If Saddam Hussein had all these horrendous weapons, he would have used them now. The undeniable ultimatum that Bush gave him, after the U.N. inspectors had been unable to turn up evidence of any weapons, made it absolutely clear to Iraq that if they had any kind of defenses the moment of their necessity was now. Especially when all the claims about how the reason we needed to be there dismantling these horrible alleged undiscovered weapons was because "Saddam is this Madman who needs to be stopped because he possesses these Evil Weapons and he's such a Madman that he wouldn't hesitate to use them in an instant!". But now he didn't use these alleged mystery weapons. So the argument that he was this unrestrained Madman who wouldn't hesitate to use these weapons, that if nothing else has been disproven by the events of the last month. The allegations of this New York Times article are so bogus. Oh, yeah, this "Madman" Saddam was building up all these evil weapons, but when faced with an undeniable and very personal ultimatum, this "Madman's" response was to dismantle these weapons and bury them for use in the future. Baloney! I'm not buying this for an instant. The Americans said the scientist told them that President Saddam Hussein's government had destroyed some stockpiles of deadly agents as early as the mid-1990's, transferred others to Syria, and had recently focused its efforts instead on research and development projects that are virtually impervious to detection by international inspectors, and even American forces on the ground combing through Iraq's giant weapons plants. An American military team hunting for unconventional weapons in Iraq, the Mobile Exploitation Team Alpha, or MET Alpha, which found the scientist, declined to identify him, saying they feared he might be subject to reprisals. But they said that they considered him credible and that the material unearthed over the last three days at sites to which he led them had proved to be precursors for a toxic agent that is banned by chemical weapons treaties. The officials' account of the scientist's assertions and the discovery of the buried material, which they described as the most important discovery to date in the hunt for illegal weapons, supports the Bush administration's charges that Iraq continued to develop those weapons and lied to the United Nations about it. Finding and destroying illegal weapons was a major justification for the war. The officials' accounts also provided an explanation for why United States forces had not yet turned up banned weapons in Iraq. The failure to find such weapons has become a political issue in Washington. Under the terms of her accreditation to report on the activities of MET Alpha, this reporter was not permitted to interview the scientist or visit his home. Nor was she permitted to write about the discovery of the scientist for three days, and the copy was then submitted for a check by military officials. Those officials asked that details of what chemicals were uncovered be deleted. They said they feared that such information could jeopardize the scientist's safety by identifying the part of the weapons program where he worked. While this reporter could not interview the scientist, she was permitted to see him from a distance at the sites where he said that material from the arms program was buried. Clad in nondescript clothes and a baseball cap, he pointed to several spots in the sand where he said chemical precursors and other weapons material were buried. This reporter also accompanied MET Alpha on the search for him and was permitted to examine a letter written in Arabic that he slipped to American soldiers offering them information about the program and seeking their protection. Military officials said the scientist told them that four days before President Bush gave Mr. Hussein 48 hours to leave Iraq or face war, Iraqi officials set fire to a warehouse where biological weapons research and development was conducted. The officials quoted him as saying he had watched several months before the outbreak of the war as Iraqis buried chemical precursors and other sensitive material to conceal and preserve them for future use. The officials said the scientist showed them documents, samples, and other evidence of the program that he claimed to have stolen to prove that the program existed. MET Alpha is one of several teams created earlier this year to hunt for unconventional weapons in Iraq. Supported by the 75th Exploitation Task Force, a field artillery brigade based in Fort Sill, Okla., the teams were charged with visiting some 150 top sites that intelligence agencies have identified as suspect. But the Pentagon-led teams, which include specialists from several Pentagon agencies, have been hampered by a lack of resources and by geography. Two weeks ago, MET Alpha was finally given a mission of inspecting barrels filled with chemicals that were buried on the outskirts of Al Muhawish, a small town south of Baghdad. A small team with little equipment and virtually no supplies traveled to the town for what was supposed to be a half-day survey. The barrels turned out to contain no chemical weapons agents. But he has given the Americans information about other unconventional weapons activities, they said, as well as information about Iraqi weapons cooperation with Syria, and with terrorist groups, including Al Qaeda. It was not clear how the scientist knew of such a connection. click the New York Times link to see the entire article
New York Times Bush Says Arms Will Be Found, With Iraqi Aid Bush said today that Iraqi officials and scientists had provided the United States with information that Saddam Hussein may have destroyed or dispersed chemical and biological weapons before the war, suggesting that the search for proof of an Iraqi weapons program could be a long one. Responding to speculation about Mr. Hussein's fate, the president said that there was considerable evidence that he was dead or severely wounded but that the United States did not have definitive proof, like DNA, that the Iraqi leader had been killed. Mr. Bush also said the resistance faced by American troops in southern Iraq in the conflict's first weeks was fiercer than he had expected, an admission that seemed at odds with the Pentagon's insistence at the time that the war was unfolding according to plan. "Shock and awe said to many people that all we've got to do is unleash some might and people will crumble," Mr. Bush said in an interview with NBC News, his most extensive since the invasion of Iraq. "And it turns out the fighters were a lot fiercer than we thought." Mr. Bush gave a detailed account of how the war looked from his perspective as commander in chief. He said he had some initial concerns about the first blow of the war, his last-minute decision to bomb a home in Baghdad where an agent had reported that Mr. Hussein and his sons might be spending the night. "I was hesitant at first, to be frank with you," Mr. Bush said, "because I was worried that the first pictures coming out of Iraq would be a wounded grandchild of Saddam Hussein." But in the end, Mr. Bush said, he was convinced that he had a good opportunity to kill Mr. Hussein. The agent who provided the information from the scene, he added, judged the bombing a success. "He felt like we got Saddam," the president said, adding that the evidence about Mr. Hussein's fate remained uncertain but that if he was not killed he was severely wounded. Asked if it might take two years to bring stability to Iraq, Mr. Bush replied: "It could, it could. Or less. Who knows?" Mr. Bush did not elaborate on the evidence that the United States has gathered since the war's end about Iraq's weapons programs. He acknowledged that questions about the credibility of the United States would not be put to rest until weapons were found. "I think there's going to be skepticism until people find out there was, in fact, a weapons of mass destruction program," he said. Despite that, he expressed confidence that American forces would eventually find chemical and biological weapons. "We are learning more as we interrogate or have discussions with Iraqi scientists and people within the Iraqi structure, that perhaps he destroyed some, perhaps he dispersed some," Mr. Bush said. Mr. Bush said the United States had so far examined only 90 of the hundreds of sites that Mr. Hussein and his government might have used to hide the weapons. But the sites that have been examined are those designated by the administration as most likely to conceal weapons. "And so we will find them," Mr. Bush said in the interview, conducted today by Tom Brokaw aboard Air Force One between the president's appearances in Ohio. "But it's going to take time to find them. And the best way to find them is to continue to collect information from the humans, Iraqis who were involved in hiding them." In an interview last week, a senior administration official who had reviewed the same intelligence on the weapons program that Mr. Bush had seen said it was unclear what kind of chemical and biological stores the United States would find. "It's possible that they had the precursors, the raw stuff, but they did not weaponize it," the official said. "We just don't know yet." But the senior official said there was no real concern in the administration that nothing of importance would be found. "We couldn't have been that far off," the official said. Mr. Bush had nothing nice to say about President Jacques Chirac of France, who led the opposition to a United Nations resolution authorizing the use of military force against Iraq. "I doubt he'll be coming to the ranch anytime soon," Mr. Bush said, saying it appeared to many in his administration "that the French position was anti-American." He expressed fear that the disagreement would weaken the NATO alliance, and in recent days some administration officials have been talking about marginalizing France within NATO. "Hopefully," Mr. Bush said, "the past tensions will subside, and the French won't be using their position within Europe to create alliances against the United States, or Britain, or Spain, or any of the new countries that are the new democracies in Europe." Mr. Bush made it clear that Turkey's refusal to allow American forces to invade Iraq from the north had in his view made the war more difficult and bloody. "Because, for example, we didn't come north from Turkey, Saddam Hussein was able to move a lot of special Republican Guard units and fighters from north to south," Mr. Bush said. The result was that American forces faced "significant resistance," the president said. For the first time, Mr. Bush acknowledged that he was concerned about power vacuums in Iraq "being filled by Iranian agents." On Wednesday, the White House said it had warned Iran not to interfere with American efforts to build an "Islamic democracy" in Iraq. "We have sent the word to the Iranians that's what we expect," he said, adding that he had talked to Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain and Jose Maria Aznar of Spain about that subject on Wednesday, to get them "to send the same message." But he made no threats against Iran, and said "we have no military plans" to deal with the country. He noted that he had sent a similar message to Syria, where officials were responding. Mr. Bush's overt use of diplomatic pressure against Syria and Iran, two countries that Mr. Bush has identified as sponsors of terrorism, is in stark contrast to the use of preemptive force against Iraq. Yet at one point in his interview, Mr. Bush acknowledged that he had yet to fully form the "Bush doctrine," or to think through how the American victory in Iraq would affect his vow to deal with weapons of mass destruction on a global basis. He also said that he would "work hard to achieve a two-state solution" in the Israeli-Palestinian dispute and that he now had an opportunity to attempt that. "I think it will accelerate" he said of the peace process, "and, hopefully, greatly." But he added, "I'm not so sure what that exactly means."
New York Times U.S. Plans to Add to Teams to Hunt for Iraqi Weapons The Bush administration, concerned about the failure to find unconventional weapons in Iraq, is moving to triple the size of the team searching for scientists and for incriminating lethal materials. Some officials are even saying that they are losing hope of finding actual weapons. Administration officials, some speaking publicly and some on condition of anonymity, insist that they remain entirely confident that evidence of illegal chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs â as opposed to the weapons themselves â will accumulate in coming weeks and months, though perhaps slowly. But to step up the pace, a military official said, about 1,000 military and scientific personnel will be added in coming weeks to the team trying to interview Iraqis who may have knowledge of Iraqi weapons programs and looking for evidence. Only 500 are doing this job now, with perhaps 150 actually searching and the rest providing backup and support. "A fairly robust organization is going over there," said a military official. "It will also look for evidence of war crimes, terrorism connections, missing P.O.W.'s â anything it can find that will help get to the weapons of mass destruction." Some officials say they think the United States should react more positively to the demand by France that United Nations inspectors certify that Iraq is free of unconventional weapons before economic penalties against the country are permanently lifted. Many United Nations members favor a return to Iraq by Hans Blix as an inspection leader as soon as the country is secure. Others say that a couple of hundred more experts, with or without Mr. Blix, cannot hurt and could actually help. But theirs is a decidedly minority view. Even the State Department, which advocated trying to find the weapons using United Nations inspectors last fall, has no tolerance for asking those inspectors to return. "Forget it," one official said. "On principle, we don't want the United Nations running around Iraq." One official, discussing the American plans, said that despite some polls indicating that Americans do not care very much whether the weapons are found, White House officials are pressing the United States Central Command to step up the search for them because of worldwide skepticism that the main American rationale for the war was not proving to be true. "There's just a lot of pressure coming from the White House on this," an administration official said. "But Centcom is pushing back because they have other things to do â like securing the country and guarding its antiquities." Administration officials and experts say that evidence of Iraq's illegal weapons programs will most likely consist of items like empty shells for chemical or biological weapons, labs that could be used to make arms and so-called precursor chemicals that could be converted to weapons use but could also be used for fertilizers, pesticides and the like. "People are realizing that Saddam Hussein may not have stored the weapons themselves, in part because when you put chemical or biological agents into weapons, they deteriorate very rapidly," an administration official said. He and others said that if the weapons themselves â the "smoking gun" that has eluded the United States since United Nations inspectors went into Iraq last fall â should not turn up, American experts may be forced to base their case for the existence of weapons programs on fragmentary evidence that could be interpreted in different ways. "The evidence that we do find will be convincing to most experts, but not necessarily to those predisposed to doubt what we say," said an American official. Another official said: "It may be that the Iraqis poured toxins into the ground, or scoured out their shells, or never filled their shells. There may be weapons, and there may not be." "But it will be clear," the official continued, referring to weapons of mass destruction by their initials, "that they were pursuing W.M.D. actively." The increasing possibility of a somewhat ambiguous result on weapons programs has led to a debate in the administration over what to do now that President Bush has decided that there will be no role for the United Nations inspectors in finding or destroying illegal weapons. Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain, like some in the administration, has argued that a United Nations team of some sort may be necessary to ratify a conclusion that weapons programs existed. The point, some officials say, would be to convince skeptics that weapons programs were indeed there. "The big concern is credibility," a military official said. "When we say we have found something, are the media sources in the Middle East and other parts of the world going to believe it?" While it appears that Mr. Blix's team will not be allowed to return soon, some State Department officials say that some kind of United Nations team might be acceptable eventually to help verify incriminating evidence or to destroy it. "If there were a role for the United Nations on weapons, it would be different from the one they had before," said an administration official. "It's too early to say what their role would be. It's too early to say that there will be no role." France has threatened to withhold its vote on lifting the permanent sanctions against Iraq until there is some agreement on the role for the United Nations in weapons inspections and destruction. French officials say this is faithful to the United Nations resolutions that were based on a finding that Iraq, in defiance of the world community, had such weapons. "How can we just walk away from what the sanctions were all about?" a French official asked. Americans say there is no room for negotiating with the French on lifting sanctions if the issue is United Nations weapons inspectors. They accuse France of having a hidden agenda: ensuring contracts for French companies in an Iraqi reconstruction program paid for with revenues from Iraqi oil exports. One problem is that American officials who now say they may not find actual weapons have changed their arguments somewhat. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell told the United Nations that the United States had evidence of actual weapons, not just weapons programs. Indeed, he suggested that some of those weapons were ordered sent into the field before the war. Now there is some doubt about that because some experts say that if there had been intelligence on their deployment, there should have been intelligence to help Americans find them. "There are still holes in what Iraq reported it had," said Raymond Zilinskas, director of the chemical and biological weapons nonproliferation program at the Monterey Institute of International Studies in California. "The Iraqis always said they destroyed the materials we know they had, but they never offered proof." But like some experts, Mr. Zilinskas said he doubted that the Iraqis had actually started up weapons programs after a first round of inspections ended in 1998. That does not mean that elements of weapons programs cannot be found now in Iraq, he said, only that the weapons themselves may not be there. "The British and now the Americans have been changing their tune," said Mr. Zilinskas, who was a weapons inspector in Iraq in the mid-1990's. "Before, they said Iraq had weapons of mass destruction ready to go. The British said they were on the shelf and could have been deployed within 45 minutes." But in the face of doubts like those expressed by Mr. Zilinskas, an administration official said: "Remember the quagmire that we were supposed to be in during the war? Don't start saying we're in a quagmire on the weapons. We'll find them." Yeah, even if you gotta puttem there yourselves.
WMD wasn't the principal reason for going to war and anyone who is not a Bush-Rush dittohead knows that. The hunt for the weapons has as much to do with controlling them as it does for showing a casus belli, especially if the shia Allah-crazed theocrats gain overwhelming power in the S. Iraq and the US has to kick their asses in a manner of speaking.
New York Times U.S. Said to Find Iraq Nerve Gas Evidence BAIJI, Iraq (AP) -- U.S. troops found about a dozen 55-gallon drums in an open field near this northern Iraqi town, and initial tests indicated one of them contained a mixture of a nerve agent and mustard gas, an American officer said Sunday. Lt. Col. Ted Martin of the 10th Cavalry Regiment said troops went to the site at midnight Friday after having been alerted by U.S. Special Forces teams, which were suspicious because of the presence of surface-to-air missiles guarding the area. A chemical team checked the drums, one of which tested positive for cyclosarin, a nerve agent, and a blister agent which could have been mustard gas, Martin said. "I am satisfied that it is sarin,'' Martin said, adding that further tests were being conducted. Soldiers also found two mobile laboratories that contained equipment for mixing chemicals, but they appeared to have been ransacked by looters, Martin said. Martin said another chemical team was being sent to the site for further testing. In the meantime, the drums have been covered with sand and are under guard by 10th Cavalry soldiers, he added. Since the collapse of Saddam Hussein's regime, there have been several reports of possible chemical weapons finds, none of which are known to have panned out. Initial tests by Army equipment are designed to favor a positive reading, erring on the side of caution to protect soldiers. Further, more sophisticated tests will be necessary to determine whether the find is evidence of an illegal weapons program.Gee, what a surprise President Bush ordered the attack on Iraq last month after Saddam refused to acknowledge that he was holding weapons of mass destruction. The Iraqis long insisted that they ended their weapons of mass destruction programs after the 1991 Gulf War. So far, no conclusive evidence of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons have been reported by coalition forces. "There are many sites that we look into every day, and when we have confirmed positive results we will provide that information,'' said Capt. Stewart Upton, a Central Command spokesman at Camp As Sayliyah, Qatar. "We just want to be very cautious that when we go with the information, that when we release nuclear, biological, or chemical information that we're accurate.'' Cyclosarin is a variant of the nerve gas that was used in the 1995 attack on the Tokyo subway system by a doomsday cult, in which 12 people died and thousands were sickened. Exposure to high amounts may lead to loss of muscle control, twitching, paralysis, unconsciousness, convulsions, coma, and death within minutes.
Is there any proof to be offered here to support your suspicions that WMD evidence in Iraq is inauthentic?
Have you considered that perhaps Saddam had WMD, and decided to use them. However, he had trouble communicating with his officers in the field, and/or they refused to obey orders to launch WMD?
Hi a, Marc Faber has some insights you, and others, might appreciate. http://www.gloomboomdoom.com/marketcoms/indexmarketcoms.htm
Have you considered that perhaps this whole thing is a bunch of concocted bullshit that the Bush gang keeps throwing in your face expecting you to eat it up?
The suspicions are based on the flimsiness of the alleged evidence in Iraq. This is why I reprint these articles so you can read for yourself the bogusness of these claims, and the bogusness of the alleged evidence being dredged up to support these claims. You read it, with open eyes, and decide for yourself.