All right Basso, to test your charges of bias, let's see what the Rupert Murdoch owned right wing NY Post had to say Doh!!!! In fact, pretty much every news outlet fronted that with some variation of that same headline, even Fox, although they have since changed it and erased all record of it ("google news" pulls one up but the story has since been erased from their webpage)
I wish I could edit: I see Fox News and Sky News, both murdoch owned right wing organizations, fronting with the same headline in the NYT which you claim is biased.
I love when people say that if Saddam didn't have WMD why didn't he say so. HE DID!!!! His people to the UN said it time and time again. They gave a giant report claiming they didn't have any WMD. The fact that nobody really believed him or the report is another story. But Saddam spent years denying he had WMD or Chem weapons. I'm not sure where this argument came from, but I've been hearing it a lot lately. Since 2001 can anyone find any quotes of Saddam claiming that he possessed WMD, or Chem weapons?
This is priceless... Both President Bush and Secretary of State Colin Powell contended Friday that a vial of botulinum bacteria found in Iraq is evidence of Saddam Hussein's weapons intent. But the chief U.S. weapons inspector said the vial had been stored for safekeeping in an Iraqi scientist's refrigerator since 1993. He offered no evidence it had been used in a weapons program during the last decade.
Kay No Longer Sure Trailers Were Labs BY DAFNA LINZER, Associated Press Writer The CIA’s man leading the hunt for suspected Iraqi weapons showed off a pair of trailers for news cameras this summer, and argued that the two metal flatbeds were designed for making biological weapons. But faced with mounting challenges to that theory, David Kay is now conceding he could have been wrong and says he doesn't know whether Iraq ever had a mobile weapons program, as top Bush administration officials claim. According to senior military officers involved in Kay's hunt, experts have been re-examining the trailers for several weeks. Until now, they were the only discovery the administration has cited as evidence of an illicit Iraqi weapons program. In six months of searches, no biological, chemical or nuclear weapons have been found to bolster the administration's central case for going to war: to disarm Saddam Hussein of suspected weapons of mass destruction. "On the basis of technical analysis on the two (trailers) that we have, it is not going to be possible to reach a determination," Kay told reporters Friday. http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tm...p/20031003/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_the_evidence_6
Saddam could have invited the inspectors to witness the destruction of the weapons. He could have videotaped it. He could have at least documented it on paper. He did none of those things. They are buried. Mr. Kay seems to think that they're there somewhere... Pointless to respond to MacBeth. Every time he and I have a dialogue, it turns personal. I know what he did and did not say, did and did not predict.
I love when people say that if Saddam didn't have WMD why didn't he say so. Franchiseblade. Excellent point. It is amazing when sometimes you miss the forest for the trees. Don't forget the incredible story where the leading Iraqi defector of all time, his son in law, told us the same thing. It's just that the Bushies forgot to mention that in their report of what he told them.
Huh? Headlines around the world were either accusing or speculating that he had those kinds of weapons? Just being a ruthless dictator doesn't make him stupid!
glynch, this is possibly the most blatant lie you have yet told here. When Hussein Kamel defected he told the CIA everything. He ran the friggen programs, he knew all about them. The CIA gave that info to UNSCOM, and they confronted the Iraqis with it, and the Iraqis subsequently admitted to large portions of it. Thousands of tons of chemical and biological (mostly chemical) weapons were destroyed because of what Saddam's son-in-law, and that is a matter of historical UNSCOM record. So for you to sit here and nonchalantly say that Kamel told us Saddam was clean... Pretty low. Outright lie.
Here is I think a fairly honest assessment by the former UNSCOM head: No Weapons Doesn't Mean No Threat By Charles Duelfer Monday, October 6, 2003; Page A23 The Iraq Survey Group headed by David Kay has now made an interim report. Ironically, this group has inherited the obligation previously levied by the United Nations upon Saddam Hussein -- namely, to credibly and verifiably detail Iraq's program of weapons of mass destruction to a skeptical international audience. The group has had far more access and resources than the U.N. inspectors under Hans Blix and it has been in Iraq longer. How is it faring and what does the interim report tell us? Particularly, does the absence of a major weapons discovery mean that U.N. inspections were working and the war was unnecessary? Kay states that while no ready-to-use weapons have been found, Iraq is a big country and many depots and other locations are yet to be inspected. However, the Kay report does list evidence of continuing research and development (though not production) in each weapon category. It also describes activities and equipment that Iraq failed to declare to the United Nations and that were not discovered by the inspectors. Future reports will have to show in verifiable detail the extent of these prohibited programs, but these findings will not greatly surprise experienced U.N. inspectors. Hussein had long differentiated between retaining weapons and sustaining the capability to produce weapons. Experience has also shown that Iraq tended to pursue whatever relevant research was allowed or was deemed undetectable. The apparent absence of existing weapons stocks, therefore, does not mean Hussein did not pose a WMD threat. In fact, fragments of evidence in Kay's report about ongoing biological weapons research suggest that Hussein may have had a quick "break-out" capacity to threaten his neighbors and, indeed, the United States with biological agents (possibly including infectious agents). But clearly this is not the immediate threat many assumed before the war. Large stocks of chemical and biological munitions have not been found. The WMD threat appears to have been longer term. Assuming this finding does not change, it will be very important for the Iraq Survey Group to establish when all agents and weapons were eliminated. It will also be important to analyze why the picture Secretary of State Colin Powell presented to the Security Council in February was so far off the mark. Future reports will also have to demonstrate what facts about the Iraq WMD program the U.N. teams missed and how Hussein's regime acted to thwart the efforts of the United Nations. This latter issue is vital. Kay makes mention of the Iraqi concealment and deception as one reason why he has found so little. The first U.N. inspection team (UNSCOM) pursued a controversial program to investigate what we termed the Iraqi concealment mechanism. The goal was to show how the enormous resources of Iraq's security and intelligence apparatus undermined the inspection teams. We accumulated evidence that presidential secretary Abed Hamid Mahmoud, now in U.S. custody, directed a government-wide effort to contain inspection activity. This included penetrating the U.N. inspection teams and even obtaining assistance from other prominent countries to fend off the inspectors. Conducting surprise inspections had become almost impossible. The Iraq Survey Group should now have access to the records and participants of the former regime. Future reports must provide a clear description of the Iraqi system for containing inspector activity. This is necessary to inform judgments about the effectiveness of the U.N. inspections. The argument is made that if no weapons were found in Iraq, then maybe the U.N. inspection process was successfully containing Hussein and, therefore, the war was unnecessary. This will be proven wrong if the Iraq Survey Group can show that Hussein could outlast and outwit the efforts of the Security Council to keep him from ever obtaining WMD. While the inspection system may have appeared to be successful at a given point, it was not sustainable and eventually the U.N. Security Council would lose focus. Kay's group needs to document the strategy that Hussein's regime was pursuing to counter and erode the U.N. disarmament measures. The Bush administration appears committed to developing a full picture of the Iraqi weapons program, even if it turns out to be less than was forecast. This task in Iraq, like so many others, is made much more difficult because of early mistakes. Key sites were left unsecured and looters destroyed much evidence. Tons of documents were collected haphazardly, and now they have to be sorted out by experts and linguists -- an extremely time-consuming process. Finally, the Iraqis who are most knowledgeable have been living in fear of arrest by the Americans or death from various internal Iraqi threats. Most of the WMD program leaders have spent the summer in jail. The second-tier scientists and engineers fear the night when U.S. military surround their homes and take them away to face an unknown future. They do not find much incentive to cooperate. Kay appears to be making necessary course corrections, and a full verifiable description of Hussein's programs and policies should be forthcoming. It will have to be meticulous. There are many very knowledgeable people in the audience, including U.N. inspectors and former Iraqi officials, who will ultimately pass judgment on its veracity. The writer, a scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center, was deputy chairman of UNSCOM, the first U.N. Iraq inspection organization, from 1993 to 2000. © 2003 The Washington Post Company http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A48562-2003Oct5.html
