Posted on 06/02/2005 7:06:49 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
UNITED NATIONS - U.N. satellite imagery experts have determined that material that could be used to make biological or chemical weapons and banned long-range missiles has been removed from 109 sites in Iraq, U.N. weapons inspectors said in a report obtained Thursday.
U.N. inspectors have been blocked from returning to Iraq since the U.S.-led war in 2003 so they have been using satellite photos to see what happened to the sites that were subject to U.N. monitoring because their equipment had both civilian and military uses.
In the report to the U.N. Security Council, acting chief weapons inspector Demetrius Perricos said he's reached no conclusions about who removed the items or where they went. He said it could have been moved elsewhere in Iraq, sold as scrap, melted down or purchased.
He said the missing material can be used for legitimate purposes. "However, they can also be utilized for prohibited purposes if in a good state of repair."
He said imagery analysts have identified 109 sites that have been emptied of equipment to varying degrees, up from 90 reported in March.
The report also provided much more detail about the percentage of items no longer at the places where U.N. inspectors monitored them.
From the imagery analysis, Perricos said analysts at the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission which he heads have concluded that biological sites were less damaged than chemical and missile sites.
The commission, known as UNMOVIC, previously reported the discovery of some equipment and material from the sites in scrapyards in Jordan and the Dutch port of Rotterdam.
Perricos said analysts found, for example, that 53 of the 98 vessels that could be used for a wide range of chemical reactions had disappeared. "Due to its characteristics, this equipment can be used for the production of both commercial chemicals and chemical warfare agents," he said.
The report said 3,380 valves, 107 pumps, and more than 7.8 miles of pipes were known to have been located at the 39 chemical sites.
A third of the chemical items removed came from the Qaa Qaa industrial complex south of Baghdad which the report said "was among the sites possessing the highest number of dual-use production equipment," whose fate is now unknown." Significant quantities of missing material were also located at the Fallujah II and Fallujah III facilities north of the city, which was besieged last year.
Before the first Gulf War in 1991, those facilities played a major part in the production of precursors for Iraq's chemical warfare program.
The percentages of missing biological equipment from 12 sites were much smaller — no higher than 10 percent.
The report said 37 of 405 fermenters ranging in size from 2 gallons to 1,250 gallons had been removed. Those could be used to produce pharmaceuticals and vaccines as well as biological warfare agents such as anthrax.
The largest percentages of missing items were at the 58 missile facilities, which include some of the key production sites for both solid and liquid propellant missiles, the report said.
For example, 289 of the 340 pieces of equipment to produce missiles — about 85 percent — had been removed, it said.
At the Kadhimiyah and Al Samoud factory sites in suburban Baghdad, where the report said airframes and engines for liquid propellant missiles were manufactured and final assembly was carried out, "all equipment and missile components have been removed."
UNMOVIC is the outgrowth of a U.N. inspections process created after the 1991 Gulf War in which invading Iraqi forces were ousted from Kuwait. Its staff are considered the only multinational weapons experts specifically trained in biological weapons and missile disarmament.
The report noted that the commissioners who advise UNMOVIC again raised questions about its future. Iraq has called for its Security Council mandate to be terminated because UNMOVIC is funded from past Iraqi oil sales and it wants to be treated like other countries, but the council has not taken up the issue.
France's U.N. Ambassador Jean-Marc de La Sabliere said Thursday the commission's expertise "should not be lost for the international community."
No WMD or capacity? What's with all this "duel" use exceptions?
So what they're saying is that everything was there to make WMD AND they left it there.
Makes you wonder if monies still were being scandalously funded after Saddam went underground.
Good read. I wouldn't be surprise if a lot of this stuff was grabbed selling as junk to smelters whatever, not that Iraq has any smelting capabiities, or do they? Things like pumps are composed mostly of perhaps pig iron. So like anywhere else it has value. Surely Iraq still has scrap yards, and folks finding and selling stuff. Just a thought. Those hundreds of thousands of Iraqi's that where going nuts during the opening days of OIF I surely where not organized insurgent groups. This process of finding and stealing stuff at various sites could have been an ongoing thing. Of course one who still believes Iraq had an ongoing record of R&D and some manufacturing of WMD's, I am not trying to presume all the stuff noticed missing is all innocent attempts to salvage junk and or sell it to feed ones family.
So...let me get this straight...
When Bush said that Iraq HAD WMD's...capacity to MAKE WMD's...and ILLEGAL delivery systems...he was lying according to all the PINHEADED LIEberals who worship at the UN altar...
But when the UN says that materials...that they HAVE KNOWN OF AND WERE MONITORING...that were WMD's and delivery systems ILLEGAL for Iraq to have...now says they are missing...NOW they want accountability as to WHERE these materials might be?
Just who was lying?!?!
I guess the UN Inspectors (Yes, I'm looking at YOU Scotty "Burger King Pedophile" Ritter) miss their kick-backs for looking the other way, and NOW want to pretend that they do their jobs!
They actually weren't illegal for Iraq to have.
LOL! Pigs really do fly!
Read again the Bold part...
UNITED NATIONS - U.N. satellite imagery experts have determined that material that could be used to make biological or chemical weapons and banned long-range missiles has been removed from 109 sites in Iraq, U.N. weapons inspectors said in a report obtained Thursday.
So are you saying that banned long-range missiles...that could carry those innocent chemical/biological items that may or may NOT have been weapons...weren't illegal?
And why have these banned missiles anyway...were they ONLY for "conventional" payloads?
And why were they in close proximity to these "suspect" dual-use chem/bio materials? Coincidence?
I'm saying you have trouble with reading comprehension. Read it again. Carefully.
Here's the situation.
First; need to calm down, read the article CAREFULLY, and go back and have a historical understanding of the 1991 terms of the war ending and the various UN resolutions.
The article isn't talking about WMDs at all.
It's talking about various industrial facilities, machines, etc. that could theoretically be used to MAKE WMDs, or make things that could then be used to make WMDs.
Iraq was prohibited from posessing WMDs. There were some things that are basically only used for making WMDs that it was prevented from having.
But there was a lot of equipment and industrial sites they were legally permitted to have as long as they had been regularly inspected by the UN; on the premise that the goal wasn't to shut down the Iraqi economy; it's impossible to have even a semi-functioning modern industrial base of a normal medium sized country like Iraq without having facilities that, while they can produce non-WMDs, could also be used to make WMD materials.
What the article is stating is that SINCE the war and US control of Iraq many of these items and facilities have been looted and scattered around.
tell 'em to check with lost and found.
Care to offer more explanaitions for your position...I am an Inorganic Chemist by trade, and have done Radiopharm chemistry...I can back my assertions as to "dual use"....can you?
Curious the timing of this report is.
Camoflaged in ammo dumps? More like lying around a farm.
And the reality is that all pesticides are very chemically similar to chemical weapons. Some of the nerve gases were IDed during pesticide research.
Your problem is you misunderstood the above (poorly worded, I grant you) sentence.
It's not talking about banned long range missles. It's material that could be used to MAKE banned long-range missles.
Found in boxes labeled "ACME LONG-RANGE MISSILES". Some assembly required.
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