Report: Iraq weapons search update late

Washington Times UPI/Drudge ^ | Sept. 14

[woofie]

LONDON, -- A scheduled update on any Iraqi weapons of mass destruction is being delayed and the entire report may not be published, The Sunday Times of London reported.

There was no immediate response from U.S. officials, but the report that originated with British officials said the Anglo-American team of 1,400 scientists, military and intelligence experts has very little to report.

[woofie]

If true, I dont get it

[Sir Gawain]

The rope-a-dope theory about using the report to bury the democrats seems to be losing ground.

[aynrandfreak]

Maybe it's just a real long rope?

[Damocles]

If there are no WMD's by next Spring this is going to be a huge political mess...

Not to mention I'm going to wonder how crappy our intelligence services really are.

[Paradox]

There is a very good likelihood that there is just nothing there, that Saddam managed to destroy and dismantle everything he had prior to the war. This was always one possibility.

I'll tell you what wont be published, the way the CIA got USED by various Iraqi "defectors", taken to the cleaners by some of those guys.

[JohnGalt]

Big shocker here, </sarcasm>.

[Carry_Okie]

The clock is ticking and the Slave Party screams while Bush slowly sinks. They had damned well better come out with something, even if they think all the stuff is in Syria or Lebanon.

[KevinDavis]

Maybe if it is from a unamed source.

[1Old Pro]

Patience is a virtue. Kay will have plenty of time to investigate, interrogate, and find the WMD's. The economy is picking up, and the Dems are infighting....sounds like the perfect trifecta for the perfect storm which will blow the Dems away.

[XJarhead]

I won't be too upset if they don't find evidence of WMD's. Intelligence sometimes gets it wrong. But if that is the case, then we are at least owed an explanation of why we were wrong, and the nature of the intelligence we had that led us to the conclusions we reached.

[JohnGalt]

David Kay = Ken Starr.

[End Times Sentinel]

This isn’t good news, but if I jumped off a bridge every time “The Media” floated a blatantly false story…

I’ll wait until a source with credibility reports this (not to besmirch WT/Drudge, but this is from UPI ultimately.)

Owl_Eagle

”Guns Before Butter.”

[End Times Sentinel]

Correction, this is from the Sunday Times, not UPI. Mondays…

>

Owl_Eagle

”Guns Before Butter.”

[dogbyte12]

You have cattle in Central California. You have a lettuce farm in San Diego. You have a cheese factory in Sonoma county. You have a tomato farm in Los Angeles. You have a ketchup plant in Oakland, an onion field in Ventura County.

Are there cheeseburgers in California because of this? No. Can you quickly assemble the components to make a cheeseburger though.

We were so hung up on finding weapons that were assembled, that we didn't fully brace the public for this possibility.

Saddam never needed to have assembled weapons. He just needed legal components. All it takes is a truck, gasoline, and a road to move legal components, that are hundreds of miles apart, to an assembly area, and like my California example, you can be grilling cheeseburgers very quickly.

The admin sold us on the fact that we knew where cheeseburgers were. This was a mistake. We should have used something similar to my analogy. We know where the ketchup is, we know where the beef is, and Saddam has easy access to all these components.

It is making our intelligence look bad. Again, some chemical weapons can be produced within a day by scientists. The components could have been stored seperately hundreds of miles apart, and have been legal as of themselves.

If you have fertilizer in your shed, and diesel fuel in your tractor, you could either be a farmer, or a terrorist.

That is all Saddam had been doing. We fell for the assembled weapons. There really was no need to assemble them more than a week before they were needed.

[oceanview]

cheney just talked about this with Russert yesterday. this can't be true, a delay makes sense, but not a total retrenchment. i would certainly delay it until after the california recall election.

[Austin Willard Wright]

Yes....it does just like the rumors of a "second volume" to the Starr Report lost ground two years ago. We can depend on one thing, however. The pro-war folks who got us in this mess will rationalize, ignore, and then rationalize again.

[swheats]

Seems the only hard fact that hasn't been disputed in this article is:

The investigation in Iraq is still headed by David Kay

[steveegg]

There is a very good likelihood that there is just nothing there, that Saddam managed to destroy and dismantle everything he had prior to the war. This was always one possibility.

Substitute "export" for "destroy and dismantle" and I'd agree with you. It's a LOT easier to smuggle out WMDs covertly than it is to destroy them covertly.

[Brian S]

Found more from a Indian News Source (Sify)...



Iraq WMD report shelved due to lack of evidence

Sunday, 14 September , 2003, 13:53

London: After failing to get any evidence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, the US and Britain have decided to delay indefinitely the publication of a full report on the controversial issue, media reported today.

Efforts by the Iraq Survey Group, an Anglo-American team of 1,400 scientists, military and intelligence experts, to scour Iraq for the past four months to uncover evidence of chemical or biological weapons have so far ended in failure, The Sunday Times claimed in its report.

It had been expected that a progress report would be published tomorrow but MPs on the British Parliaments security and intelligence committee have been told that even this has been delayed and no new date set.

British defence intelligence sources have confirmed that the final report, which is to be submitted by David Kay, the survey groups leader, to George Tenet, head of the CIA, had been delayed and may not necessarily even be published, the paper said.

In July, Kay suggested on US television that he had seen enough evidence to convince himself that ousted Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein had had a programme to produce weapons of mass destruction.

He expected to find "strong" evidence of missile delivery systems and "probably" evidence of biological weapons.

But last week British officials said they believed Kay had been "kite-flying" and that no hard evidence had been uncovered.

The hunt for weapons is seen in London and Washington as a vital step in convincing an increasingly sceptical public that the war was justified.