House Reopens Issue of Iraq's WMD

NY Sun ^ | Feb. 3, 2006 | ELI LAKE

[FairOpinion]

Nearly a year and a half after a final report from American weapons inspectors concluded they could not uncover evidence of stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, the chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence has reopened the question, launching an inquiry and asking the director of national intelligence to re-examine the issue.

Chairman Peter Hoekstra, a Republican from Michigan, is said by his staff to believe that it is too soon to conclude that Saddam Hussein either destroyed or never had the stockpiles and programs to produce biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons that Western intelligence agencies insisted he had before the war.

In the weeks before and following the launch of Operation Iraqi Freedom, at least 10 facilities believed by American, European, and Israeli intelligence to be for the production and research of chemical and biological weapons were systematically looted by members of Iraq's Republican Guard, ordered by the regime's leadership to destroy and hide evidence of the programs, according to current and former intelligence officials from America, Britain and Israel. In interviews with the New York Sun, these officials reflect the position of Defense Secretary Rumsfeld in the months after the war: "The absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence."

The chairman of the House intelligence committee apparently has a similar view. "The chairman very much believes the issue of weapons of mass destruction is not settled yet and there are sufficient questions of organized looting, transfer to another country or party or things that may have been missed by the survey group. There are enough questions that need to be answered before anyone can say definitively what happened," a spokesman for Mr. Hoekstra, Jamal Ware, said yesterday.

[Tommyjo]

What he needs to do is testify and name names. He says he knows the Iraqi Air Force pilots who flew 727s and 747s out of Iraq but won't name them. These pilots require to be tracked down. Anyway the guy is promoting his book. Why wasn't he interviewed by the ISG? Why are those wrecks and stored 727s and 747s still in Iraq not tested for any residue of possible WMD?

The General has used two sources in his book. The flights out of Iraq to support the Syrian humanitarian dam cause. These flights were recorded by the UN. The Iraqis had to report them under the agreement. He is also using the Jordanian planned chemical attack. If those chemicals recovered in Jordan had been weapons grade chemical weapons then the Jordanians would have given access to the US and the world would have known about it. In my opinion the guy is resting on very dodgy sources in an effort to promote his book. It will be interesting if he is brought to testify and is made to expand on his book. Failing that he is just riding on the back of known events.

[evad]

Might as well fight 'em now, we'll be fighting them sooner or later anyway.

Indeed...and I'd rather fight them "there" than the "shopping centers of Boston".