http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/01/18/iraq/main537096.shtml Inspectors Call U.S. Tips 'Garbage' (CBS) While diplomatic maneuvering continues over Turkish bases and a new United Nations resolution, inside Iraq, U.N. arms inspectors are privately complaining about the quality of U.S. intelligence and accusing the United States of sending them on wild-goose chases. CBS News Correspondent Mark Phillips reports the U.N. has been taking a precise inventory of Iraq's al-Samoud 2 missile arsenal, determining how many there are and where they are. Discovering that the al-Samoud 2 has been flying too far in tests has been one of the inspectors' major successes. But the missile has only been exceeding its 93-mile limit by about 15 miles and that, the Iraqis say, is because it isn't yet loaded down with its guidance system. The al-Samoud 2 is not the 800-mile-plus range missile that Secretary of State Colin Powell insists Iraq is developing. In fact, the U.S. claim that Iraq is developing missiles that could hit its neighbors – or U.S. troops in the region, or even Israel – is just one of the claims coming from Washington that inspectors here are finding increasingly unbelievable. The inspectors have become so frustrated trying to chase down unspecific or ambiguous U.S. leads that they've begun to express that anger privately in no uncertain terms. U.N. sources have told CBS News that American tips have lead to one dead end after another. Example: satellite photographs purporting to show new research buildings at Iraqi nuclear sites. When the U.N. went into the new buildings they found "nothing." Example: Saddam's presidential palaces, where the inspectors went with specific coordinates supplied by the U.S. on where to look for incriminating evidence. Again, they found "nothing." Example: Interviews with scientists about the aluminum tubes the U.S. says Iraq has imported for enriching uranium, but which the Iraqis say are for making rockets. Given the size and specification of the tubes, the U.N. calls the "Iraqi alibi air tight." The inspectors do acknowledge, however, that they would not be here at all if not for the threat of U.S. military action. So frustrated have the inspectors become that one source has referred to the U.S. intelligence they've been getting as "garbage after garbage after garbage." In fact, Phillips says the source used another cruder word. The inspectors find themselves caught between the Iraqis, who are masters at the weapons-hiding shell game, and the United States, whose intelligence they've found to be circumstantial, outdated or just plain wrong. Meanwhile, the U.S. and Britain are planning to present a new resolution to the U.N. Security Council on Monday in a bid for support to use force to disarm Iraq. Finishing touches were being put on the resolution on Thursday. Adoption is by no means assured. A majority of the 15 council members are opposed to war at least until U.N. weapons inspectors report in mid-March. Secretary Powell said a headcount was "academic" because the resolution demanding Iraqi disarmament had not been put forward. Powell, who flies to Japan on Friday for the start of a five-day Asia trip, juggled resolution diplomacy with stressful negotiations with Turkey, a potential key ally in any war. Turkey is balking at U.S. terms for an economic aid package. Powell, who interceded on Wednesday with Prime Minister Abdullah Gul, said he had told the Turkish leader "our position was firm with respect to the kind of assistance we could provide." However, Powell said, "there may be some other creative things we can do." As for the expected U.N. resolution, the Bush administration sees little value in extending inspections and much to worry about in Iraq's connection to al Qaeda and other terror groups. One U.S. official said the projected day for presenting the resolution was Monday but that it could slip a day or two. Powell said, "We won't put a resolution down unless we intend to fight for the resolution, unless we believe we can make the case that it is appropriate." In Baghdad, meanwhile, Iraq allowed another flight by an American U-2 surveillance plane Thursday as President Saddam Hussein's government sought to convince the world that it is cooperating with the weapons inspectors. In New York, a U.N. spokesman said Iraq also had submitted a list of people involved in the destruction of banned weapons — a key demand by chief weapons inspector Hans Blix. It was the second flight this week by a U-2 in support of the U.N. inspection program. The Iraqi Foreign Ministry said the plane spent six hours and 20 minutes over Iraq's territory, searching for evidence of banned weapons. In regard to the possible basing of U.S. troops in Turkey, Gul said in Ankara that a statement would be made on Friday. He did not elaborate. Powell did not elaborate on the refinements under consideration, but another U.S. official said one approach might be to seek a $1 billion congressional appropriation that would then permit Turkey to obtain loans at preferential U.S.-government rates for many times that amount. Ships carrying equipment for a U.S. infantry division are already at sea. The United States wants to base tens of thousands of soldiers in Turkey to open a possible northern front against Iraq. The dispute with Turkey is one of many problems the Bush administration has as it tries to line up support for an attack on Iraq if Saddam doesn't disarm quickly. Implying the United States might deploy troops elsewhere if terms could not be reached with Turkey, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said "we have to deal with realities, and we will." Meanwhile, President Bush sought to keep the pressure on the Security Council, telling a suburban Atlanta audience, "Denial and endless delay in the face of growing danger is not an option." The president has said the council risks irrelevance if it does not face up to Iraq's defiance of more than 10 years of disarmament resolutions. Mr. Bush also has said if the council does not approve a second resolution he is prepared to go to war with a "coalition of the willing" — nations like Britain that agree with him that Iraq's arsenals of biological and chemical weapons pose a threat. Mr. Bush planned to host Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar of Spain, an ally, at his Texas ranch Friday and Saturday. Another potential ally, Prime Minister Simeon Saxcoburggotski of Bulgaria, is due next Tuesday at the White House
If the Iraqis have all the WMD hidden in 1000 places, and they move the WMD weekly, then all intelligence more than a week old is "garbage".
Assuming Powell is correct, Iraq has tons of precursor material for biological and chemical WMD. One would think that that would be hard to move from one place to another, versus having it stashed in one well hidden place.
Well No Worries, the whole world knows that the banned material is in Saddam's possession. Do you doubt that we once knew the location? Do you doubt that Saddam has been scrambling to find new and inventive hiding places?
johheath: We have a custom here of presenting an article or a link to bolster or prove our assertions of fact. Have you ever thought of doing this?
As a matter of fact, I have presented articles and links many times to this BBS already. You could not possibly be insinuating that you believe Saddam is not currently in possession of chemical and biological weapons, are you? If so, perhaps you could provide some evidence of your sanity.
I have no idea. I can not prove it one way or another. An impartial observer may be lead to believe that our intell is not as good as we think (or as good as we reporting it to be). An impartial observer may also come to the conclussion that if the US is building a case for invading Iraq based on our intell the US may not have just reasons for the war.
This game of smoke and mirrors we are playing is becoming so complex that it's going to take 10 years to figure out which side is guilty of more fabrications. We're going to war one way or another. The Bush administration has already provided too much rhetoric to back down now without losing face. It's just a question of when and how. Are we going to thrash Iraq or try to finance a buyout and get some of his military leaders to oust him?
There is a small problem wiht the above. A new Iraqi leader does not necessarily guarantee UN WMD compliance, or even more to the point a more pro-Western regime. As an aside, isn't it interesting that the US has plans to protect the Iraqi oil fileds once the invasion starts, but do not have a plan to protect the lives of the innocent Iraqis.
This is one of the best bottom-line statements I've read about the situation. IMO, anyone who buys into either side is getting duped.
What in the hell does Inspector Gadget have to do with ANYTHING? Some of these threads are totally stupid. You don't even say if you are talking about the Mathew Broderick IG or the cartoon. You need to explain your thoughts. Idiot.
Lets make it simple to understand. I lost my remote last month. I didn't find it till the first of Febuary. Now my home is just over 1,000 sq. feet. Now if someone was intentionally hiding it from me somewhere in the state of California then it would lead one to believe the task of finding it would be impossible. Debating whether or not Powell is correct is reducing the arguement. Powell and the United States governement know exactly what he has and hasn't accounted for. The government gave him those weapons, correct? Isn't that the spin you have placed on the arguement for the last year? What do you have to back up the statement that America doesn't have plans to protect innocent Iraqis? Here we go. Forget Saddam's intentional slaughter but blame the Americans for mistakes made(Or the lack there of). Unbelievable.
Let's see. Saddam is a proven liar, mass murderer, rapist, and torturer of men, women, and children. He invaded Kuwait, and pillaged the country when he was forced out. He is responsible for more Arab and Muslim deaths than any man alive. Colin Powell is the most respected man is America, who has spent his entire adult life serving our country. B-bob and Heratic can't decide which man is more credible? Guys, I hate to break it to you, but you are displaying ZERO common sense on this issue.
Nice twist, Johnheath. When Trader_Jorge gets back he will find a perfect pupil in you. You just need to learn to end your posts with all caps statements. Did I ever say I trusted Saddam? Um, no. If you could, for a moment, try to avoid oversimplifying the situation, you could admit that (*gasp*) maybe more than one person can distort truth at a time. That's right. A large fraction of human beings now distrust Saddam, but a large fraction of those same humans distrust our country's leadership. They can't *all* be less smart and/or more ignorant than you, do you think? So, if someone ignores the plain fact that the credibility of both sides has been called into question (to differing degrees, yes, but by hundreds of millions of people in each case), who is having trouble with common sense? Of course I trust people like Powell more than I trust Hussein. But I also think this administration is patching together a poor, inconsistent, and vague argument to attack while most people (including military experts like General Clark -- see related thread) are saying that such a war is "like elective surgery." I would love to boil it down and say "X is right!" and "Y is wrong!" but I think the issue is too important to trivialize.
According to their own budgetary disclosures, the US has lost billions in weapons each year for the last decade...it happens, as with anything else. It's dumped, it breaks down, it just breaks, etc. I'm not saying Saddamn doesn't have them, just that we wouldn't be able to know it by a simple method of crossing off what we gave him a decade ago from a list nad saying that there's unnaccounted items... BTW, everyone seems to sidestep this moral issue...We are now willing to go to war, and inevitably kill innocent civilians as well as who knows how many young soldiers on both sides, on the grounds that Saddam's possession of the WMD that we gave him in the first place is so intolerable that it justifies war. Yeah, I know it's been said before...but beyond a half-assed " That was then, this is now." evasion, can any of the pro-Bush's war stance camp justify this?
B-Bob...you are wasting your time...He will inevitably respond by telling you that all of his opions are 'facts', and express his disbelief that you haven't seen the light like he has...and he might even bring his granny into the argument. He has no evident ability to distinguish between objective and subjective thought, even when his 'facts' defy historical record. Honestly, there is no opint in pursuing a rational argument here...
....and YOU accuse me of being unable to distinguish fact from opinion? LMAO Mr. Referee. After you penalize yourself 15 yards for piling on, take your head out of your arse and go study about a little about these subjects. "We" were not the primary suppliers of WMD for Iraq- the Germans win this prize by a longshot. American companies did sell duel use products to Iraq, but certainly not with the intent of allowing Saddam to build WMD to turn on us. Your assertion that "we gave him WMD" is IGNORANT, and/or a willful lie on your part. Of course, if you were correct, and we did give WMD to the madman Saddam, then we would have an obligation to forcibly disarm him. Therein lies the real problem with your illogical, condescending, and childishly arrogant stance. You actually contend that we gave a madman WMD, but we have no right to correct this mistake. Your logic says that we have to allow this madman to threaten his neighbors and the West because we erred in the first place. I suppose if your dog craps in the middle of your living room, you refuse to clean up the mess because you didn't take him out for his daily walk?
"We" were not the primary suppliers of WMD for Iraq- the Germans win this prize by a longshot. American companies did sell duel use products to Iraq, but certainly not with the intent of allowing Saddam to build WMD to turn on us. Your assertion that "we gave him WMD" is IGNORANT, and/or a willful lie on your part. You often acuse posters of wilful ignorance or willful lies. Is it possible that they just disagree with you or base their beliefs on different sources than you are exposed to? In your opinion are most people IGNORANT, willful liars or anti-semites? How about, 1) Proof Germans were the primary suppliers? (Please, even if it's just Rush told me so on my car radio.) 2) Proof US companies only sold dual use products. ************************************* ************************************* How did Iraq get its weapons? We sold them By Neil Mackay and Felicity Arbuthnot THE US and Britain sold Saddam Hussein the technology and materials Iraq needed to develop nuclear, chemical and biological wea pons of mass destruction. Reports by the US Senate's committee on banking, housing and urban affairs -- which oversees American exports policy -- reveal that the US, under the successive administrations of Ronald Reagan and George Bush Snr, sold materials including anthrax, VX nerve gas, West Nile fever germs and botulism to Iraq right up until March 1992, as well as germs similar to tuberculosis and pneumonia. Other bacteria sold included brucella melitensis, which damages major organs, and clostridium perfringens, which causes gas gangrene. Classified US Defence Dep-artment documents also seen by the Sunday Herald show that Britain sold Iraq the drug pralidoxine, an antidote to nerve gas, in March 1992, after the end of the Gulf war. Pralidoxine can be reverse engineered to create nerve gas. The Senate committee's rep orts on 'US Chemical and Biological Warfare-Related Dual-Use Exports to Iraq', undertaken in 1992 in the wake of the Gulf war, give the date and destination of all US exports. The reports show, for example, that on May 2, 1986, two batches of bacillus anthracis -- the micro-organism that causes anthrax -- were shipped to the Iraqi Ministry of Higher Education, along with two batches of the bacterium clostridium botulinum, the agent that causes deadly botulism poisoning. One batch each of salmonella and E coli were shipped to the Iraqi State Company for Drug Industries on August 31, 1987. Other shipments went from the US to the Iraq Atomic Energy Commission on July 11, 1988; the Department of Biology at the University of Basrah in November 1989; the Department of Microbiology at Baghdad University in June 1985; the Ministry of Health in April 1985 and Officers' City, a military complex in Baghdad, in March and April 1986. The shipments to Iraq went on even after Saddam Hussein ordered the gassing of the Kurdish town of Halabja, in which at least 5000 men, women and children died. The atrocity, which shocked the world, took place in March 1988, but a month later the components and materials of weapons of mass destruction were continuing to arrive in Baghdad from the US. The Senate report also makes clear that: 'The United States provided the government of Iraq with 'dual use' licensed materials which assisted in the development of Iraqi chemical, biological and missile-system programmes.' This assistance, according to the report, included 'chemical warfare-agent precursors, chem ical warfare-agent production facility plans and technical drawings, chemical warfare filling equipment, biological warfare-related materials, missile fabrication equipment and missile system guidance equipment'. Donald Riegle, then chairman of the committee, said: 'UN inspectors had identified many United States manufactured items that had been exported from the United States to Iraq under licences issued by the Department of Commerce, and [established] that these items were used to further Iraq's chemical and nuclear weapons development and its missile delivery system development programmes.' Riegle added that, between January 1985 and August 1990, the 'executive branch of our government approved 771 different export licences for sale of dual-use technology to Iraq. I think that is a devastating record'. It is thought the information contained in the Senate committee reports is likely to make up much of the 'evidence of proof' that Bush and Blair will reveal in the coming days to justify the US and Britain going to war with Iraq. It is unlikely, however, that the two leaders will admit it was the Western powers that armed Saddam with these weapons of mass destruction. However, Bush and Blair will also have to prove that Saddam still has chemical, biological and nuclear capabilities. This looks like a difficult case to clinch in view of the fact that Scott Ritter, the UN's former chief weapons inspector in Iraq, says the United Nations des troyed most of Iraq's wea pons of mass destruction and doubts that Saddam could have rebuilt his stocks by now. According to Ritter, between 90% and 95% of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction were des troyed by the UN. He believes the remainder were probably used or destroyed during 'the ravages of the Gulf War'. Ritter has described himself as a 'card-carrying Republican' who voted for George W Bush. Nevertheless, he has called the president a 'liar' over his claims that Saddam Hussein is a threat to America. Ritter has also alleged that the manufacture of chemical and biological weapons emits certain gases, which would have been detected by satellite. 'We have seen none of this,' he insists. 'If Iraq was producing weapons today, we would have definitive proof.' He also dismisses claims that Iraq may have a nuclear weapons capacity or be on the verge of attaining one, saying that gamma-particle atomic radiation from the radioactive materials in the warheads would also have been detected by western surveillance. The UN's former co-ordinator in Iraq and former UN under-secretary general, Count Hans von Sponeck, has also told the Sunday Herald that he believes the West is lying about Iraq's weapons programme. Von Sponeck visited the Al-Dora and Faluja factories near Baghdad in 1999 after they were 'comprehensively trashed' on the orders of UN inspectors, on the grounds that they were suspected of being chemical weapons plants. He returned to the site late in July this year, with a German TV crew, and said both plants were still wrecked. 'We filmed the evidence of the dishonesty of the claims that they were producing chemical and biological weapons,' von Sponeck has told the Sunday Herald. 'They are indeed in the same destroyed state which we witnessed in 1999. There was no trace of any resumed activity at all.' Us supplies bio weapons materials to Iraq I know the authors are IGNORANT or wilful liars.
I have never called anybody an anti-Semite. Nice try though. I do find it interesting that one of your chat buddys uses an anti-Israeli lie from Hamas, and when I point out his error, you attack me. This says alot to me about your character. I don't listen to Rush, so your attempt to label me says more about you than me. We know that the Germans were the primary suppliers for Iraqis now banned programs because the Iraqis say so. Germany was the hub of Iraq's military purchases in the 1980s. Our commercial attaché, Ali Abdul Mutalib, was allocated billions of dollars to spend each year on German military industry imports. These imports included many proscribed technologies with the German government looking the other way. In 1989, German engineer Karl Schaab sold us classified technology to build and operate the centrifuges we needed for our uranium-enrichment program. German authorities have since found Mr. Schaab guilty of selling nuclear secrets, but because the technology was considered "dual use" he was fined only $32,000 and given five years probation. Meanwhile, other German firms have provided Iraq with the technology it needs to make missile parts. -KHIDHIR HAMZA http://techfocus.org/modules/news/article.php?storyid=2874 Since the Iraqis themselves contradict your article, then I guess I will put your featured authors in the IGNORANT catagory.
