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."
Wish I could find a great pic I've seen. Two Iraqis making Aluminum ingots in a makeshift forge from scrap.
You are right on with your post.
Would UNMOVIC even know if an Iraqi ministry confiscated the equipment? I doubt it.
Big ping.
TRACKING IRAQI WEAPONS MATERIAL
http://www.iraqwatch.org/update/index.html
These weapons that they never had and the UN "couldn't find" sure seem to do a lot of traveling.
It's not talking about banned long range missles. It's material that could be used to MAKE banned long-range missles.
Not to be contentious, but I do recall that after the fall of Bagdhad, OUR Military investigations teams actually DID discover actually manufactured "Banned" Long-Range missiles, and drums of chemicals and biotoxins labeled "pesticides"...the missile warheads found were also equipped with dual-stage heads...like the IED Sarin heads that were found after one was set off improperly on a roadside.
Also there were those German made Mobile Weapons labs, you remember them...the ones with the secret areas hidden inside with all the pipes and such, that the Marxist-Stream Media tried to p[ass off as "Hydrogen Generators" for baloons...mn, the media whores REALLY got revealed in this war!
Of course, the Fourth Reich...er Estate did NOT try to delve too deep into THAT bit o' evidence!
My point is that UNMOVIC actually had so-called "banned" items in existence....categorized them, and put a U.N. seal on them instead of destroying them. This was because our "allies" France, Germany, Russia, and China were subverting the 1991 embargo on all these materials. The PROFIT they made was on the backs of OUR soldiers..I for one will NEVER again buy a French or German product due to their perfidity and duplicity!
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."
I second you statements. Things often get out of hand. People including myself sometimes fail to read things with care, and then in-advertantly change the nature of the issue. Cleary, this could be an explaination on what has been going on. Conversely, surely most of this forum understand that Iraq had a WMD program consisting of biochemical, biological, nuclear, and various weapon systems to distribute these things against invading forces, and countries they might attack in the future.
" Wish I could find a great pic I've seen. Two Iraqis making Aluminum ingots in a makeshift forge from scrap."
I have no doubt as to them setting up small metal refining processes. And surely as stated elsewhere in this post, they where a industrialized nation, therefore they had such capabilities and probably still do. But in my mind there is no doubt as to all the things they had, used in the manufacturing of WMD's. And we do know that concerning biochemical WMD, lots of small makeshift labs have been set up in towns such as Fallujah after OIF I was effectively over. To me this is all a mixed bag. As how effective any small quantities of biochemical/biological chemicals,organisms could be generated and then packaged, and delivered to effectively cause great harm to many in a given area of dispertion, who knows.
Logically, the UN should have no interest in this "disappearance".
What I remember the most is the plans of a centrifuge (Pretty sure) found "under a rosebush".
I remember the missile incident. The Iraqi engineers said they were withing the terms of the treaty. I believe it was the launching vehicle that gave it away. They were all to be destroyed but I suppose that paperwork takes a few years of kickbacks.
In UNMOVIC's twentieth quarterly report dated 28 February (LINK)
The report further reiterated the need -- outlined in the previous quarterly report -- to adjust monitoring procedures "with respect to small quantities of weapons of mass destruction. While they may not be of military significance, they may be of potential interest to nonstate actors," the report said. "Small quantities of such materials could be acquired through clandestine procurement networks," the report contended.
Another issue of concern detailed in the report is the possible existence of "seed stocks" that might be used in the future for the production of biological-weapon agents. There is a "residue of uncertainty" as to whether those stocks continue to exist, the report noted. "Given its unresolvable nature, the issue could best be dealt with through monitoring to detect inter alia any possible future activity associated with biological weapon agent production or significant related laboratory research work," the report contended.
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See my posts at this thread. Also not that Duelfer and Perricos raised concerns of "seed stocks" U.N.: Satellite shows Iraq stripped sites
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Perricos also told the Security Council that key questions remained unanswered, including the fate of hundreds of damaged chemical artillery rockets and toxic chemicals under UN seal at the Al-Muthanna complex northwest of Baghdad. "What happened to the 25 Al-Sumud-2 missiles and the 326 SA2 engines that UN inspectors didn't have time to destroy before they left?" Perricos asked. He also raised the issue of monitoring for unspecified dual-use items, aljazeera.net reported.
Paging Hans Blix, paging Hans Blix please--see your optrometist.
The point to this relates back to liberals condemnation of "Bush's decision" to attack. Last week Kerry made a statement to the effect that a serious effort would be made to impeach based on no WMD. The UN has been surveying the equipment since the war began and now has lost track of 109 sites. Obviously if it never existed they could not have been focusing on it, let alone had reason to.
I do not understand why this story is not breaking news or whatever it's called. This ruptures a major attempt in the liberal effort to derail conservative efforts to turn America around. Instead we promote ~9 deaths in somewhere... which only enhances the media effort.
Thanks for the two links to UNMOVIC activties. Will read.
Perhaps I should have been a little more implicit with how I wrote. I surely was not negrogating the affects even a small amount of sarin nerve gas, VX nerve gas, anthrax etc., could make on those cought in the area of dispersion. No reply solicited this late in thread.
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