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C-Span now showing the Oil For Food Scandal with Congress members.

By RICHARD SPERTZEL Mr. Spertzel, head of the biological-weapons section of Unscom from 1994-99, just returned from Iraq, where he has been a member of the Iraq Survey Group (ISG). The Wall Street Journal October 14, 2004; Page A18 After the release of the Iraq Survey Group's Duelfer report, the headlines blazed "No WMD Found." Most stories continued by saying that Iraq did not constitute an imminent threat to the U.S. and thus the U.S. was wrong to eliminate that threat. This reflects the notion that Iraq was only a threat if it had military munitions filled with WMD. The...

To the people of the United States of America, I am confused now, and here is the reason: President George W. Bush's reaction to the Oct. 6 final report compiled by the U.S.-led team of inspectors on their search for weapons of mass destruction (WMD) allegedly held by the regime of Saddam Hussein

Would we have gone into Iraq had we known what he know today about the state of Saddam Hussein's programs for the production of weapons of mass destruction? The Bush White House has been unapologetic about its policy, and according to National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice, speaking on Fox News Channel on Sunday, the answer is "yes." But the point is of course that we didn't know. Saddam Hussein's truly moronic game of deception made it very hard to think otherwise than that he had all sorts of weapons of mass destruction (WMDs).

Howard Dean must have been ecstatic as he read the headlines on Oct. 7: "Report Discounts Iraqi Arms Threat" affirmed the Washington Post, while The New York Times, not to be outdone, jubilantly proclaimed that "sanctions worked." The Yale dining halls were abuzz with liberal energy: I could scarcely walk to my table without hearing about "how we had contained Saddam" or how "we never should have invaded Iraq." Democrats were vindicated, Republicans were doomed; with this newfound evidence, John Kerry could "finish Bush off" while the current administration would "lose all remaining credibility." Naturally, I was a bit taken...

Sordid affairIT'S PROBABLY wishful thinking to expect - in the home stretch of an overheated U.S. presidential election race - very much reasoned debate on the final report of the top U.S. arms inspector concerning Saddam Hussein's regime and his pursuit of weapons of mass destruction. Predictably, some have seized on Charles Duelfer's findings, delivered last week, that Saddam had no stockpiles of WMDs and no active capability to reconstitute those weapons programs, to argue that the U.S.-led invasion was therefore wrong since Iraq posed no threat to the world. Others have pointed out, however, that the same report concludes...

For years, Saddam Hussein showed himself to be a master practitioner of the big bluff. Everyone outside Iraq and just about everyone inside believed that he harbored a secret stockpile of weapons of mass destruction.[snip]Saddam made a calculated decision, says the [Duelfer] report, that getting out from under sanctions was of paramount importance. He opted for a "tactical retreat" by ordering the elimination of what he had left: all biological, chemical and nuclear programs were abandoned, stockpiles destroyed.But according to the report, former officials say they "heard him say or inferred" that he "intended to resume" developing his chemical- and...

URL Given is for the 19 page "Key Findings" of the Duelfer Report -- it is in .PDF format, so cannot excerpt. Almost every word strongly underpins EVEN IN HINDSIGHT the actions of President Bush. Entire report also at same CIA site, but this is the "synoposis" THE LIBS ARE SPINNING SOME OBSCURE POINT INTO A LIE THAT WMD WASN'T A REALISTIC REASON FOR WAR -- WE HAVE GOT TO GET THIS PAST THE MEDIA EDITORS' SPIKE!!!

Corrections Washington Post, October 8, 2004, Pg. 2 "An Oct. 7 article and the lead Page One headline incorrectly attributed a quotation to Charles A. Duelfer, the chief U.S. weapons inspector in Iraq. The statement, 'We were almost all wrong,' was made by Duelfer's predecessor, David Kay, at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing Jan. 28." Oopsie! Isn't this the darndest thing? An enormously important report confirming that Saddam was scamming the world by selling oil to UN criminals as part of his reacquiring WMDs next year, and those silly geese at the Post just sort of got it all...

OP-ED COLUMNIST Saddam Hussein saw his life as an unfolding epic narrative, with retreats and advances, but always the same ending. He would go down in history as the glorious Arab leader, as the Saladin of his day. One thousand years from now, schoolchildren would look back and marvel at the life of The Struggler, the great leader whose life was one of incessant strife, but who restored the greatness of the Arab nation. They would look back and see the man who lived by his saying: "We will never lower our heads as long as we live, even if...

John Kerry Distorts the Charles Duelfer Report to rewind, rewrite and replay history regarding inspections, WMD's, sanctions and Oil for Food. John Kerry is using a distortion of the Charles Duelfer Report to rewind, rewrite and replay history skewed by selective-hindsight revisionism to support a naive assertion that we would be better off if George Bush had declined to launch Operation Iraqi Freedom. To test the sensibility of Kerry's claims now, let's re-wind history and operate on the basis of what the Dulfer Report now says we now know and on the basis of Kerry's claim that relying on indigenous...

WASHINGTON, Oct. 8 - The Bush administration's handling this week of a report on Saddam Hussein's attempts to purchase weapons and buy influence has angered French officials and set back a year of American efforts to repair the rupture caused by the Iraq war, French and other European officials said Friday. The anger of France and others is focused on the assertions in the report by Charles A. Duelfer, the top American arms inspector in Iraq, that French companies and individuals, some with close ties to the government, enriched themselves through Iraq's efforts to gain influence around the world in...

E-mail Author Author Archive Send to a Friend <% printurl = Request.ServerVariables("URL")%> Print Version October 08, 2004, 1:55 p.m. Dissimulation ReignsWhat on earth was going on in the mind of Saddam Hussein? Attention focuses on what exactly went through the minds of the major players on the scene. When John Kerry voted to authorize military action by the president, did he expect such action to be taken? If he expected something else, what was it? A supererogatory resolution by the Security Council? If so, why did he not stress the need for it at the time? As for Mr....

America involved in Oil for Food Scandal?

Al Tariq Company’sHabbaniyah I/Fallujah III Site The Al Tariq Company produced castor oil by extractionfrom 1992 until 2002, using an Iraqi-designedand produced crushing mill purchased locally. AlTariq offi cials complied with UNSCOM on therequirement that they burn the bean mash left overfrom production while UN inspectors remained inIraq. This open pit burning of mash was no longerobserved after the plant was reconstructed, post-OperationDesert Fox bombing, and went operational. Themash, which took days to burn and created signifi cantsmoke, was burned in pits near the Fallujah III facility.At one point, Al Tariq offi cials considered usingthe bean mash in animal feed,...

A SPECIAL French court yesterday charged Charles Pasqua, the senator at the centre of Iraqi bribery allegations, with offences in three cases of alleged corruption while he served as Interior Minister.The move against M Pasqua, 77, although unconnected with Iraq, embarrassed Paris as it sought to pour scorn on American allegations that he and other senior French politicians, businessmen and officials had received millions of pounds in a campaign orchestrated by the regime of Saddam Hussein to influence France. The court appearance by M Pasqua, 77, a longtime associate of President Chirac and a senior Gaullist party figure until the...

Is it really true that Saddam Hussein had no "stockpiles" of weapons of mass destruction before the U.S. invaded in March 2003? Not exactly - at least not if one counts the 500 tons of uranium that the Iraqi dictator kept stored at his al Tuwaitha nuclear weapons development plant. The press hasn't made much of Saddam's 500-ton uranium stockpile, downplaying the story to such an extent that most Americans aren't even aware of it. But it's been reported - albeit in a by-the-way fashion - by the New York Times and a handful of other media outlets. And one...

The facts about the U.N.’s corrupt Oil-for-Food relationship with the deposed Iraqi tyrant are further exposed. CIA chief weapons inspector Charles Duelfer may not have found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, but he sure found information enough to blow the lid off the simmering scandal of the United Nations Oil-for-Food program. As it turns out, Oil-for-Food pretty much was Saddam Hussein's weapons program. As Duelfer documents, Oil-for-Food allowed Saddam to replenish his empty coffers, firm up his networks for hiding money and buying arms, corrupt the U.N.'s own debates over Iraq, greatly erode sanctions and deliberately prep the ground...

Kerry could benefit from CIA findings on Iraq, but Bush has his own ammunition. WASHINGTON — The costs and benefits of President Bush's decision to invade Iraq loom ever larger as a potential tipping point in the 2004 presidential election after the release of a definitive CIA study this week concluding that Saddam Hussein possessed neither weapons of mass destruction nor active programs to produce them. The study comes as violence continues to plague Iraq. The situation exposes Bush to a potentially dangerous squeeze: mounting losses on the ground combined with mounting challenges to his original justification for the war....

I'm confused...does the report itself say "no WMDs found" or that Saddam was not producing any more WMDs after 1991? I thought the report clearly points out 53 chemical weapons found in 2004 but they were pre-1991?

Is it really true that Saddam Hussein had no "stockpiles" of weapons of mass destruction before the U.S. invaded in March 2003? Not exactly - at least not if one counts the 500 tons of uranium that the Iraqi dictator kept stored at his al Tuwaitha nuclear weapons development plant.

ON NOVEMBER 3, we may look back at October 7 as a very good day--even a turning point--for the Bush campaign. This was the day that news reports, one after another, reminded us that we have not found stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Most of the accounts I saw included side-by-side comparisons of language from the Duelfer report and prewar claims made by top Bush administration officials. And nowhere did I see even a mention that John Kerry, John Edwards, and even French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin talked about Iraq's WMD with much the same certitude...

ENGLEWOOD, Colo. — Democratic Sen. John F. Kerry on Thursday said a new CIA report proved the U.S. was duped into war while President Bush argued that it justified sending in troops, starkly dividing the two candidates as they headed into the pair's second debate tonight.______________________________snip____________________________________ "I believe we were right to take action, and America is safer today with Saddam Hussein in prison," Bush told reporters in Washington. "He retained the knowledge, the materials, the means, and the intent to produce weapons of mass destruction. And he could have passed that knowledge on to our terrorist enemies…. In a...

United Nations - CIA-Iraq chief weapons inspector Charles Duelfer, whose report cast doubt on Bush administration claims that Saddam Hussein was hiding weapons of mass destruction, was blocked from reaching that same conclusion in 1999-2000 by the Clinton White House. Before officially joining the CIA weapons hunt earlier this year, Duelfer spent more than 8 years hunting WMD at the United Nations, first for the noted Swede Rolf Ekeus, than the flamboyant Aussie Richard Butler. Butler, known for his repeated clashes with Iraq officials, was eventually forced out of his U.N. job by the French and Russian ambassadors in June...

OK, Let me just tell you something here I spent about 5 minutes looking through Charles Duelfer’s Report this execerpt is from part 1, i'm NOT a laywer NOT even close! Why is Kerry lying to the people? Sheesh just read this and you decide if the sanctions were working... 1996 Beginning of Oil-for-Food. Another example of a key infl ection point was the 1996 decision to accept the Oil-for-Food (OFF) program. Internally, Iraq was in trouble. The economy was in tatters. The middle class was decimated by the collapse of the dinar and the impact of sanctions. The hobbling...

Iraq: You wouldn't know it from the headlines, but the new WMD report explains why Saddam Hussein was a threat and why the U.S. was right to remove him.Arms inspector Duelfer has just delivered the most exhaustive findings so far on Saddam's WMD. As anyone even faintly aware of the report must know by now, Duelfer and his team found no WMD stockpiles and concluded that Iraqi WMD capability was "essentially destroyed" after the 1991 Gulf War.The anti-war media have been quick to seize on that angle, kicking off stories with agitprop leads like this one from The Associated Press'...

WASHINGTON - President Bush (news - web sites) and his vice president conceded Thursday in the clearest terms yet that Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) had no weapons of mass destruction, even as they tried to shift the Iraq (news - web sites) war debate to a new issue — whether the invasion was justified because Saddam was abusing a U.N. oil-for-food program. Ridiculing the Bush administration's evolving rationale for war, Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry (news - web sites) shot back: "You don't make up or find reasons to go to war after the fact." Vice President Dick...

The political spin machines went into high gear Wednesday with the publication of the report from the Iraq Survey Group on Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction (WMD). The group’s finding that Saddam Hussein did not have a functional program for the production of weapons of mass destruction, nor any known stockpiles of the same, was treated as big news. In the context of a heated election campaign, the news was played as a devastating blow to President Bush’s case for the war in Iraq. But this represents a serious distortion. There is news in the report, to be sure,...

Duelfer Damns U.N. With a presidential election less than a month away and the press and the Democrats eager to discredit the Bush administration, most of what we've been hearing about the final report of Charles Duelfer's Iraq Survey Group, issued yesterday, has centered on the question of whether Saddam Hussein's regime possessed stockpiles of mass-destruction weapons. The U.S. and most other world intelligence services believed it did, and this was among the justifications for Iraq's liberation last year. The absence of such stockpiles is supposed to prove that the U.S.-led coalition was wrong to liberate Iraq--that Saddam Hussein did...

KEY FINDINGS (BIOLOGICAL) - Excerpt In 1991, Saddam Husayn regarded BW as an integral element of his arsenal of WMD weapons, and would have used it if the need arose. • At a meeting of the Iraqi leadership immediately prior to the Gulf war in 1991, Saddam Husayn personally authorized the use of BW weapons against Israel, Saudi Arabia and US forces. Although the exact nature of the circumstances that would trigger use was not spelled out, they would appear to be a threat to the leadership itself or the US resorting to “unconventional harmful types of weapons.” • Saddam...

His generals were stunned when he told them banned arms didn't exist, report says. WASHINGTON — Shortly before the U.S. bombing and invasion of Iraq last year, Saddam Hussein gathered his top generals together to share what came to them as astonishing news: The weapons that the United States was launching a war to remove did not exist. &#8203; &#8203;&#8203;&#8203;&#8203; "There was plenty of surprise when Saddam said, 'Sorry guys, we don't have any' " weapons of mass destruction to use against the invading forces, a senior U.S. intelligence official said. The unexpected peek inside Hussein's inner circle in the...

MIAMI - Vice President Dick Cheney (news - web sites) asserted on Thursday that a report by the chief U.S. weapons inspector in Iraq (news - web sites), who found no evidence that Iraq produced weapons of mass destruction after 1991, justifies rather than undermines President Bush (news - web sites)'s decision to go to war. The report shows that "delay, defer, wasn't an option," Cheney told a town-hall style meeting. While Democrats seized on the new report by Charles Duelfer to bolster their case that invading Iraq was a mistake, Cheney focused on portions of the report that were...

Hussein wanted to make banned arms, but his ability to do so was 'essentially destroyed' after the Gulf War, the chief inspector reports. WASHINGTON — Saddam Hussein did not produce or possess any weapons of mass destruction for more than a decade before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq last year, according to a comprehensive CIA report released Wednesday. Hussein intended to someday reconstitute his illicit programs and rebuild at least some of his weapons if United Nations sanctions were eased and he had the opportunity, the report concluded. But the Iraqi regime had no formal, written strategy to revive the...

Here's how stupid this Saddam and Al Qaeda (search) debate is. OK, let's say Edwards and Kerry and Lockhart et al, are right. There's no WMD (search) connection, no Al Qaeda connection and no Sept. 11 connection. Let's say they're right — despite the evidence that conclusions have been made for political purposes — but let's say they're right for argument's sake: There were no WMD, no Al Qaeda, no 9/11 link. That means Saddam was innocent and that means the war was wrong...

WHEN George Bush said at the end of the Iraq war that it would be only a matter of time before stockpiles of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons were discovered, few doubted him. But after a hunt lasting more than a year by the 1,400 British, United States and Australian military experts who formed the Iraq Survey Group (ISG), no such weapons have been found. Yesterday, Charles Duelfer, the ISG chief, confirmed what many people had come to accept - that Iraq had no stockpiles of biological or chemical weapons before last year’s US-led invasion, and its nuclear programme had...

The author of the final report into Iraqi weapons of mass destruction threw Tony Blair and George Bush a lifeline today by saying the world was "better off" without Saddam Hussein.Mr Duelfer confirmed the Iraqi dictator destroyed illegal weapons after the first Gulf war, dismantledhis nuclear bomb programmeand was a "diminishing"-threat at the time of last year's invasion. But giving evidence to the Senate armed services committee, he supported the military campaign. "The world is better off," he said. He said Saddam had made "a lot of progress" in eroding sanctions to the point at which he could begin building...

This report relays the findings of the Special Advisor to the Director of Central Intelligence on Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction.We are aware that the files comprising this 1,000-page report are extremely large and, in practice, available only to visitors who have a broadband connection to our site. Thus, we extracted the key findings from each of the major sections of the report and provide them as a separate, much smaller file. All of the files linked below are in PDF format and require Adobe's free Acrobat® Reader™ to view. We plan to post an HTML version of the complete...

http://asia.news.yahoo.com/041007/ap/d85ibcbg0.htmlThursday October 7, 11:21 AM Saddam Told Interrogators of Iran Fixation Photo: AP Saddam Hussein was obsessed with his status in the Arab world, dreaming of weapons of mass destruction to pump up his prestige. And even as the United States fixated on him, he was fixated on his neighboring enemy, Iran. That is the picture that emerges from interrogations of the former Iraqi leader since his capture last December, according to the final report of the chief U.S. arms inspector, which gives a first glimpse into what the United States has gleaned about Saddam's hopes, dreams and insecurities. The...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction programs had deteriorated into only hopes and dreams by the time of the U.S.-led invasion last year, a decline wrought by the first Gulf War and years of international sanctions, the chief U.S. weapons hunter found. And what ambitions Saddam harbored for such weapons were secondary to his goal of evading those sanctions, and he wanted them primarily not to attack the United States or to provide them to terrorists, but to oppose his older enemies, Iran and Israel. The report of weapons hunter Charles Duelfer was presented Wednesday to senators...

Saddam Hussein's goal through the 1990s and until the 2003 U.S. invasion was to end U.N. sanctions on Iraq, while working covertly to restore the country's ability to produce weapons of mass destruction, a report by the chief U.S. weapons inspector says.     "Saddam wanted to re-create Iraq's WMD capability — which was essentially destroyed in 1991 — after sanctions were removed and Iraq's economy stabilized, but probably with a different mix of capabilities," the report said. [snip]Mr. Duelfer yesterday said inspectors still cannot "definitively say whether or not WMD materials were transferred out of Iraq before the war," although...

At first glance the ISG report appears to be a crushing indictment of the intelligence that was fed to the American and British governments before the war - not to mention the uses to which that intelligence was put by the White House and Downing Street. But look again. The report is a cerebral, detailed affair, and within it there is something for everyone. Charles Duelfer, head of the ISG, appears to have made a serious effort to get inside the mind of Saddam Hussein. The ISG even questioned him as part of the investigation. This is what he says...

CIA: Saddam Bought Off Countries, People with Oil Thursday, October 07, 2004 1:34 a.m. ET By Evelyn Leopold UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The Central Intelligence Agency has published hundreds of names of people, firms, political parties and government officials Saddam Hussein purportedly tried to buy off to get U.N. sanctions lifted. At the same time, Saddam and his government managed to amass some $11 billion through shadowy deals to circumvent the sanctions, first imposed in 1990 and lifted after the U.S.-led invasion a year ago, said the report, released on Wednesday. The report was part of a 1,200-page survey for...

Report May Undercut Bush's Iraq Rationale By: John J. LumpkinAssociated Press Writer WASHINGTON (AP) -- The final report of the chief U.S. arms inspector for Iraq was expected to undercut a principal Bush administration rationale for removing Saddam Hussein, that Saddam's Iraqi government had weapons of mass destruction.Duelfer, head of the Iraq Survey Group, was providing his findings Wednesday to the Senate Armed Services Committee. His team has compiled a 1,500-page report; it is unclear how much will be made public. Duelfer's predecessor, David Kay, who quit last December, also found no evidence of weapons stockpiles.White House spokesman Scott McClellan...

No weapons since 1991, this is a joke report. Noone believed this would have been possible in 2002. The UN I am convinced took the weapons out of Iraq to discredit Bush. He would not have risked his Presidency that he would have won easily if he knew there was no WMD.

Undercutting the Bush's administration's rationale for invading Iraq (news - web sites), the final report of the chief U.S. arms inspector concludes that Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) did not vigorously pursue a program to develop weapons of mass destruction when international inspectors left Baghdad in 1998, an administration official said Wednesday. AP Photo Reuters Slideshow: Iraq Latest headlines: · Report: Saddam Not in Pursuit of Weapons AP - 5 minutes ago · US to admit no WMDs in Iraq, but Bush unrepentant AFP - 15 minutes ago · Bush attacks Kerry over Iraq, economy AFP - 16 minutes...

Chemical munitions were found; Iraqi scientists retained seed stocks for biological agents; Iraqi Intelligence Services maintained undeclared clandestine laboratories to research and test various chemicals and poisons (page 15); sources indicate IIS was "planning to produce ... sulfer mustard, nitrogen mustard, and sarin".. Uday attempted to obtain chemical weapons for use during OIF.."testing on humans continued until the mid 1990s.. resulting in their deaths"..

US weapons experts sought help from Saddam Hussein himself to piece together Iraq's prewar weapons program, appealing to his desire to rehabilitate his name to pry loose his secrets, a US official said. The debriefings were conducted by a single FBI agent, who was chosen with to gather evidence for trial but also in the belief that having just one person dedicated to Saddam would help establish a bond with the former dictator, said the official. "This guy, he is a very cagey guy," the official said of Saddam. The official said Saddam has "an exquisite sense of the...

The government's most definitive account of Iraq's arms programs, to be released today, will show that Saddam Hussein posed a diminishing threat at the time the United States invaded and did not possess, or have concrete plans to develop, nuclear, chemical or biological weapons, U.S. officials said yesterday. The officials said that the 1,000-page report by Charles A. Duelfer, the chief U.S. weapons inspector in Iraq, concluded that Hussein had the desire but not the means to produce unconventional weapons that could threaten his neighbors or the West. ...[snip]The official said Duelfer will tell Congress in the report and in...

Head of Iraq Survey Team Charles Duelfer asserted Wednesday in testimony and report to the US Senate Armed Forces Committee that no WMD stockpiles were found to exist in Iraq in 2003. However, Iraq was producing missiles beyond UN-imposed limits and could have fitted them with warheads very quickly. The ICG team found no active nuclear program and no conclusive findings on biological programs. However, by 2003, Iraq had capabilities for producing chemical or biological weapons in months and retained the intellectual capacity to reconstitute WMD programs. The ISG team found no evidence of mobile biological weapons facilities but cannot...

... Moreover, the IIS paper targeted a number of French individuals that the Iraqi's thought had close relations to French President Chirac, including, according to the Iraqi assessment, the offi cial spokesperson of President Chirac's re-election campaign, two reported "counselors" of President Chirac, and two well-known French businessmen. In May 2002, IIS correspondence addressed to Saddam stated that a MFA (quite possibly an IIS offi cer under diplomatic cover) met with French parliamentarian to discuss Iraq-Franco relations. The French politician assured the Iraqi that France would use its veto in the UNSC against any American decision to attack Iraq, according...