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Nigergate: The shadow of the French inspector After yesterday’s posting, a close look at Ambassador Wilson, today’s the turn of Mr Jacques Baute. The following article raises some incredible questions and reveals some amazing facts. Mr Baute, a Frenchman, seemed to know all about the the Niger forgeries and kept very quiet about them. The result: the Bush administration was ridiculed. The day after Baute’s organisation, the International Atomic Energy Agency, declared the documents to be forgeries the French Government made a startling announcement..... The Bush administration was decieved by it’s presumed allies and the blame was placed on the...

Baghdad leaders reveal that coup plot duped MI6 Julie Flint explains how rumours of Saddam's overthrow caused British intelligence to miss vital information about Iraq's weapons programme British intelligence took its eyes off Saddam Hussein's weapons programmes because it had been duped into believing a military coup would leave Sunni Muslims in power in Iraq. Sources in the country say what they missed was a push to convert chemical and biological organisms into dry agents that could be hidden until pressure on the regime was lifted. 'From the second half of 2000, the focus of the British was not on...

Thirteen years ago, Samantha Power made a name for herself with her Pulitzer prize-winning book, “‘A Problem from Hell’: America and the Age of Genocide.” In this book, she explored the history of America’s reluctance to intervene to stop or prevent genocides. Prescribing American intervention as justified on grounds both “moral” and in service of “enlightened self-interest,” Power asked how something so clear in retrospect as the need to stop genocide could “become so muddled at the time by rationalization, institutional constraints, and a lack of imagination.” It appears that on Monday morning, Power herself is going to demonstrate exactly...

... Now police say his daughter might have brought it from Russia in her suitcase - but it is just the latest of a series of bizarre theories Thirteen days after Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were attacked with a nerve agent in Salisbury, police appear to be no nearer any answers as to how the pair were poisoned. Theories banded around in the past fortnight include food poisoning, a bouquet of flowers laced with the deadly substance Novichok and the lethal toxin being smeared on the former agent's car door handle. Now, it is understood investigators have turned...

After the release of the Iraq Survey Group's Duelfer report, the headlines blazed "No WMD Found." ...This reflects the notion that Iraq was only a threat if it had military munitions filled with WMD. The claim "Iraq was not an imminent threat" was also expounded by pundits that seemingly crawled out of the woodwork as well as those opposed to President Bush. But have these individuals read carefully the report...? While no facilities were found producing chemical or biological agents on a large scale, many clandestine laboratories operating under the Iraqi Intelligence Services were found to be engaged in small-scale...

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia will only respond to a British demand it provide answers about the nerve agent that poisoned former double agent Sergei Skripal if London lets Moscow analyze the substance, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Tuesday. British Prime Minister Theresa May said it was "highly likely" that Moscow was responsible for the poisoning in England of Skripal and his daughter using a military-grade nerve agent that was part of the Novichok group of nerve agents developed by the Soviet military. Lavrov said the British government was obliged to provide Moscow access to the substance because Britain...

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Monday that the poisoning of an ex-Russian spy in Britain “clearly came from Russia” and “certainly will trigger a response."

Just one day after Michael Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the F.B.I. in the Russia investigation, reports have surfaced accusing a veteran investigator in the special probe of sending disparaging text messages regarding President Donald Trump. The investigator was removed from the probe a few months ago because of the potential of a political bias. The New York Times and The Washington Post both reported December 2 that Peter Strzok, a senior counterintelligence investigator at the F.B.I., was removed from the probe because several disparaging text messages indicated he wasn’t a fan of Trump and was possibly a Hillary...

The former U.N. weapons inspector convicted in an online sex sting has been sentenced to 1½ to 5½ years in state prison. Following his sentencing in Monroe County Court on Wednesday afternoon, Scott Ritter was led out in handcuffs and sent to Monroe County Correctional Facility, where he will remain until it is determined which state prison he will serve his sentence at.

Hillary Clinton handing over a sizable portion of US uranium production potential to Russia is not an isolated event, but rather is the logical convergence of decades-old Clinton era dealings with Russia and rogue states, for enrichment of the power elite. AT contributor Michael Curtis is correct when he says that the Uranium One deal has serious implications for our national security.  In fact, the revelation of Hillary’s independent intel network, coupled with Clinton era national security policy changes in the form of counter-proliferation (CP) regimes, have been far more strategically harmful than many Americans realize.... 

An email made public through the organization WikiLeaks suggests that a company controlled in part by the family of Saddam Hussein’s nuclear weapons mastermind donated to the Clinton Foundation’s Clinton Global Initiative before a different company controlled by the same family was awarded a 35-year no-bid lease to Port Canaveral’s cargo container terminal.

Florida Sen. Marco Rubio told Fox News he’s “gravely concerned” about Iran’s role in helping Syria develop its chemical warfare program that ended up killing dozens of people weeks ago. Rubio, a Republican, said he was troubled by reports that both Iran and Russia were complicit in Bashar Assad’s chemical weapons program. While the Trump administration accused Moscow of covering up the Syrian regime's chemical weapons attack, the U.S government has not mentioned Iran's possible role. {snip} “The thing that makes Iran so dangerous is it not only exports its weapons to proxies in Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq, but it brags...

A British nuclear expert has fallen to his death from the 17th floor of the United Nations offices in Vienna. The 47-year-old man died after falling more than 120ft to the bottom of a stairwell. He has not been named. He worked for the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization, an international agency charged with uncovering illicit nuclear tests. A UN spokesman in the Austrian capital said there were no "suspicious circumstances" surrounding the man's death. Police said no other person was believed to have been involved. No suicide note has been found. Four months ago another UN worker also believed to...

MOSCOW –  Striving to salvage ties amid a fierce dispute over Syria, the United States and Russia on Wednesday agreed to work together on an international investigation of a Syrian chemical weapons attack last week that prompted retaliatory American missile strikes. Washington blames Russia's ally, Syrian President Bashar Assad, while Moscow says Syrian rebels are responsible. After a day of discussions with U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said the former Cold War foes agreed a U.N. probe of events in northern Syria on April 4 was necessary. More than 80 people were killed in...

The director of a top American spy agency said Tuesday that he believed that material from Iraq's illicit weapons program had been transported into Syria and perhaps other countries as part of an effort by the Iraqis to disperse and destroy evidence immediately before the recent war.The official, James R. Clapper Jr., a retired lieutenant general, said satellite imagery showing a heavy flow of traffic from Iraq into Syria, just before the American invasion in March, led him to believe that illicit weapons material ''unquestionably'' had been moved out of Iraq.''I think people below the Saddam Hussein-and-his-sons level saw what...

The household cleaning agent chlorine, in heavy concentration is purchased by Iran and and fitted with detonators, to provide President Bashar Assad with a vehicle for cheating on his undertaking to surrender Syria’s chemical arsenal under the year-old US-Russian chemical disarmament accord. And Assad is indeed getting away with using chlorine bombs, with crippling effect, especially on children, every few days. On April 7, Israel Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon offered chapter and verse to prove that the Syrian army had perpetrated a chemical attack on civilians in he town of Harasta on March 27, causing scores of serious injuries and...

WASHINGTON — U.S. warships launched dozens of cruise missiles against a Syrian government-controlled air base Thursday in a major retaliatory strike against Syrian president Bashar Assad for chemical attacks against scores of civilians earlier this week. The missiles were launched by the Rota, Spain-based U.S. guided missile destroyers USS Ross and USS Porter from the Mediterranean Sea and were programmed to hit aircraft shelters, ammunition storage sites, radar sites, aircraft and fuel sites at Shayrat Air Base. That base is where Assad regime military aircraft that carried out the chemical strike launched from, President Donald Trump said in an address...

Syrian Accountability Act to Combat Terrorism By Jim Hauser Talon News December 18, 2003WASHINGTON (Talon News) -- Last week, President Bush signed into law H.R. 1828, the Syria Accountability and Lebanese Sovereignty Restoration Act of 2003. The legislation calls on the president to impose sanctions on Syria to discourage support for international terrorist groups and the occupation of Lebanon.The bill demands that Syria end support for terrorism; halt the development of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) along with medium- and long-range missiles; and withdraw the roughly 20,000 troops it has deployed in Lebanon.It also calls on Syria to "enter into...

Kim Jong-nam 'killed by VX nerve agent found on his face' Kim Jong-nam, the half-brother of North Korea's leader, was killed by a highly toxic nerve agent, says Malaysia. Mr Kim died last week after two women wiped a substance over his face in a check-in hall at Kuala Lumpur airport. Malaysian toxicology reports have identified the chemical as "VX nerve agent", classified as a weapon of mass destruction by the United Nations.

In August 2007, because certain intelligence agencies were not convinced of Israeli claims that President Bashar Assad was engaged in the construction of a nuclear weapons facility, Israel sent sent 12 members of the Sayeret Matkal commando unit into Syria in two helicopters to collect soil samples outside the site in question. Needless to say, this was a highly dangerous operation. And it very nearly went wrong. The commandos were almost exposed when a Syrian patrol drove past the landing site where the helicopters were parked. But it was well worth it. The results provided "clear-cut proof" of the nuclear...