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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...

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...

The assertion that Saddam Hussein had no Weapons of Mass Destruction prior to last year’s liberation has been rendered absurd – by United Nations weapons inspectors. Demetrius Perricos, acting chairman of UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC), recently disclosed that his inspectors have been busily tracking shipments of illicit Iraqi WMD components around the world. The Associated Press announced that UNMOVIC inspectors have found dozens of engines from banned al-Samoud 2 (SA2) missiles, which were shipped out of Iraq as “scrap metal.” Most recently, UNMOVIC agents found 20 SA-2 engines in Jordan, along with a great deal of other...

UN Confirms: WMDs Smuggled Out of Iraq © June 18, 2004, Rod D. Martin 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...

The assertion that Saddam Hussein had no Weapons of Mass Destruction prior to last year’s liberation has been rendered absurd – by United Nations weapons inspectors. Demetrius Perricos, acting chairman of UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC), recently disclosed that his inspectors have been busily tracking shipments of illicit Iraqi WMD components around the world. The Associated Press announced that UNMOVIC inspectors have found dozens of engines from banned al-Samoud 2 (SA2) missiles, which were shipped out of Iraq as “scrap metal.” Most recently, UNMOVIC agents found 20 SA-2 engines in Jordan, along with a great deal of other WMD...

With the media's focus on chronicling every attack on coalition forces or terrorist attack against Iraqi civilians in Iraq, they might be forgiven for missing other stories occasionally. Reporting democracy at the local level or the opening of a new school isn't sexy work for the most part. It's the equivalent of traveling halfway across the world to cover stories that local beat reporters write every day in your local paper. That focus on Iraqi insurgents, however, seems to have blinded almost everyone to a major story that surfaced last week since it was largely ignored by the media with...

With the media's focus on chronicling every attack on coalition forces or terrorist attack against Iraqi civilians in Iraq, they might be forgiven for missing other stories occasionally. Reporting democracy at the local level or the opening of a new school isn't sexy work for the most part. It's the equivalent of traveling halfway across the world to cover stories that local beat reporters write every day in your local paper. That focus on Iraqi insurgents, however, seems to have blinded almost everyone to a major story that surfaced last week since it was largely ignored by the media with...

For some of us, Iraq's possession of WMD was axiomatic. Saddam had it and used it in the late 1980s (Halabja and Iran) and early 1990s (southern Iraq after the aborted Shi'ite uprising). It was there in the mid-1990s; UN inspectors found it. It was there in the late 1990s; UN inspectors said so. There was no evidence that he had gotten rid of it. Deductive reasoning said it must still be there. For others, deduction ran the other way: If you can't find it, it must not be there. On June 9th, the UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission...

Hillary Clinton. Ted Kennedy. Howard Dean. The United Nations. Al Gore. They, in the words of David Kay, were all wrong. But because he is the Democrat nominee for President of the United States, John Kerry bears the greatest burden. These useless idiots have committed a blunder of historic proportions. They decelerated the Bush administration’s “rush to war” against Saddam Hussein. And now, according to the United Nations (yes, the United Nations) Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction are out there, on the black market, or perhaps already in the hands of anti-American terrorist. Big media has largely ignored the new...

The United Nations has determined that Saddam Hussein shipped weapons of mass destruction components as well as medium-range ballistic missiles before, during and after the U.S.-led war against Iraq in 2003. The UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission briefed the Security Council on new findings that could help trace the whereabouts of Saddam's missile and WMD program. The briefing contained satellite photographs that demonstrated the speed with which Saddam dismantled his missile and WMD sites before and during the war. Council members were shown photographs of a ballistic missile site outside Baghdad in May 2003, and then saw a satellite...

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Engines for long-range missiles have turned up in Jordan from unguarded sites in Iraq that were once monitored for materials that could produce banned weapons, U.N. inspectors said on Wednesday. In a closed-door U.N. Security Council meeting, Demetrius Perricos, the acting director of the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspections Commission, warned that too many pieces of equipment were leaving Iraq, some as scrap. "We found a few more engines and a few other items in Jordan," Perricos told Reuters. "It is getting bad. Too many things are coming out." UNMOVIC, using photographs and serial numbers, previously...

UNITED NATIONS - U.N. weapons inspectors are planning for possible monitoring of Iraq's biological, chemical and missile programs despite being barred from the country by the United States, according to a report to the U.N. Security Council. The quarterly report released Wednesday by the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, known as UNMOVIC, outlines a range of activities undertaken by the U.N. inspectors to seek new information about Iraq's weapons programs and to prepare for a possible future role. U.N. inspectors were pulled out of Iraq in March, just before the U.S.-led war that toppled Saddam Hussein's regime. After the...

Since midsummer, the Senate Intelligence Committee has been attempting to solve the biggest mystery of the Iraq war: the disparity between the Bush Administration’s prewar assessment of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction and what has actually been discovered. The committee is concentrating on the last ten years’ worth of reports by the C.I.A. Preliminary findings, one intelligence official told me, are disquieting. “The intelligence community made all kinds of errors and handled things sloppily,” he said. The problems range from a lack of quality control to different agencies’ reporting contradictory assessments at the same time. One finding, the official went...

NEW YORK - Hans Blix, the United Nations inspector who clashed often with the Bush administration over allegations of Iraq's possession of weapons of mass destruction, has a book deal. Pantheon hopes to publish Blix's book, currently untitled, in the spring of 2004. "The core of the book will be the four months leading up to the invasion of Iraq," Pantheon editor Dan Frank said Thursday. "It will give readers a clear sense of what the U.N. does and the ins and outs of diplomacy." Frank said Blix has written about a half to two-thirds of what should be a...

At the risk of injecting some facts into the current "Bush lied us into war" campaign, I've been talking to some of the people who might actually know something about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. Though NRO lacks the budget of CBS — we wouldn't buy interviews anyway, and only wish we could promise our sources stardom on MTV — we still manage to get facts the old-fashioned way. We ask questions, and sometimes get lucky enough to get the right people to answer. One person who not only knew what the intel said about Saddam's WMD but had...

07/03/2003 Press ReleaseSC/7682 NOTE: FOLLOWING ARE SUMMARIES OF STATEMENTS MADE TO THE SECURITY COUNCIL MEETING TODAY, 7 MARCH. A COMPLETE SUMMARY OF THE MEETING WILL APPEAR AFTER THE CONCLUSION OF THE MEETING AS PRESS RELEASE SC/7682. Background When the Security Council met this morning to consider the situation between Iraq and Kuwait, it had before it a note from the Secretary-General (document S/2003/232) transmitting the twelfth quarterly report of the Executive Chairman of the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) in accordance with paragraph 12 of Security Council resolution 1284 (1999), covering UNMOVIC’s activities from 1 December 2002...

U.S. Searches More Than 80 Iraqi Sites for Weapons of Mass Destruction, Comes Up Empty WASHINGTON April 23 — American forces are changing their search strategy after coming up empty at most of the top suspected weapons sites in Iraq, officials said Wednesday. And the White House appeared to be trying to scale back expectations that weapons of mass destruction will be found. Troops on the ground have searched more than 80 sites that prewar U.S. intelligence judged the most likely hiding places for chemical and biological weapons as well as evidence of an Iraqi nuclear program, Defense Department officials...

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - Six Iraqi scientists working at different Baghdad research institutions were ordered to destroy some bacteria and equipment and hide more in their homes before visits from U.N. weapons inspectors in the months leading up to the war, the scientists told The Associated Press. In separate interviews, all of the scientists said they were involved in civilian research projects and none knew of any programs for weapons of mass destruction. It was not clear why their materials, ostensibly for nonmilitary research, were ordered destroyed. But their accounts indicate the government of Saddam Hussein may have had...

David Harrison in Baghdad uncovers the secret documents which expose the extent of Moscow's involvement The full extent of the help given to Saddam Hussein by Russia's intelligence services is laid bare in secret documents uncovered by The Telegraph. As well as spying on Tony Blair, Russian agents reported to Iraq that President George W. Bush hoped to justify war by provoking a conflict with the UN weapons inspectors. The documents were obtained from the smoking ruins of the federal headquarters of the Iraqi Intelligence Service (Iris) in central Baghdad. They show that, only months before war began, the Russian...

SYDNEY (AFP) - Former chief UN weapons inspector Richard Butler backed US claims Tuesday that Syria helped conceal Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, saying he saw evidence of it. The former Australian diplomat said he had seen intelligence when he headed the UN team in Iraq from 1997 until 1999 which seemed to indicate Syria had helped keep Iraq's weapons of mass destruction hidden. "I was shown some intelligence information, from overhead imagery and so on, that the Iraqis had moved some containers of stuff across the border into Syria," Butler told ABC Radio. "We had reason to believe...