Posted on 02/08/2006 5:47:44 AM PST by yoe
Better question would be, why completely ignore his claims (which are backed up by others as well)? I'm not saying anyone should draw definative conclusions, but at least report the fact that a high-ranking member of Saddam's military is making the claim. To ignore it is just not right.
Absolutely I care, especially when placed in the context of 9/11 and Hussein's history. One would have to be a complete idiot (and you are welcome to take offense) to put their faith in Hussein's regime.
The link I provided showed ample evidence of WMDs (which you say, and Hussein and friends said, did not exist). That link was only a small portion of evidence supporting my case.
Yet, like a good little liberal, you keep trying to pretend the "claim of WMDs" was the only reason to go to war. That's been proven false time and time again.
I don't think any of us trust the UN.
I do not trust the CIA/NSA/FBI.... or any government agency to do anything but try and paint GWB and the right in a bad light. Remember, the GOP is "supposed to be for smaller government" waiting 10 seconds for all to stop laughing" and these people all derive their income from government so they could NEVER support anything but a socialist in the Whitehouse.
I'll just say, " Same opinion here " and leave it at that..
It's as good an answer as any I've got..
I'm as befuddled as everyone else as to why the most blatant evidence of WMD never gets to the public..
As for the reason to go to war, there is one thing those who try to run from the case made before the war cannot dispute. If Iraq had done whatever we considered to be 'disarming' before we went in, there would've been no war. Period. No amount of internal oppression in that country would've prompted us to go to war. The 'threat' was the deal. That's it. And without the spectre of WMD, no one would even pretend that Iraq was a 'threat' to this country.
You can call that 'liberal' all you want. I don't give a rat's ass if you do. But you claim to be interested in 'evidence' and then try to claim that there was some WMD program that threatened us - which the Duelfer report does not come close to saying - and then turn around and say WMD's aren't the issue. Make up your mind.
We know the CIA was a nest of traitors aka, liberals. This is serious. We have US officials actively undermining the country because their political party did not win the election.
Except how can we know where the WMD's came from until you actually find them, and then inspect them for Pete's sake? They could always order suppression of the find later.
But that doesn't appear to be what's going on.
If Iraq had done whatever we considered to be 'disarming' before we went in, there would've been no war.
And it did not. So why do you expend so much energy over trying to insist that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction? It's irrelevant (not to mention wrong).
If a few dozen aging chemical warheads in the hands of a Muslim tyrant worries you, then I don't know how you sleep at night.
What worries me, aside from the prevalent ostrich syndrome affecting so many in the face of a deadly Islamofascist threat, is said Muslim tyrant giving WMDs to terrorists.
As for this absurd accusation of yours:
...then try to claim that there was some WMD program that threatened us - which the Duelfer report does not come close to saying...
...well, I wish you wouldn't make things so easy. I would at least like a challenge, come on!
What have we found and what have we not found in the first 3 months of our work?We have discovered dozens of WMD-related program activities and significant amounts of equipment that Iraq concealed from the United Nations during the inspections that began in late 2002. The discovery of these deliberate concealment efforts have come about both through the admissions of Iraqi scientists and officials concerning information they deliberately withheld and through physical evidence of equipment and activities that ISG has discovered that should have been declared to the UN. Let me just give you a few examples of these concealment efforts, some of which I will elaborate on later:
- A clandestine network of laboratories and safehouses within the Iraqi Intelligence Service that contained equipment subject to UN monitoring and suitable for continuing CBW research.
- A prison laboratory complex, possibly used in human testing of BW agents, that Iraqi officials working to prepare for UN inspections were explicitly ordered not to declare to the UN.
- Reference strains of biological organisms concealed in a scientist's home, one of which can be used to produce biological weapons.
- New research on BW-applicable agents, Brucella and Congo Crimean Hemorrhagic Fever (CCHF), and continuing work on ricin and aflatoxin were not declared to the UN.
- Documents and equipment, hidden in scientists' homes, that would have been useful in resuming uranium enrichment by centrifuge and electromagnetic isotope separation (EMIS).
- A line of UAVs not fully declared at an undeclared production facility and an admission that they had tested one of their declared UAVs out to a range of 500 km, 350 km beyond the permissible limit.
- Continuing covert capability to manufacture fuel propellant useful only for prohibited SCUD variant missiles, a capability that was maintained at least until the end of 2001 and that cooperating Iraqi scientists have said they were told to conceal from the UN.
- Plans and advanced design work for new long-range missiles with ranges up to at least 1000 km - well beyond the 150 km range limit imposed by the UN. Missiles of a 1000 km range would have allowed Iraq to threaten targets through out the Middle East, including Ankara, Cairo, and Abu Dhabi.
- Clandestine attempts between late-1999 and 2002 to obtain from North Korea technology related to 1,300 km range ballistic missiles --probably the No Dong -- 300 km range anti-ship cruise missiles, and other prohibited military equipment.
In addition to the discovery of extensive concealment efforts, we have been faced with a systematic sanitization of documentary and computer evidence in a wide range of offices, laboratories, and companies suspected of WMD work. The pattern of these efforts to erase evidence - hard drives destroyed, specific files burned, equipment cleaned of all traces of use - are ones of deliberate, rather than random, acts.
http://www.cia.gov/cia/public_affairs/speeches/2003/david_kay_10022003.html
Excerpt from
STATEMENT BY DAVID KAY ON THE INTERIM PROGRESS REPORT ON THE ACTIVITIES OF THE IRAQ SURVEY GROUP (ISG) BEFORE THE HOUSE PERMANENT SELECT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE, THE HOUSE COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS, SUBCOMMITTEE ON DEFENSE, AND THE SENATE SELECT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE
October 2, 2003
Oh yes and for the most part ignored by Fox News as well. Them evil MSMs must have got to them as well...I tell you, I'm just going to start getting all my news from World Nut Daily. They must be the only ones that tell the truth....
What you continue to cite is evidence of programs that used to exist, pieces of those programs being hidden away (i.e. not being used), and some evidence of intent to restart those programs in the future. In other words, evidence that they may have had the capability to present a threat at some point. But no evidence that they presented a current threat.
Oh, and on the 'no WMD' statement you keep repeating, can you at least try to be a little honest? I haven't said once, much less repeatedly, that Iraq had absolutely no WMD. In fact, I have acknowledged that they had stray weapons from pre-'91. But that ain't the story you were sold, at all. Current programs stockpiling massive quantities of N, B, AND C weapons, that's the 'threat' we were facing. You know it as well as I do, but you want to forget it in the interest of whose 'side' it impacts. Me, I'm less concerned with 'sides' than I am with evidence. I'll gladly acknowledge they had some amount of WMD, contrary to your shrieks. Can you acknowledge that what they had was the barest whisper of what you were told they had?
Absolutely not. I have no clue how much they had, nor do you. I will certainly say that the amount found so far is quite small, smaller than expected.
But no evidence that they presented a current threat.
LOL!!! In the words of Sherman T. Potter "Horse feathers!!"
Gosh, I don't know. I mean, what could a few airplane passengers with boxcutters possibly do to me as I drive slowly past the Pentagon helo pad on the morning of September 11th, 2001? (Two hours prior to impact, as a matter of fact.)
(Waiting for the inevitable answer involving some program or old weapon being modified or completed or improved or made to actually work and then being given to someone completely other to then be smuggled into the US, etc. - hardly a 45 minute process, to say the least.)
By that standard, we should just go take out any country that has any weapons of any kind. That work for you?
Yes, although I don't need either report. See Tokyo, 1995 or Paris/London, 2003.
Oh
#77.
And let's say that's the case.
The "incident" has already HAPPENED, i.e., when they supplied the material to Saddam.
It wouldn't be our announcing it.
And those "catastrophic consequences," are not averted by apppeasement. Just like with Hitler and Tojo.
The failure to acknowledge, prove, and confront the perps is an ongoing national security threat.
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