Posted on 01/17/2005 11:54:41 AM PST by Indy Pendance
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The final U.S. intelligence report on weapons of mass destruction in Iraq is expected to address whether the banned armaments may have been smuggled out of the country before the war started.
Top Bush administration officials have speculated publicly that chemical, biological or radiological weapons may have been smuggled out, and the question is one of the unresolved issues on WMD. The report is due next month.
Intelligence and congressional officials say they have not seen any information - never "a piece," said one - indicating that WMD or significant amounts of components and equipment were transferred from Iraq to neighboring Syria, Jordan or elsewhere.
The administration acknowledged last week that the search for banned weapons is largely over. The Iraq Survey Group's chief, Charles Duelfer, is expected to submit the final installments of his report in February. A small number of the organization's experts will remain on the job in case new intelligence on Iraqi WMD is unearthed.
But the officials familiar with the search say U.S. authorities have found no evidence that former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein transferred WMD or related equipment out of Iraq.
A special adviser to the CIA director, Duelfer declined an interview request through an agency spokesman. In his last public statements, he told a Senate panel last October that it remained unclear whether banned weapons could have been moved from Iraq.
"What I can tell you is that I believe we know a lot of materials left Iraq and went to Syria. There was certainly a lot of traffic across the border points," he said. "But whether in fact in any of these trucks there was WMD-related materials, I cannot say."
Last week, a congressional official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said suggestions that weapons or components were sent from Iraq were based on speculation stemming from uncorroborated information.
President Bush and top-raking officials in his administration used the existence of WMD in Iraq as the main justification for the March 2003 invasion, and throughout much of last year the White House continued to raise the possibility the weapons were transferred to another country.
For instance:
-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said in early October he believed Saddam had WMD before the war. "He has either hidden them so well or moved them somewhere else, or decided to destroy them ... in event of a conflict but kept the capability of developing them rapidly," Rumsfeld said in a Fox News Channel interview.
Eight months earlier, he told senators "it's possible that WMD did exist, but was transferred, in whole or in part, to one or more other countries. We see that theory put forward."
-Secretary of State Colin Powell expressed concern the WMD would be found. However, when asked in September if the WMD could have been hidden or moved to a country like Syria, he said, "I can't exclude any of those possibilities."
-And, on MSNBC's "Hardball" in June, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz said: "Everyone believed that his programs were more active than they appeared to be, but recognize, he had a lot of time to move stuff, a lot of time to hide stuff."
Since the October report from Duelfer, which said Saddam intended to obtain WMD but had no banned weapons, senior administration leaders have largely stopped discussing whether the weapons were moved.
Last week, the intelligence and congressional officials said evidence indicating somewhat common equipment with dual military and civilian uses, such as fermenters, was salvaged during post-invasion looting and sold for scrap in other countries. Syria was mentioned as one location.
However, the U.S. intelligence community's 2002 estimate on Iraq indicated there were sizable weapons programs and stockpiles. The officials said weapons experts have not found a production capability in Iraq that would back up the size of the prewar estimates.
Among a series of key findings, that estimate said Iraq "has largely rebuilt missile and biological weapons facilities damaged" during a 1998 U.S.-British bombing campaign and "has expanded its chemical and biological infrastructure under the cover of civilian production."
Although the U.S. had little specific information, the estimate also said Saddam probably stockpiled at least 100 metric tons, possibly 500 metric tons, of chemical weapons agents - "much of it added in the last year."
The liberals won't acknowledge WMD's until a nuclear bomb blows up, or a large city (millions) succumbs to biological or chemical weapons, they are too myopic to not get today's technology. Of course, it will be our fault if that does happen.
As I understand it, there have been no post-1991 WMDs found. That's the problem.
Bush made himself quite clear in his September 2002 speech at the UN; that's enough time to move an entire country.
We may not have found WMDs but we found enough pesticide to last for 500 years.
Don't forget that Bush haters will say "it was Rumsfeld who sold Iraq the chemical weapons" when presented with evidence of WMDs found in Iraq. The Bush Administration said it was going to stop looking for "Large Stockpiles" of WMDs in Iraq.
It would make it so much simpler if WMDs had been found. It would make honest men out of so many that appear to be
wrong. Time will sort out the facts and establish the truth. It would be terrible if a war was generated with all the death and destruction it entails on the basis of bad information or worse, deliberate lies.
Let's go have a look see in both Syria and the Bekka Valley in Lebanon.....
Sarin, a colorless and odorless gas, has a lethal dose of 0.5 milligram for an adult. It is 26 times more deadly than cyanide gas and is 20 times more lethal than potassium cyanide. Just 0.01 milligram per kilogram of body weight a pinprick sized droplet will kill a human. The vapor is slightly heavier than air, so it hovers close to the ground. Under wet and humid weather conditions sarin degrades swiftly, but as the temperature rises up to a certain point, sarin's lethal duration increases, despite the humidity.
Mankind has always searched for more and more powerful weapons, whether it be a bigger rock to throw a better quality bow and arrow or musket or a more powerful bomb. Obviously this century it has been explosives of one kind or another. More specifically the tendancy has been for more powerful missiles or aerial bombs this race reached its height when the nuclear bomb was invented the power of these bombs were so supremly powerful that the target would be of no use to anyone after the explosion due to the damage and contamination. So as a result the search for weapons that would kill the enemy but leave the surrounding area undamaged and any contamination short lived. Chemical and Biological weapons were the answer to these problems. Chemical weapons have been around in less sophisticated forms for decades, they were used quite extensively in the first world war but took the form of simple gasses such as chlorine and mustard gas. In this day and age the current crop of chemical weapons are far more dangerous and well researched.
Among the most dangerous chemical weapons are the so called nerve gasses or nerve agents, nerve agents have entirely dominated chemical warfare since the Second World War. Nerve agents acquired their name because they affect the transmission of nerve impulses in the nervous system. All nerve agents belong chemically to the group of organo-phosphorus compounds. They are stable and easily dispersed, highly toxic and have rapid effects both when absorbed through the skin and via respiration. Nerve agents can be manufactured by means of fairly simple chemical techniques. The raw materials are inexpensive and generally readily available. This makes them even more dangerous as they can be made by any irresponsible mind with a decent laboratory.
Chemical and Biological weoponary are the future of modern warfare. The governments of the world spend billions of pounds a year resarching more nerve gasses and biological weapons and cures for there effects. This pattern is not going to change but policing of this technology is going to beome increasingly important. Should the nations of the world ever have to fight someone other than themelves Chemical and biological weapons will most likely be the most effective so prehaps this research can be justified. It has always been mankinds nature to fight but it is important to consider that the American national military budget could solve the homeless problem in he states in Just over a year. Modern warfare does not require the amount of money that some countries spend on it but with human nature so fickel another war is never going to be that far away.
As you have undoubtedly noted, the posturing on both sides (Syria and US) has already begun.
Saddam was given at least 6 months notice...plenty of time to relocate weapons..Russians there to help him...some say they went through Lebanon to the Beqaa valley... Lebanon?
Read this about WMD's and Russia.
How could John Kerry have been so wrong.
Not one single piece? So, they're disregarding the scuds, the buried planes, the mobile labs, the bio-hazard suits and anti-toxins, the sarin, the neatly stored canisters of chemicals, the hundreds of thousands of bodies in mass graves, and etc.? Okie, dokie then.
John A. Shaw, deputy undersecretary of defense for international technology security, said this week that two European intelligence services have obtained documentary evidence indicating Russian spetsnaz, or special forces, troops were involved in a covert program to shred documents on Russian arms sales to Iraq, and to move weapons out of the country to Syria, Lebanon and possibly Iran.
Here's a good article that sums it up. http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=13438
With a mid-sized excavator, you can dig a hole big enough to bury a semi in about an hour, an hour to cover it back up, and "poof" it's gone. A little landscaping, and unless someone fesses up..........
read later
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