WMD (Weapons of Mass Disappearance)

War, News and Stories of Iraq

Moderator: Super Moderators

mudwoman
Pirate
Posts: 9375
Joined: 05-17-2000 02:00 AM

Post by mudwoman » 12-08-2003 11:27 PM

Race you can choose to send your son or daughter off to war on the word of an Iraqi Colonel if you want. I would not.

User avatar
Devastated
Moderator - Hammock Expert
Posts: 4943
Joined: 12-29-2002 03:00 AM

Post by Devastated » 12-09-2003 07:27 AM

Shoulda woulda coulda.
So what?
Woulda made Colon Bowel look better..........shoulda???:confused:

User avatar
Iris
Pirate
Posts: 13539
Joined: 01-01-2003 03:00 AM

Post by Iris » 12-10-2003 05:54 PM

WHY did the Iraqi army decide not to fight?
We must, indeed, all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately. B. Franklin

User avatar
BenSlain
Pirate
Posts: 3419
Joined: 09-14-2000 02:00 AM

Post by BenSlain » 12-10-2003 10:20 PM

Iris wrote: WHY did the Iraqi army decide not to fight?



Cause thay got scared that their ass'es where gonna get blown off. And, they diden't want to fight for Saddam. Like many of them are stating.
Put in a prison cell, but one time he could-a been The champion of the world.

User avatar
Iris
Pirate
Posts: 13539
Joined: 01-01-2003 03:00 AM

Post by Iris » 12-11-2003 12:02 AM

Maybe. Maybe not. There were rumors of deals.
We must, indeed, all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately. B. Franklin

User avatar
Corvid
Anchors Aweigh
Posts: 5678
Joined: 12-31-2002 03:00 AM

Post by Corvid » 12-11-2003 03:46 AM

BenSlain wrote: Cause thay got scared that their ass'es where gonna get blown off. And, they diden't want to fight for Saddam. Like many of them are stating.



Or perhaps they knew that they could not match the technology out in the open... but sniping from the bushes renders all that high tech stuff smart bomb stuff moot. Our Navy is out of this game. So is the Air Force. Now it is just the gritty contest between grenades, car bombs, snipers and grunts.

They watched the Israelis do it to England.

They saw the FLN do it to France in Algiers.

They saw the Viet Namese do it to the US.

They learned.... We didn't.

I just wish that they had paid more attention to Ghandi and his methodology.

Rummy got suckered... this ain't France in 1944.

User avatar
diep
Pirate
Posts: 44
Joined: 09-22-2003 03:37 PM

Post by diep » 12-11-2003 04:26 PM

Racehorse,,,, read the next article and understand why news media like Fox are really bad for your valuable brain.

WMD claims of Iraqi 'colonel' treated sceptically
However, sections of the transcript of the NBC interview that the network did not broadcast were aired on the ITV News Channel, which has a partnership with NBC. In one, the colonel was asked by NBC's Baghdad correspondent why he was so sure that these were chemical or biological weapons. His reply suggests that he was not, in fact, sure at all.

"We cannot determine exactly, but the procedures taken show that these were indeed WMD," he said. "It might have been chemical or biological but it was definitely unconventional weapons."

In another section, broadcast by ITV, the colonel says: "The instructions from Saddam were clear. When you get to a critical point where the survival of the country is at stake then you can use these weapons. All weapons starting from the common knife all the way up to nuclear weapons can be used.That was the instruction."

As it has long been known that Iraq's armed forces did not possess nuclear weapons, this raises further doubts about the unnamed "colonel's" credibility. Separating out the truth in this conflict has always been difficult as Iraq has been awash with rumour, misinformation and propaganda since the invasion was launched.

User avatar
racehorse
Pirate
Posts: 14976
Joined: 01-04-2003 03:00 AM
Location: Commonwealth of Kentucky

Post by racehorse » 12-11-2003 07:21 PM

diep wrote: Racehorse,,,, read the next article and understand why news media like Fox are really bad for your valuable brain.

WMD claims of Iraqi 'colonel' treated sceptically


diep, I read articles from numerous sources with very divergent points of view and will continue to. ;)
racehorse
Image

User avatar
Devastated
Moderator - Hammock Expert
Posts: 4943
Joined: 12-29-2002 03:00 AM

Those Pesky WMDs

Post by Devastated » 12-19-2003 08:52 AM

Remember 'weapons of mass destruction'? For Bush, they are a nonissue

By Richard W. Stevenson, New York Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/
12/18/politics/18PREX.html


WASHINGTON — In the debate over the necessity for the war in Iraq, few issues have been more contentious than whether Saddam Hussein possessed arsenals of banned weapons, as the Bush administration repeatedly said, or instead was pursuing weapons programs that might one day constitute a threat.

On Tuesday, with Mr. Hussein in American custody and polls showing support for the White House's Iraq policy rebounding, Mr. Bush suggested that he no longer saw much distinction between the possibilities.

"So what's the difference?" he responded at one point as he was pressed on the topic during an interview by Diane Sawyer of ABC News.

To critics of the war, there is a big difference. They say that the administration's statements that Iraq had chemical and biological weapons that it could use on the battlefield or turn over to terrorists added an urgency to the case for immediate military action that would have been lacking if Mr. Hussein were portrayed as just developing the banned weapons.

"This was a pre-emptive war, and the rationale was that there was an imminent threat," said Senator Bob Graham of Florida, a Democrat who has said that by elevating Iraq to the most dangerous menace facing the United States, the administration unwisely diverted resources from fighting Al Qaeda and other terrorists.

The overwhelming vote in Congress last year to authorize the use of force against Iraq would have been closer "but for the fact that the president had so explicitly said that there were weapons of mass destruction that posed an imminent threat to citizens of the United States," Mr. Graham said in an interview on Wednesday.

As early as last spring, Mr. Bush suggested that the Iraqis might have dispersed their biological and chemical weapons so widely that they would be extremely difficult to find. And some weapons experts have suggested that Mr. Hussein may have destroyed banned weapons that he had in the early 1990's but left in place the capacity to produce more.

This week, at a news conference on Monday and in the ABC interview on Tuesday, Mr. Bush's answers to questions on the subject continued a gradual shift in the way he has addressed the topic, from the immediacy of the threat to an assertion that no matter what, the world is better off without Mr. Hussein in power.

Where once Mr. Bush and his top officials asserted unambiguously that Mr. Hussein had the weapons at the ready, their statements now are often far more couched, reflecting the fact that no weapons have been found — "yet," as Mr. Bush was quick to interject during the interview.

In the interview, Mr. Bush said removing Mr. Hussein from power was justified even without the recovery of any banned weapons. As he has since his own weapons inspector, David Kay, issued an interim report in October saying he had uncovered extensive evidence of weapons programs in Iraq but no actual weapons, Mr. Bush said the existence of such programs, by violating United Nations Security Council resolutions, provided ample grounds for the war.

"If he were to acquire weapons, he would be the danger," Mr. Bush continued, referring to Mr. Hussein. "That's what I'm trying to explain to you. A gathering threat, after 9/11, is a threat that needed to be dealt with, and it was done after 12 long years of the world saying the man's a danger."

Pressed to explain the president's remarks, Scott McClellan, the White House spokesman, said Mr. Bush was not backing away from his assertions about Mr. Hussein's possession of banned weapons.

"We continue to believe that he had weapons of mass destruction programs and weapons of mass destruction," Mr. McClellan said on Wednesday.

Mr. Bush has always been careful to have multiple reasons ready for his major policy proposals, and his administration has deployed them deftly to adapt to changing circumstances.

In trying to build public and international support for toppling Mr. Hussein, the administration cited, with different emphasis at different times, the banned weapons, links between the Iraqi leader and terrorist organizations, a desire to liberate the Iraqi people and a policy of bringing democracy to the Middle East.

When it came to describing the weapons program, Mr. Bush never hedged before the war. "If we know Saddam Hussein has dangerous weapons today — and we do — does it make any sense for the world to wait to confront him as he grows even stronger and develops even more dangerous weapons?" Mr. Bush asked during a speech in Cincinnati in October 2002.

In the weeks after the fall of Baghdad in April, the White House was equally explicit. "One of the reasons we went to war was because of their possession of weapons of mass destruction," Ari Fleischer, then the White House spokesman, told reporters on May 7. "And nothing has changed on that front at all."

On Wednesday Mr. McClellan, when pressed, only restated the president's belief that weapons would eventually be found. Mr. Bush, despite being asked repeatedly about the issue in different ways by Ms. Sawyer, never did say it, except to note Mr. Hussein's past use of chemical weapons. He emphasized Mr. Hussein's capture instead.

"And if he doesn't have weapons of mass destruction?" Ms. Sawyer asked the president, according to a transcript provided by ABC.

"Diane, you can keep asking the question," Mr. Bush replied. "I'm telling you — I made the right decision for America because Saddam Hussein used weapons of mass destruction, invaded Kuwait. But the fact that he is not there is, means America's a more secure country."

THERE'S AN ELEPHANT IN THE LIVING ROOM. I don't like this one bit and I haven't all year. I do suspect that we might "find" a trace of a WMD closer to election time...I can still see the elephant in the living room and I don't like being manipulated this way.

Joolz
Pirate
Posts: 11976
Joined: 12-25-2002 03:00 AM

Post by Joolz » 12-19-2003 03:05 PM

Thanks for posting that, Dev. I'd heard a sound-bite of Bush's snippy reply to Diane Sawyer on the radio. It was good to see the WHOLE thing in context. Sheesh...

Here's some more to chew on...


Dec 15, 10:17 PM

Senators were told Iraqi weapons could hit U.S.
Nelson said claim made during classified briefing

By John McCarthy
FLORIDA TODAY


U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson said Monday the Bush administration last year told him and other senators that Iraq not only had weapons of mass destruction, but they had the means to deliver them to East Coast cities.

Nelson, D-Tallahassee, said about 75 senators got that news during a classified briefing before last October's congressional vote authorizing the use of force to remove Saddam Hussein from power. Nelson voted in favor of using military force.

Nelson said he couldn't reveal who in the administration gave the briefing.

The White House directed questions about the matter to the Department of Defense. Defense officials had no comment on Nelson's claim.

Nelson said the senators were told Iraq had both biological and chemical weapons, notably anthrax, and it could deliver them to cities along the Eastern seaboard via unmanned aerial vehicles, commonly known as drones.

"They have not found anything that resembles an UAV that has that capability," Nelson said.

Nelson delivered the news during a half-hour conference call with reporters Monday afternoon. The senator, who is on a seven-nation trade mission to South America, was calling from an airport in Santiago, Chile.

"That's news," said John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, a Washington, D.C.-area military and intelligence think tank. "I had not heard that that was the assessment of the intelligence community. I had not heard that the Congress had been briefed on this."

Since the late 1990s, there have been several reports that Iraq was converting a fleet of Czechoslovakian jet fighters into UAVs, as well as testing smaller drones. And in a speech in Cincinnati last October, Bush mentioned the vehicles. "We're concerned that Iraq is exploring ways of using these UAVs for missions targeting the United States," the president said.

Nelson, though, said the administration told senators Iraq had gone beyond exploring and developed the means of hitting the U.S. with weapons of mass destruction.

Nelson wouldn't say what the original source of the intelligence was, but said it contradicted other intelligence reports senators had received. He said he wants to find out why there was so much disagreement about the weapons. "If that is an intelligence failure . . . we better find that out so we don't have an intelligence failure in the future."

Pike said any UAVs Iraq might have had would have had a range of only several hundred kilometers, enough to hit targets in the Middle East but not the United States. To hit targets on the East Coast, such drones would have to be launched from a ship in Atlantic. He said it wasn't out of the question for Iraq to have secretly acquired a tramp steamer from which such vehicles could have been launched.

"The notion that someone could launch a missile from a ship off our shores has been on Rummy's mind for years," Pike said, referring to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.

Sen. Bob Graham, who voted against using military force in Iraq, didn't return phone calls concerning the briefing. Spokespersons for Reps. Dave Weldon and Tom Feeney said neither congressman could say if they had received similar briefings since they don't comment on classified information.

http://www.floridatoday.com/!NEWSROOM/l ... NELSON.htm
Last edited by Joolz on 12-19-2003 03:07 PM, edited 1 time in total.
Image Anchors Aweigh!

User avatar
Iris
Pirate
Posts: 13539
Joined: 01-01-2003 03:00 AM

Post by Iris » 12-26-2003 01:36 AM

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/19/polit ... ner=GOOGLE

Head of Iraqi Arms Search May Be Ready to Step Down
By RICHARD W. STEVENSON

Published: December 19, 2003

WASHINGTON, Dec. 18 — David Kay, the head of the effort by the United States to find the banned weapons cited by President Bush as a primary reason for going to war with Iraq, is considering stepping down in the next few months before the group he leads completes its search and issues a final report, government officials said Thursday.

Image
David Kay has been looking for
banned weapons in Iraq.


Dr. Kay, 63, is widely respected as thorough and straightforward even among critics of the war who have raised doubts about whether the threat from Iraq was as dire as the administration made it out to be. Should he leave, Democrats and some weapons experts said, it could fuel a perception that the United States is winding up the hunt without having found any caches of biological or chemical weapons.

"Kay's departure is very convenient in the effort to change the subject," said Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, a senior Democrat on the Armed Services and Intelligence committees, referring to what he said were attempts by Mr. Bush to deflect attention from the administration's assertions that Iraq possessed stores of banned weapons. He added, "Kay set a very high standard of proof. He wants real evidence of the presence of weapons. That apparently is not a standard that is going to be met."

The organization Dr. Kay leads, the Iraq Survey Group, issued an interim report in October citing extensive evidence that Saddam Hussein had pursued banned weapons programs, including attempts to acquire missile technology from North Korea. But the report said the group had found no actual weapons, and Dr. Kay said at the time that it would take another six to nine months to complete his work, suggesting that his final report would land in the middle of the presidential election campaign.

Asked Thursday about Dr. Kay's plans, Scott McClellan, the White House spokesman, said he did not want to speak for Dr. Kay but that the administration was intent on finishing the evaluation of Saddam Hussein's weapons programs and the search for actual weapons.

"The search is an important priority, and the work of the Iraq Survey Group continues," Mr. McClellan said. The group, he said, will "complete its work."

The White House continues to maintain that banned weapons will be found in Iraq. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld told reporters on Tuesday that a hole the size of the one Mr. Hussein was found in could hold enough biological weapons to kill tens of thousands of people, and that it could be some time before the United States gets the help it needs from Iraqis to find the hiding places.

But Mr. Bush said in an interview on Tuesday with ABC News that what was known about Mr. Hussein's weapons programs was enough to justify the war, and he seemed to play down the distinction between actual weapons and weapons programs. "So what's the difference?" he responded when pressed on the topic during the interview.

Dr. Kay's preliminary findings in October were hailed by the administration as vindication of its argument that Iraq was a threat that had to be dealt with. They were also used by critics of the war to press their argument that Mr. Bush had exaggerated the threat.

In discussions this week at the Central Intelligence Agency's headquarters, Dr. Kay, who took the job in June and has been living in Baghdad, said he was considering leaving in part because the search was taking much longer than he had initially expected, putting a strain on his family, government officials said. The Washington Post reported Thursday that Dr. Kay might leave before February. He could make his decision final next week when he returns to the C.I.A. for another round of discussions, they said.

Dr. Kay's group has seen some of its personnel and budget diverted to fighting the insurgency in Iraq, and its work has been hindered by the danger of moving around the country, officials said.

"Whether he's going to see the mission through to the end is unclear, but there's no doubt that he and others in the U.S. government agree there's plenty to be done in Iraq on the weapons of mass destruction issue," said an official. "He's giving some consideration to leaving early, but there definitely isn't any final resolution."

When asked whether Dr. Kay was frustrated that the search had not proceeded at a faster pace, the official said, "Most people had hoped things would be resolved a bit more quickly" than the current timetable calling for the survey group to finish its work sometime in the middle of next year.

The official said Dr. Kay was on vacation and not doing interviews.

David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security and a former arms inspector for the International Atomic Energy Agency in Iraq, said the administration would have to be careful if Dr. Kay left to fight any perception that it was downgrading its effort to come up with a full accounting of Iraq's weapons.

"David has been a strong advocate of the administration's position that there is a lot of W.M.D. in Iraq, and one interpretation could be that he couldn't find them so he wants to get out," Mr. Albright said. "Certainly if Kay leaves they should have someone to replace him who has a direct connection to Tenet and who is credible." He was referring to George J. Tenet, the director of central intelligence.
We must, indeed, all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately. B. Franklin

User avatar
CindyLouWho
Pirate
Posts: 3533
Joined: 01-02-2003 03:00 AM

Post by CindyLouWho » 12-26-2003 01:48 AM

Curiouser and curiouser.

My prediction for 2004: Americans will be shocked and awed at the cache of weapons "found" in a spider-hole (wink wink) in late summer or early fall.

User avatar
Devastated
Moderator - Hammock Expert
Posts: 4943
Joined: 12-29-2002 03:00 AM

Post by Devastated » 12-26-2003 07:44 AM

I agree, Cindy!:(

User avatar
Corvid
Anchors Aweigh
Posts: 5678
Joined: 12-31-2002 03:00 AM

Post by Corvid » 12-29-2003 10:31 PM

Has anyone ever noticed that one never sees Kobe Bryant and Osama bin Laden in the same photo?


hmmmmm........

mudwoman
Pirate
Posts: 9375
Joined: 05-17-2000 02:00 AM

Post by mudwoman » 01-25-2004 05:01 PM

266 DAYS ... AND STILL NO WMD FOUND IN IRAQ

Powell: Possible Iraq Had No Banned Arms
Sat Jan 24,12:50 PM ET

By GEORGE GEDDA, Associated Press Writer

TBLISI, Georgia - Secretary of State Colin Powell (news - web sites) held out the possibility Saturday that prewar Iraq (news - web sites) may not have possessed weapons of mass destruction.

Powell was asked about comments last week by David Kay, the outgoing leader of a U.S. weapons search team in Iraq, that he did not believe Iraq had large quantities of chemical or biological weapons.

"The answer to that question is, we don't know yet," Powell told reporters as he traveling to this former Soviet republic to attend the inauguration Sunday of President-elect Mikhail Saakashvili.

Powell acknowledged that the United States thought deposed leader Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) had banned weapons, but added, "We had questions that needed to be answered.

"What was it?" he asked. "One hundred tons, 500 tons or zero tons? Was it so many liters of anthrax, 10 times that amount or nothing?"

Almost a year has passed since Powell's speech before the U.N. Security Council in which he accused Iraq of violating a U.N. weapons ban.

Since then, the Bush administration has been less categorical on the issue, contending that Saddam was actively pursuing banned weapons. The administration generally has avoided the issue of actual possession.

President Bush (news - web sites), in his State of the Union address on Tuesday, cited an interm report by Kay in October in which the inspector claimed to have found dozens of weapons-related programs in Iraq. Those programs would be continuing if the United States had not acted to oust Saddam's government, Bush said.

Vice President Dick Cheney (news - web sites), in an interview Wednesday with National Public Radio, said the administration had not given up on the search for weapons. The "jury is still out," he said.

"It's going to take some additional, considerable period of time in order to look in all the cubby holes and the ammo dumps and all the places in Iraq where you might expect to find something like that," Cheney said. "It doesn't take a large storage space to store deadly toxins, or even just the capacity to produce it."

White House press secretary Scott McClellan said Friday that the administration stands by its assertions that Iraq had banned weapons at the time of the U.S.-led war and that it was only a matter of time before inspectors uncover their location.

LINK


Iraq's WMD: the big lie?

The justification for war
With the resignation of David Kay from the Iraq Survey Group, the pressure could not be greater on Blair to explain where he got the idea that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. By Neil Mackay

YOU’D be forgiven for thinking that David Kay was personally out to get Tony Blair. On Wednesday, when the Hutton report is published, the question everyone will want to know is did Blair and his Cabinet lie about the threat of Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction (WMD)?

The answer according to Kay, who resigned last week as head of the Iraq Survey Group, which had the job of finding WMD, is that there aren’t any, and none have been manufactured since 1991. For Blair, his statement was the equivalent of slashing a boxer’s achilles tendons minutes before he gets into the ring for the fight of his life.

What Kay has concluded after nine futile months seems to tally with the overall gist of Andrew Gilligan’s broadcast on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme when he reported that the government had “sexed up” the case for war. So the key question now is: was Blair given unreliable and over-egged information by the intelligence services, or rather did he have the intelligence services “sex-up” or selectively cherry-pick information to suit his case for war?

In answer to this question, the Sunday Herald has heard from dozens of senior members of the intelligence community who passed their views on to us through a highly-respected go-between involved with British intelligence.

The views include those from:

The Defence Intelligence Staff (DIS), which helped supply intelligence for Blair’s disputed September 2002 WMD dossier;

The Joint Intelligence Organisation, which includes John Scarlett, the chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) – the body which liaises between the intelligence services and the government and which was supposed to have sole control of the drafting of the dossier – and the JIC’s support staff;

And MI6, the Secret Intelligence Service, the main agency responsible for gathering the intelligence which went into the dossier.
The Sunday Herald has been told that the reason the intelligence community wants to speak out now is to get their defence in first before the expected attack from politicians.

They know that Lord Hutton will apportion blame to the Ministry of Defence, Number 10, Blair’s former spin-doctor-in-chief Alastair Campbell, the BBC, its reporter Andrew Gilligan and even Dr David Kelly. And when that happens, the politicians, keen to save their jobs and reputations, will try to blame the intelligence community for giving them duff information.

This is not a mea culpa from the intelligence community, instead it is a warning that they are not prepared to be the whipping boy for the failure to prove the case for war, the death of David Kelly and the quagmire that the government is now in over the lack of WMD in Iraq.

The key points the intelligence community now wants placing on the record are:

Firstly, there was a problem with Iraq, particularly over the interpretation of the WMD issue. Many said they had been openly sceptical about the presence of WMD in Iraq for years. There was a systematic failure, they believe, in the way intelligence was interpreted. This was because they were under pressure to provide the government with what it wanted, namely that Iraq possessed WMD and that it posed a clear and present danger.

Secondly, they say intelligence was “cherry-picked” about Iraq: that damning intelligence against Iraq was selectively chosen, whilst intelligence assessments, which might have worked against the build-up to war, were sidelined. The government was looking for anything that would cast Iraq in a negative light.

Thirdly, they claim that a political agenda had crept into the work of the intelligence community and they found themselves in the position of taking orders from politicians. When asked if direct lies were told to the British public, the answer was that the intelligence they supplied was one- sided and produced on demand to politicians.

Fourthly, the intelligence community got into the habit of making worst-case scenarios and these were used to make factual claims by politicians. The intelligence community accepts that intelligence was used for political ends. But they also understand that intelligence is not supposed to help politicians justify their actions as that distorts the nature of what intelligence work is about.

While they believe they are not in the firing line over Hutton, they also realise that they are going to have to think long and hard about the future of British intelligence. They stressed that they accepted that there would be changes in the way British intelligence operates, adding that they wanted changes in order to maintain their integrity.

The intelligence officers seemed justified in getting their first strike in when, on Friday night, Donald Anderson, a Labour loyalist and chair of the foreign affairs committee, attacked British intelligence in the wake of the resignation of David Kay. Anderson admitted that it looked “increasingly forlorn” that any WMD stockpiles would be found . When asked, however, if he thought this was a failure by politicians or by the intelligence services, he said: “I think more likely the latter. Remember that both the President and the Prime Minister relied on the intelligence that was available. And indeed the world community appeared to accept this because in the UN Security Council resolution 1441 on November 8 it was accepted that Saddam Hussein was a danger to world peace, he was ordered effectively to co-operate, he did not co-operate and it seems now rather puzzling that if it be the case, as it is likely, that there was no such weapons available, that he did not put his hands up immediately. This does raise very important questions about the quality of that intelligence.”

Does it raise a question about the intelligence service or does it actually raise questions about the politicians who were forcing the intelligence services to jump through hoops and spin the facts on matters of national and international security? What the large group of intelligence officers who passed their feelings to the Sunday Herald say is not entirely new. It is potentially crippling for Blair given the timing of their comments, but the concept that politicians were ordering that intelligence be twisted for political ends regarding Iraq has been aired before.

In fact, in June last year the Sunday Herald revealed that Britain ran a covert “dirty tricks”operation designed specifically to produce misleading intelligence that Saddam had WMD in order to give the UK an excuse to wage war on Iraq.

Scott Ritter, the former UN chief weapons inspector and US military intelligence officer, said that Operation Rockingham was established by the Defence Intelligence Staff – a part of the intelligence service involved in the compilation of the September 2002 dossier on Iraqi WMD – within the Ministry of Defence in 1991. It was set up to “cherry-pick” intelligence proving an active Iraqi WMD programme and to ignore and quash intelligence which indicated that Saddam’s stockpiles had been destroyed or wound down.

When Kay resigned on Friday, he left with this parting shot: “I don’t think they (WMD) existed. What everyone was talking about is stockpiles produced after the end of the last Gulf War and I don’t think there was a large-scale production programme in the 1990s.”

The day before, US Vice-President Dick Cheney was still claiming that Saddam had been a legitimate threat. “We know … that prior to our going in that [Saddam] had spent time and effort acquiring mobile biological weapons labs,” Cheney said, reiterating a long-discredited claim that military trailers found in Iraq were mobile bio-weapons labs. In fact, the labs were, according to British weapons experts who examined them, used for producing hydrogen to fill artillery balloons.

The man appointed by the CIA to replace Kay, Charles Duelfer, a former UN weapons inspector, said earlier this month that he did not believe banned weapons would ever be found. Still the British and US administrations are sticking to their claims. White House spokesman, Scott McClellan, said: “We remain confident that the Iraq Survey Group will uncover the truth about Saddam’s regime, the regime’s weapons of mass destruction.”

A spokesman for Tony Blair said: “It is important people are patient and we let the Iraq Survey Group do its work. There is still more work to be done and we await the findings of that. But our position is unchanged.”

Few are buying these claims. John Rockefeller, the senior Democrat on the Senate intelligence committee, said: “It increasingly appears that our intelligence was wrong about Iraq’s weapons, and the administration compounded that mistake by exaggerating the nuclear threat and Iraq’s ties to al-Qaeda. As a result, the United States is paying a very heavy price.”

Shadow foreign secretary Michael Ancram says Kay’s resignation and comments “raise very serious questions about the Prime Minister and why he told us what he did last year and after the war about WMD. It is important if we are to be able to rely … on the word of the prime minister in relation to intelligence, that we now find out what the basis of his comments were, and we need a public inquiry to do that.” The LibDem foreign affairs spokesman Menzies Campbell added: “It is pretty extraordinary that first Hans Blix … David Kay and now David Kay’s successor have all effectively said the same thing. There needs to be an inquiry to consider whether we went to war on a flawed prospectus.”

So, just as Hutton is about to announce the findings of his investigation, there is a rising clamour for yet another inquiry – this time not dealing with the death of just one whistle-blowing government scientist, but rather with the deaths of thousands of Iraqi men, women and children and hundreds of American and British troops.

FOUR QUESTIONS HUTTON MUST ANSWER
1 Did the government ‘sex up’ the September 24 dossier justifying war against Saddam Hussein?

We know the document was changed by John Scarlett, chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee, at the suggestion of Blair’s spin-meister Alastair Campbell and other aides. Campbell suggested 15 changes, including one to a passage claiming Iraq “may be able” to deploy WMD within 45 minutes, which he described as “weak”. Scarlett changed it to “are able to”.

2 Did the BBC Today reporter Andrew Gilligan exaggerate comments made by Kelly and was the BBC wrong in standing by them?

It is not clear whether Kelly specifically blamed Campbell for inserting the 45-minute claim, as Gilligan claimed. It is known that BBC executives had reservations about Gilligan’s use of language and that the board of governors defended the report without knowing of those reservations. However, it is also clear that most of the claims in Gilligan’s report have been shown to be true.

3 Was David Kelly given adequate protection by his superiors after he told them he had talked to Gilligan?

Richard Hatfield, MoD personnel director, said he had given “outstanding support” to Kelly. Kelly himself told journalist Nick Rufford that he had been “put through the wringer” by Hatfield and other MoD officials. It’s clear that while Kelly had been warned that the media were likely to name him as Gilligan’s source, he was not told that a decision had been taken to confirm his name to any journalist who put it to the MoD.

4 Who was responsible for the strategy of confirming Kelly as Gilligan’s source?

Campbell and Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon wanted his name out. Sir Kevin Tebbit, the MoD’s most senior civil servant, told the inquiry the PM approved the strategy . Blair had earlier denied authorising Kelly’s naming but later said he took ‘‘full responsibility’’ for the government’s decisions.

LINK

CONTD...
Last edited by mudwoman on 01-25-2004 08:46 PM, edited 1 time in total.

Post Reply

Return to “Iraq”