Convicting Saddam & His WMD

I've been thinking our big problem with Iraq was that Powell presentation at the UN.

At jury duty in a criminal case where you must convict beyond a reasonable doubt (one of those scales of justice better be on the floor or very close to it), the case at the UN was terrible. I doubt a jury in this nation could have convicted. On the other hand, to illustrate, we have this nut case in North Korea, shouting about incinerating everybody, and there he is releasing crystal clear photos of his own offending power plant.

In a civil case, where you only have to win 51-49, Powell clearly wins. I went with the tougher standard of the criminal case in my analogy because we are putting our people's lives on the line and that should require compelling proof.

Now that the war seems inevitable, the only way I can see for the US to save itself in the eyes of the doubters, and maybe history, is to capture and haul out tractor-trailer loads of these WMDs. No more rusting shells and crappy photos. I want to see the real goods when all is said and done. Hope the Bushies have this angle covered or we'll get skewered again.

Geo.

 

Innocent until proven guilty? Saddam is innocent? What gave you that idea?

Saddam needs to be held to the standards of a convicted criminal on parole. A parole is guilty until proven innocent.

A parolee is immediately thrown in jail on violation of the terms of his parole. He is not granted the same rights of the one who was never convicted.

The very fact that he has not been 100% forthcoming from the very beginning, the fact that we have had to force him to comply at gunpoint is enough to revoke his parole.

From a legal perspective, the burden of proof rests on Saddam, not on those who seek to disarm him and uphold the 18 previous resolutions.

 

Saddam is guilty until he proves himself innocent according to UN resolutions. The onus is on him to convincinly show that he destoyed all WMD.

But besides that, he is still technically in a state of war. The end of activites in 1991 was not the end of the war, it was a cease-fire explicitly based on his commitement to disarm:

"...However, other international lawyers argue that the 1991 cease-fire with Iraq was explicitly conditional on Iraq's implementation of the disarmament terms of the settlement, and that the US could be entitled at some point to view the ceasefire as having lapsed...".
http://www.observer.co.uk/iraq/story/0,12239,910547,00.html

 

Gen. Hussein Kamal, director of Saddam's WMD programs [and also Saddam's son-in-law] defected to Jordan in 1995, whereupon he was extensively debriefed by the CIA and the Brits.

Separately, Kamal was interviewed by Rolf Ekeus, chairman of the U.N. Special Commission on Iraq and Chief Inspector Maurizio Zifferero of the International Atomic Energy Action Team, both established by the U.N. Security Council to implement UNSC disarmament resolutions.

Newsweek has obtained the U.N. document, verified its authenticity and reports in its current issue that Kamal told the same story to the CIA and to the Brits.

Immediately after the Gulf War ceasefire, but before the U.N. inspectors had arrived in Iraq, Kamal said he ordered the destruction of all chemical and biological weapons stocks and the missiles to deliver them.

According to Newsweek, Kamal was "a gold mine of information. He had a good memory and, piece by piece, he laid out the main personnel, sites and progress of each WMD program." A military aide who defected with Kamal supported Kamal's assertions.

By 1995, of course, UNSCOM and the IAEA already knew most of it, but now they were having it confirmed by the Iraqi general actually in charge of Iraq's WMD programs.

But, UNSCOM had to certify to the UNSC that the Iraqi WMD production and destruction books balanced.

So, according to Newsweek, Kamal's revelations about the destruction in 1990 and 1991 of all Iraq's WMD stocks were kept secret. Ekeus hoped he could bluff Saddam into providing the necessary documentation. But Saddam – even with warhawk guns at his head – has not yet provided that documentation. The Iraqis claim it doesn't exist, now, and perhaps never did.

In any case, there is no reason to keep Kamal's revelations secret any longer. Especially since the warhawks continue to allude to them as their justification for invading Iraq.

So, WorldNetDaily has gone far beyond Newsweek, actually publishing excerpts from the "sensitive" UNSCOM-IAEA interviews.

Guess what. The UNSCOM-IAEA inspectors – and hence all U.N. Security Council members – have known for at least four years that, as best the U.N. inspectors could subsequently discover, Kamal did tell the truth, when, in response to the question posed by UNSCOM inspector Nikita Smidovich:

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=31303

soooooo how do you prove the negative

I get the tanks I come over to your vilage and accuse you of dad things an of illegal weapons(mind you I had sold them to you illegally). You deny, saying you destroyed them years back. I say you lie, because you don't show me you have them. I come in and kill you and few innocent family members. I occupy your house and it doesn't hurt that your back yard has the second largest oil reserve, and it would cost only 1.5$ barrel to get. Ahahahaha nice markup too!!! 1.5 cost- 35 sell hmm few thousand percent? not bad not bad at all

And this is what I call Justice and helping your family.


ahhhh yes just in case some of you want a more detailed archived info/references:

excerpt
Nevertheless, UNSCOM recorded how there was compliance with most of its work for over seven years of intrusive inspections. As a result, UNSCOM’s executive chairman Rolf Ekeus reported to the Security Council on 11 April 1997 that "not much is unknown about Iraq’s retained proscribed weapons capabilities" (para.46). The long-term monitoring of Iraqi sites was largely unobstructed: "Iraq has sustained a good level of cooperation in the operation of the monitoring system" (report by UNSCOM’s executive chairman, 11 October 1996, para.61; similar statements made in subsequent reports). In its October 1997 report, UNSCOM stated that "the majority of [weapons] inspections were conducted in Iraq without let or hindrance" (Annex I, para.33). Even up to its final inspection report on 15 December 1998, UNSCOM was recording how "the majority of the inspections of facilities and sites under the ongoing monitoring system were carried out with Iraq’s cooperation". Non-cooperation was recorded in only 5 out of 427 inspections in the round before inspectors were withdrawn on the request of the US; those 5 instances resulted in minor delays, not inspection refusals. Nevertheless, this report was taken by the US and UK as a justification to launch the "Desert Fox" bombing campaign against Iraq later that month.

http://www.arabmediawatch.com/iraq/reading/artgr6.htm

 

In that weird little analogy to what happens in trials, it gets weirder. The rules at the courthouse are you can't convict because he has a record. So if a person did 99 burglaries in the past, you can't convict him in a trial on #100. In fact, you would never get to know about the priors. Also, the burden is on the US to prove it I'd say.

Anyway, since putting that up, it sure looks like it is deteriorating in the UN and the markets. Hope Bush is on top of things. Today we were wondering why special forces couldn't have brought out something concrete from somewhere in Iraq on WMD by now.

Geo.

PS: My stand is in favor of war for other reasons.

 

Seems like this one is now making the rounds on ET and elsewhere. There are at least two problems for the pro-Saddam types - like Trader556 and msfe, among others - in staking too much on Kemal:

1. If you believe his testimony in full, then you have to believe that Iraq engaged in thorough and radical deception of UN inspectors up to the point at which Kemal's revelations became known.

2. Even if you accept his never-proven, self-interested assertions that "all" Iraqi biological and chemical weapons stockpiles were destroyed prior to 1995, then it would follow that you would accept his other assertions. Here's one report I was able to locate today:

http://stacks.msnbc.com/news/876128.asp

Therefore, if you believe Kemal, then you have to believe that the Iraqi government engaged in systematic and wide-ranging deception and that, furthermore, it never abandoned either its WMD ambitions or the technical capacity to resume its WMD programs.