Leader of Iraq Governing Council Killed

[Dynamite Kid]

anyway, this really isnt suprising. Saddam made weapons, and never accounted for destroying them. i hadn't expected they'd have disolved or evorparated into thin air.and i don't think he would destroy them and NOT tell anyone. so yeah, they show up.

I'm not an expert on the shelf life of nerve agents, but what's the shelf life of something like sarin gas? Reports show this shell to be a leftover from the 80s, when Saddam was freely buying these weapons. This points to Hussein having HAD a weapons programme. However, Kay and others pointed to Hussein having an ongoing weapons programme, recently (hilariously) downgraded to 'Weapons of Mass Destruction Related Programme Activities'. So far, the Danes have found a very old canister and insurgents have blown up an old shell with small amounts of gas. Technically violations. But are these worth the loss of life and expense, especially considering the current civil war?

[DarthZeth]

oh. i see. so now its gone from "it was lies!" to "well, it wasnt lies... but it was just inconsiquential!"

the "best" estimate i've heard was that their would be a few tons of biological and chemical agents. that is to say, you could store them all in a moderately sized swimming pool.

their was NEVER a claim that their were rows and rows or poison tipped Intercontental ballsitic missiles aimed at us. The claim was that he did have chemical and bio weapons, that he was required to destroy them, and that he had NOT accounted for destroying them. as it is, the ammount of ammunition Iraq has stock piled is more then TWICE what the united states has. it took contractors over a month to clear out a single supply dump. It will take a while to find a swimming pool full of chemicals.

as it is, they have already uncovered tons of evidence that points to on going development and research involving chemical and bio weapons. They have found numerous programs, instalations, and activities that were not declared in Iraq's final report to the UN inspectors. and they we not "over sights" on Saddam's part.

Saddam WAS in violation of the resolution.

[Lucas]

I do actually believe it was implied that there were rows of ICBMs when the united states stated that saddam's weapons of mass destruction posed a massive risk to the united states, so much that it was worth undertaking a war.

i dunno, rushing into a country (keyword rush) under the premise that WMDs are stored there (the case wasn't for removing saddam under humanitarian aims, so.. don't bring it up), and then making a news story out of a semibroken and discarded shell with some past the due date sarin seems like there's a large amount of grasping at straws.

as it is, the US has live smallpox locked down for future use in biowarfare, like.. smallpox the one disease we ever beat. smallpox: the one no one on earth has antibodies against now. uh, hypocrites? yeah, sounds like it. its not like the US is holding the smallpox as a deterrant or anything, or as if the smallpox is useful for research (given that if it escapes, we have an insta-pandemic), so why is it there?

to remove saddam's chemical weaponry would be the same as creating a pariah in the arab world. lets not forget that saddam did start to comply around a month and a half before the start of the war. also, its unreasonable to suggest that he would have disarmed and scuttled all of his missiles on the eve of a foreign invasion, and yet that's exactly what he started to do.

in light of this, finding instalations, programs, and activities isn't good enough. the US went in to find a smoking gun. it did so at the expense of worldwide opinion, and at the expense of the war on terror. assuming that iraq would comply 100% to a UN resolution that, before the run up to the war, carried little weight is lucridious, considering even the US has reneged on very important treaties. (NK fuel oil sounds pretty important to me). the resolution was flawed too, in that it carries the same "you pay for your loss" attitude as the treaty of versailles (sp?). had the resolution opted to give saddam an incentive other than destruction in return for the disarmement (given that he and iran still weren't on best of terms).

oh, and i want sources for all the programmes, installations, and activities (how can they be finding activities now...?) that clearly show that saddam had a weapon of mass destruction. not to be a jerk, but every time i read these, there's always a "oh, this could have been used to make tires" anecedote at the end.

[DarthZeth]

yeah. That 14 year "rush" to war. weee haw. what a cowboy.

I do actually believe it was implied that there were rows of ICBMs

of course. accuse Bush of making claims he didn't make, that way you can call him a liar when we don't find things that we never said were their.

quality, man. quality

he united states stated that saddam's weapons of mass destruction posed a massive risk to the united states

you mean "the UN, France, the UK, John Kerry and the USA" don't you?

anyway, look to Jordan. a Chemical cocktail capable of killing 80,000 people was going to be used in a terrorist attack.

check out the inept Sarin chemical attack in the Tokyo that killed a few people and hurt hundreds of people. If they had done it properly and let the gas disperse, you'd have had hundreds dead.

check out the fact that Al Quada agents are fighting with the ba'athist remnants in Iraq now. I know much was made of Bush's "Lies" that Iraq was aligned with terrorists (despite Saddam’s massive checks written to Hamas), but now it seems that the Ba'athists and Al Quada ARE getting along! hmmm

anyway, the threat form Saddam wasn't his military. that was made perfectly clear in 1991. The problem was the WMDs coupled with terrorism.

the US has live smallpox locked down for future use in biowarfare

Russia, the USA and.. one other entity(I forget who), have reference strains of small pox on ice for research purposes in case small pox ever comes back. (the actual small pox vaccine isn’t made from small pox. its made form a related virus, so we don't need to even produce small pox and kill it to make vaccines [that’s how most vaccines are made]) last i read, those three samples of small pox are the only ones to exist, anywhere in the world. We don't have missiles tipped with small pox.

that being said, we DO have chemical and bio weapons. They are, however, not deployed and not in use. they are largely experimental. If we don't know what kind of bio and chem weapons are out there, we don't know how to defend against them.

likewise, there are MANY nations that have chemical and biological weapons. Iraq, however, agreed to GIVE THEM ALL UP. that was part of the peace deal in 1991.

finding instalations, programs, and activities isn't good enough

of course not. nothing would be.



Here’s some of the things that have been reported in Iraq:

- New research on BW-applicable agents, brucella and Congo-Crimean hemorrhagic fever, and continuing work on ricin and aflatoxin that were not declared to the United Nations.

- "Reference strains" of a wide variety of biological-weapons agents

- A prison laboratory complex

- A line of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), or drones, "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 kilometers [311 miles], 350 kilometers [217 miles] 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 U.N.

- Plans and advanced design work for new long-range missiles with ranges up to at least 1,000 kilometers [621 miles] - well beyond the 150-kilometer-range limit [93 miles] imposed by the U.N

-In testimony before Congress on March 30, Duelfer, revealed that the ISG had found evidence of a "crash program" to construct new plants capable of making chemical- and biological-warfare agents.

- The ISG also found a previously undeclared program to build a "high-speed rail gun," a device apparently designed for testing nuclear-weapons materials.

- 500 tons of natural uranium stockpiled at Iraq's main declared nuclear site south of Baghdad, which International Atomic Energy Agency spokesman Mark Gwozdecky acknowledged to Insight had been intended for "a clandestine nuclear-weapons program."

Check it out here:
http://worldnetdaily.com/news/articl...TICLE_ID=38213

PS: you were posting in the thread that I originally posted that list. You should already know this.

[Lucas]

PS: you were posting in the thread that I originally posted that list. You should already know this.

yeah, its been a while, but lets check the source.

They found equipment for "uranium-enrichment centrifuges" whose only plausible use was as part of a clandestine nuclear-weapons program. In all these cases, "Iraqi scientists had been told before the war not to declare their activities to the U.N. inspectors," the official said.

finding "equipment" for the centrifuges means nothing. to create uranium fluride, the gas that's used to separate the fissionable and non-fissionable isotopes, a lot of equipment is needed. why? because its THE MOST CORROSIVE GAS KNOWN TO MAN. anything it touches that isn't gold plated dissapears. next, the enrichment process delivers between .05% and 1% of the starting mass in terms of U-238. having a centrifuge means nothing unless you have more than a TON of purified uranium ore. uranium centrifuges have been used as ad-hoc blood pumps, oil pumps, and as a high powered gold/sand prospecting device.

"a clandestine network of laboratories and safe houses with equipment that was suitable to continuing its prohibited chemical- and biological-weapons [BW] programs,"

not only does bias in the article show via the diction (uh, a clandestine network anyone? how can an abandoned network be called clandestine

Both senior administration officials spoke to Insight on condition that neither their name nor their agency be identified, but their accounts of what the United States has found in Iraq coincided in every major area.

insight calls itself a

publication not afraid to ruffle the establishment

, so why was it the one that recieved this shocking information? why wasn't it published in a daily newspaper instead of a magazine that's somewhat sensationalistic.

next their accounts coincide on every major area: first off, what's a major area, and second, why didn't they say they coincide completely, unless they contradict each other in smaller areas. smaller areas are regularly less rehearsed.

A prison laboratory complex that may have been used for human testing of BW agents and "that Iraqi officials working to prepare the U.N. inspections were explicitly ordered not to declare to the U.N." Why was Saddam interested in testing biological-warfare agents on humans if he didn't have a biological-weapons program?

why didn't you say that the complex WAS used for testing before jumping towards the conclusion it was. our hospitals can be called prison laboratory complexes if you add bars to the front doors. what's to say the place wasn't used for the torture that we know saddam has been using? well nothing, because all we've got is a bland statement of affirmation.

"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 U.N."

so? they're drones.

"Plans and advanced design work for new long-range missiles with ranges up to at least 1,000 kilometers [621 miles] -- well beyond the 150-kilometer-range limit [93 miles] imposed by the U.N. Missiles of a 1,000-kilometer range would have allowed Iraq to threaten targets throughout the Middle East, including Ankara [Turkey], Cairo [Egypt] and Abu Dhabi [United Arab Emirates]."

and yet they only found plans and designs, none of these longer range missiles. this is a darn shame, because missiles need to be tested once a final product is decided one. diamond sands is the US's spot. does it strike me as chancy to stupid at best that saddam would have tested these missles before the sactions and restrictions ended? yeah, just a bit.

Or did they think that a captured Saddam would guide U.S. troops to smoking vats full of nerve gas in an abandoned factory?

sarcasm in an article? not only does that reveal reporting bias, but it wasn't even poignant. the article isn't presenting facts, its presenting a defence. i could go on, but i think it would be more useful to look at the ISG's report, and the Kay interview that this "article" draws on.

that and

Until now, however, journalists have devoted scant attention to this evidence, in part because it contradicts the story line they have been putting forward since the U.S.-led inspections began after the war.

But another reason for the media silence may stem from the seemingly undramatic nature of the "finds" Hanson and others have described. The materials that constitute Saddam's chemical-weapons "stockpiles" look an awful lot like pesticides, which they indeed resemble.

"Pesticides are the key elements in the chemical-agent arena," Hanson says. "In fact, the general pesticide chemical formula (organophosphate) is the 'grandfather' of modern-day nerve agents."

The United Nations was fully aware that Saddam had established his chemical-weapons plants under the guise of a permitted civilian chemical-industry infrastructure. Plants inspected in the early 1990s as CW production facilities had been set up to appear as if they were producing pesticides, or in the case of a giant plant near Fallujah, chlorine, which is used to produce mustard gas.

When coalition forces entered Iraq, "huge warehouses and caches of 'commercial and agricultural' chemicals were seized and painstakingly tested by Army and Marine chemical specialists," Hanson writes. "What was surprising was how quickly the ISG refuted the findings of our ground forces and how silent they have been on the significance of these caches."

Caches of "commercial and agricultural" chemicals don't match the expectation of "stockpiles" of chemical weapons. But, in fact, that is precisely what they are. "At a very minimum," Hanson tells Insight, "they were storing the precursors to restart a chemical-warfare program very quickly."

the fact that the article shoots itself in the foot and again shows huge bias. it insults all journalists, and insinuates that they all have an anti-bush agenda, THEN goes to show that all these chemicals are incredibly explainable THEN shows the ISG refuting claims that the ground forces made. perhaps the article's writer didn't understand that the army itself would have been FAR more happy than the ISG to find any trace of these chemical weapons, and yet despite their more rigorous testing, the article throws out the army's findings without a second word.

there's more examples of the article flopping later and discrediting the ISG, and supporting the army.. but i think this is pretty damn flaky. this article is about media bias, not stockpiles.
great article.

[DarthZeth]

yes, its BIASED information!!

except i recognize most of that form David Kay's report. that article was just pulled up with a quick google search.

here's David Kay's interim report:

http://www.cia.gov/cia/public_affair..._10022003.html

here, let me copy and past from the David KAy report:

Originally Posted by Daive Kay report

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.

and now what i posted form that BIASED article?

- New research on BW-applicable agents, brucella and Congo-Crimean hemorrhagic fever, and continuing work on ricin and aflatoxin that were not declared to the United Nations.

- "Reference strains" of a wide variety of biological-weapons agents

- A prison laboratory complex

- A line of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), or drones, "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 kilometers [311 miles], 350 kilometers [217 miles] 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 U.N.

- Plans and advanced design work for new long-range missiles with ranges up to at least 1,000 kilometers [621 miles] - well beyond the 150-kilometer-range limit [93 miles] imposed by the U.N

-In testimony before Congress on March 30, Duelfer, revealed that the ISG had found evidence of a "crash program" to construct new plants capable of making chemical- and biological-warfare agents.

- The ISG also found a previously undeclared program to build a "high-speed rail gun," a device apparently designed for testing nuclear-weapons materials.

- 500 tons of natural uranium stockpiled at Iraq's main declared nuclear site south of Baghdad, which International Atomic Energy Agency spokesman Mark Gwozdecky acknowledged to Insight had been intended for "a clandestine nuclear-weapons program."

holy crap! Insights, the BIASED reporting agency, says the same exact thing as David Kay, the ISG head! (or at least he was when he reported these).


you fail. please try something better then "that report is BIASED and UNTRUE!"

[Lucas]

before i check out the link, i'm just going to note that i refuted the importance of what... all those save for the fuel and rail gun using the source you used. it wasn't about the bias, it was about the fact that this biased article shot itself in the foot and showed exactly why this wasn't publicly announced: because its not credible in the least.

i think i also pointed out the ISG's vested interest in revealing this.

i fail? no i think you failed to get the "wow those reports are shocking, but here's a viable reason for why they aren't conclusive" thing

note: i'm building, come back later

oh man, this is funny. check the "equipment from a mosque" section. i can name pretty much every piece they've got on display, and all of it is used in highschool labs, except for the computer, printer, and elongated bell jar. kay's using this as proof of CW programmes?

this is pretty shaky for a report to the house committee on intelligence. lines like

We are starting to survey parts of Iraq's chemical industry to determine if suitable equipment and bulk chemicals were available for chemical weapons production

my chemical supplier can give me the neccesary chemicals to construct a superconducting railgun, and decent supplier should be able to. this means nothing, they're wasting their time trying to find ghosts.

While searching for retained weapons, ISG teams have developed multiple sources that indicate that Iraq explored the possibility of CW production in recent years, possibly as late as 2003.

and the US is currently exploring the construction of handheld microwave cannons that cause intracranial bleeding
exploring means nothing.

We are still working on determining the extent to which this network was tied to large-scale military efforts or BW terror weapons

what's a terror weapon? and they state they still don't know anything about how much of the "pesticides" was related to military use. if after 3 months of their own testing they don't know.. well.. sounds shaky at this point in time.

preserving BW expertise, BW capable facilities and continuing R&D - all key elements for maintaining a capability for resuming BW production

see, little key words like "BW expertise" are misleading. do they really mean biologists? and if so, why not say "they have biologists in iraq" BW capable facilities include, as i've stated before hospitals. not that they're finding hospitals, but the language is critically imprecise, with no reason to be.

In some cases, these groups performed work which could help preserve the science base and core skills that would be needed for any future fissile material production or nuclear weapons development.

no. how terrible. they let them continue work in fields that can be used to build weapons. einstein would be proud.

it gets even worse. at the end Kay states that

The good news is that we do not have to rely for the first time in over a decade on...information supplied by defectors, some of whom certainly fabricated much that they supplied and perhaps were under the direct control of the IIS;

yet uses former iraqi scientist testimony as the basis for most of his "findings", noting that these scientists are always unnamed.

i'll expand on this later after rereading the entire thing once more (i'm on read thru 3), but this isn't hard evidence, and it certainly isn't good secondary evidence. if you're grasping for something, anything, to prove iraq had WMD capability.. then fine, use this report. doesn't make it any less flaky.

[Dynamite Kid]

oh. i see. so now its gone from "it was lies!" to "well, it wasnt lies... but it was just inconsiquential!"

It certainly wasn't the stockpile that the infamous Tony Blair '45-minute' claim said it would be. The information going in was that Hussein was actively pursuing a programme of chemical and nuclear weapons (the 'yellow cake uranium') , and the best they've found are unmarked shells and trace amounts of very easy to make chemicals likely bought during the Iran-Iraq war. There hasn't been evidence of the continuing programme that was stated in the buildup to the invasion. If this is all that's needed to invade a nation for danger to the world, N. Korea, Saudi, and Israel are smoking craters by now. Geopolitically a good invasion, moraaly not so much.

[DarthZeth]

Lucas, you wanted "sources for all the programmes, installations, and activities"

you asked for sources about the programs that Saddam had that were in violation of the resolutions and agreements. you got them (actually, this stuff has been reported a bunch of times... and ignored.) then you try to dismiss them as biased or unimportant. You're trying to say that the ISG is Biased? If you are not going to trust the findings of the ISG, you aren’t going to trust ANYONE.

if you are going to categorically deny all reports and evidence that shows that saddam was covertly developing prohibited weaponry, then you're just being thick.

the bottom line is that Saddam was in violation of the resolutions, KNEW he was in violation of the resolutions, was HIDING shit that was in violation of the resolutions.


of course, now its changed form "it was all lies!" to "oh, its just doesn’t MATTER."



Dynomite: i was under the impression that the shell that exploded was NOT form the Iran-Iraq war. The shell that exploded was a Binary shell (two “harmless” chemicals mix in the air to form sarin). Iraq only had non-binary shells during the Iran-Iraq war. The old technology was basically a shell filled with Sarin. These were hell a dangerous to handle (lots of people got killed in accidents), and the pre-mixed sarin decays over time. Its suspected that Iraq got the technologies from Russia after the USSR collapsed (they got a lot of technology and hardware form Russia)

Oh yeah, NO binary shells were declared AT ALL by Iraq.

[Squishy Cheeks]

Zeth your pro war bias is showing. Your making a mountain out of a mole hill. As to your claim terrorist connections of the Ba'athists I have an old quote for you.

"The enemy of my enemy is my friend."