming, lends weight to your theory.