UN Confirms: WMDs Smuggled Out of Iraq (could be a repost, but uncertain. CHECK THE DATE!)

Pure Pursuit Intelligence E-Mail | June 18, 2004 | Rod D. Martin

[Trident/Delta]

In a report which might alternately be termed “stunning” or “terrifying”, United Nations weapons inspectors confirmed last week not merely that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, but that he smuggled them out of his country, before, during and after the war.

Late last week, the UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) briefed the Security Council on Saddam's lightning-fast dismantling of missile and WMD sites before and during the war. UNMOVIC executive chairman Demetrius Perricos detailed not only the export of thousands of tons of missile components, nuclear reactor vessels and fermenters for chemical and biological warheads, but also the discovery of many (but not most) of these items - with UN inspection tags still on them -- as far afield as Jordan, Turkey and even Holland.

Notably absent from that list is Iraq's western neighbor Syria, ruled by its own Baath Party just like Saddam's and closed to even the thought of an UNMOVIC inspection. Israeli intelligence has been reporting the large-scale smuggling of Saddam's WMD program across the Syrian border since at least two months before the war. Syria has long been the world's foremost state-sponsor of terrorism.

Perricos highlighted the proliferation danger to the Security Council, as well he should: UNMOVIC has no idea where most of the WMD material is today, just that it exists and it's gone; and anything in Syria is likely to be in Jerusalem or New York tomorrow.

This is the biggest news story of 2004 so far. Yet you haven't heard about it, have you?

You probably haven't heard about Canada's Prime Minister Paul Martin either -- a socialist and no friend of America. Addressing a group of 700 university researchers and business leaders in Montreal last month, Martin stated bluntly that terrorists have acquired WMDs from Saddam. “The fact is that there is now, we know well, a proliferation of nuclear weapons, and that many weapons that Saddam Huseein had, we don't know where they are…. [T]errorists have access to all of them,” the Canadian premier warned.

The tip of this terrorist sword was scarcely deflected on April 26th, when Jordanian intelligence broke up an al Qaeda conspiracy to detonate a large chemical device in the capital city of Amman. Directed by al Qaeda terrorist leader Abu al-Zarqawi -- the same man who personally beheaded American Nicholas Berg in Iraq last month -- the plotters sought to use a massive explosion to spread a “toxic cloud”, meant to wipe out the U.S. embassy, the Jordanian prime minister's office, the Jordanian intelligence headquarters, and at least 20,000 civilians (by contrast, only 3,000 died on 9/11). Over twenty tons of chemical weapons were seized from the conspirators, who were just days away from carrying out their plot.

One wonders where CNN and USA Today think twenty tons of nerve gas and sarin came from: Chemical Weapons-Mart? Yet their coverage, like most major media outlets, mentioned not a word about Saddam's smuggled WMDs, which -- according to liberal dogma -- “don't exist.”

Even though the UN says they do exist, now spread around the world.

It's not just the UN. Bill Clinton says they exist, even after the war: in a July 2003 interview with Larry King, the ex-president uncharacteristically defended George Bush, saying “it is incontestable that on the day I left office, there [was]…a substantial amount of biological and chemical material unaccounted for” in Iraq. Every intelligence agency in the world -- French, British, German, Russian, Czech, you name it -- agreed before the war; Jordanian intelligence can certainly confirm their opinion today.

So what's the deal? Why the relentless pretence that “Bush lied” when even the UN and Bill Clinton say he didn't? Why the absolute silence about “inconvenient” parts of various UN reports, such as the discovery of chemical and biological weapons plans, recipes and equipment; of bio-weapons agents in an Iraqi scientist's house; of a prison lab for testing bio weapons on humans; of complexes for manufacturing fuel for prohibited long-range missiles; of artillery rounds containing enough sarin to kill thousands of people, of similar shells containing mustard gas, two (but far from the only) of which were used in a terrorist attack against U.S. forces just weeks ago?

America cannot afford the answer to this “why”: that many on the left consider George W. Bush's defeat more urgent than al Qaeda's, his political death more essential than the possible physical death of millions of Americans.

The character of our foreign enemies has never been in doubt. The character of the enemy within -- from Dan Rather to Michael Moore -- has never been clearer. And the stakes are the highest they've ever been.

[Trident/Delta]

Rod D. Martin is Founder and Chairman of Vanguard PAC. A former policy director to Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and Special Counsel to PayPal.com Founder Peter Thiel, he is a member of the Board of Governors of the Council for National Policy, a Vice President of the National Federation of Republican Assemblies (NFRA), and editor of Thank You President Bush, the definitive response to the current deluge of Bush-bashing books.

Semper Fi

[patj]

bump

[Mrs Zip]

ping

[TalonDJ]

Have you got a link for this?

[PilloryHillary]

Bump for link

[Eastbound]

BTTT!

[crushelits]

WE NEED A LINK
http://www.?

[Bigh4u2]

http://editorials.arrivenet.com/gov/article.php/279.html

[Trident/Delta]

Thank you. The original link was not on the intelligence report that I received via email.

Semper Fi

[kpp_kpp]

in searching google the article appears to be from thevanguard.org

[UseYourHead]

Hear is a link to the UN Document discussing this information:

http://www.un.org/Depts/unmovic/new/documents/quarterly_reports/s-2004-435.pdf

[A.A. Cunningham]

smuggled Iraq

[qwertz]

Hear is a link to the UN Document discussing this information:

http://www.un.org/Depts/unmovic/new/documents/quarterly_reports/s-2004-435.pdf

I remember reading that UN report a few months ago, when a similar story had surfaced at WorldTribune.com (something like "Saddam shipped out WMD before war and after"). Let me tell you what I had to conclude back then.

In short, it didn't take me long to realize the story is highly misleading, if not an outright lie.
What the UN report evidently is about is stuff that had been safe, tagged and locked up in sealed and monitored UN storage sites by UN inspectors, but got looted when coalition forces failed to protect the material stored at those sites from looters.
Some of the stuff, like rocket engines, turned up in scrap yards in Rotterdam, which brought this massive failure to the UN's attention. It's worrying because noone knows what else with UN tags on it (and the coalition didn't protect) was sold as scrap metal. In fact, UNMOVIC isn't provided much information by the Iraq Survey Group, nor do they have inspectors on the ground. In no way would they even be in the position to say: Saddam did this or that. The only thing they're able to say is whole UN storage sites had disappeared since Saddam had been disposed.
Also, the UN report isn't talking about weapons, but "weapons components"; not about WMD, rather material like rocket engines; and - again - they clearly weren't shipped out by Saddam BEFORE the war, because they had been tagged and locked down by UN inspectors in UN-monitored store sites, and at the end of May 2003 those sites had been still intact according to satellite images provided by the UN report.

In conclusion, one shouldn't believe everything one reads. There's a lot of misinformation and spin going around. A lot of shitty sources fom whence a host of deliberately deceiving articles ricochet through the internet and political message boards to finally disappear, but to never get retracted and leave false perceptions.

[Trident/Delta]

Well, I for one thank Gawd that there are poeple like you, who can think for the rest of us and interpret what is and isn't bullsh!t and make sure we all don't have to bother thinking things through for ourselves... Thank you soooo much

Semper Sarcasm

[qwertz]

Not only are you entitled to think for yourself, you're even asked to do so - and share your ínsights with us.

So go read the relevant UN report linked to by UseYourHead, and then tell me where exactly it says (or from where it can be logically concluded, for God's sake) that

1. Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction
2. which he smuggled out of his country
3. before, during and after the war
4. and UN inspectors said so

Your turn.

[Stellar Dendrite]

bump

[sargon]

I've never been clear on exactly what was seized as a result of breaking up that Jordanian plot.

Does anybody have a link to a detailed article on that story?

[AngryJawa]

1. Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction

2. which he smuggled out of his country

3. before, during and after the war

4. and UN inspectors said so

5. These weapons do not simply vanish.

5. Someone, somewhere has posession of them.

6. That person or organization has them for a reason.

7. If we don't either find the weapons or destroy their owners, we'll eventually be their target.

[Just Lori]

Just got the Sept 04 issue of Air Force Magazine. Page 25. "U.S. Spirits Nuclear Materials Out Of Iraq".

The United States secretly airlifted more than a ton of potentially dangerous nuclear materials out of Iraq in June, Spencer Abraham, Sec. of Energy, announced July 9. The operation was conducted jointly by DOE and DOD.

Twenty DOE nuclear experts "packaged 1.77 metric tons of low-enriched uranium and roughly 1,000 highly radioactive sources" from Iraq's Tuwaitha nuclear complex just outside Baghdad, according to a DOE release.

The Defense Department airlifted the radioactive materials to the United States on June 23. DOD also "provided security, coordination, planning, ground transportation, and funding for the mission" the release stated.

Abraham said the operation will "keep potenially dangerous nuclear materials out of the hands of terrorists." He added, "It also puts this material out of reach for countries that may seek to develop their own nuclear weapons."

The uranium would have been usable in a radiological dispersion device, commonly known as a "dirty bomb", or for reprocessing in a more advanced nuclar weapons program.



There ya go. I copied it word for word.

[qwertz]

I'm not sure what you're trying to prove. Please elaborate.

Just in case, here's some context from May 2003 about Tuweitha:

"Before the allied invasion, Tuweitha was a high-security area monitored by the IAEA with the cooperation of the Hussein regime. But in the chaos after dictator's downfall and before the arrival of U.S. troops, locals stripped the complex bare."