So are the Weapons' Inspections working or not?

Now, the weapon inspectors themselves don't even seem to agree. The more I think about it, these weapons inspections are just a joke. If you have inspectors who aren't even coming up with the same findings, then how reliable of an operation can this really be?

I mean, the whole purpose of the inspections was to make Americans and others feel confident that Iraq does not have weapons. After reading this article, all I'm left with is more uncertainty and doubt.

Whether you think we should go to war or not, using the "weapons inspections" as the reason for not going seems pretty careless.


http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tm...cid=514&u=/ap/20030128/ap_on_re_mi_ea/un_iraq


<b>Weapons Reports Reveal U.N. Rift on Iraq</b>

By DAFNA LINZER, Associated Press Writer

UNITED NATIONS - The top U.N. weapons inspector said Iraq has failed to fully cooperate and suggested Baghdad was lying about its biological and chemical weapons. But his counterpart at the nuclear agency was upbeat and said there was no evidence Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) was restarting his nuclear program.

The different assessments mirrored those of a divided Security Council, split over whether Iraq can be disarmed peacefully or only through military action and how much time it should be given to comply.

The United States and Britain believe Saddam Hussein is rearming and that time is running out for Iraq to cooperate with inspections. France, Russia and others say there's no evidence to support that assertion and that inspections should continue.

So it was no surprise that the United States highlighted the tough report by chief weapons inspector Hans Blix while French diplomats claimed that a softer tone from International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei backed their assertions that inspections are starting to work and should continue.

In separate reports, deemed crucial by Security Council members weighing the possibility of another Iraq war, Blix and ElBaradei repeatedly came up with contrasting findings.

On cooperation, Blix said Iraq was good on access but weak on substance. He said the Iraqis need to provide inspectors with documents and hand over evidence to support claims that they no longer have weapons of mass destruction.

ElBaradei was gentler, saying cooperation could be better but that Iraq has made available additional documentation to nuclear inspectors. He said he could wrap up his work in a few months if he gets the continued cooperation he needs.

Blix suggested there was reason to believe that Iraq may still have anthrax and that it wasn't telling the truth when it claimed that it didn't weaponize VX, a deadly nerve agent.

Iraq's deputy prime minister, Tariq Aziz, denied in an interview with the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. that they had any remaining anthrax stocks. "Iraq has no anthrax. All the biological weapons were obliterated in 1991," Aziz told the CBC.

ElBaradei came close to giving Iraq a clean bill of health on the nuclear side, saying his teams found no evidence to contradict Iraq's claims that it ended its nuclear program in 1991.

One reason for the different outlooks may be that Blix's department, the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, or UNMOVIC, is handling biological, chemical and missile programs that Iraq fully developed. The IAEA, however, is only dealing with nuclear issues in a country that never succeeded in completing an atomic bomb.

"We do have major outstanding disarmament issues that need to be resolved that they don't," said Ewen Buchanan, spokesman for UNMOVIC. "We have three portfolios, not one, and are dealing with programs where real weapons existed."

Blix's team is also bigger, has greater needs on the ground and far more infrastructure, including helicopters and a U-2 reconnaissance plane which the Iraqis so far won't let them operate.

"The IAEA isn't necessarily dealing with those things," Buchanan said.

Still, several former inspectors were struck by the contrasts, especially regarding the issue of continued inspections.

While Blix made clear that his work has only begun, ElBaradei specifically asked for more time in order to avert war.

"It's surprising that ElBaradei could go through the exact same motions, the same meetings with the Iraqis and come out with such a positive report," said David Albright, an American who served on the nuclear inspection team in the 1990s.

Others suggested ElBaradei may have more independence since the IAEA, unlike UNMOVIC, is not under the direct authority of the Security Council. Blix's teams have thus far refused to conduct interviews with Iraqi scientists in the presence of government minders. But ElBaradei's teams have conducted several such interviews.

Blix highlighted some 3,000 documents inspectors found hidden in the home of an Iraqi scientist earlier this month — some dealing with uranium enrichment — as an example of information which the Iraqis should have turned over to inspectors.

ElBaradei raised the documents too, but diminished their importance by saying the papers only dealt with Iraq's nuclear program prior to the 1991 Persian Gulf War (news - web sites) and "do not appear to reflect new or current activity."

The United States had hoped the reports would help sway the council, ahead of President Bush (news - web sites)'s State of the Union address on Tuesday night, toward supporting possible military action. But the reports didn't appear to change any positions.

U.S. diplomats, who spoke on condition of anonymity, tried to emphasize areas where Blix's harsh criticism, both in public and behind closed-doors, supported their assertions of Iraqi noncompliance.

Secretary of State Colin Powell (news - web sites) quoted Blix's assessment that "Iraq appears not to have come to a genuine acceptance, not even today, of the disarmament that was demanded of it." He didn't refer to ElBaradei's pronouncement that nuclear experts found "no evidence that Iraq has revived its nuclear program."

French diplomats, speaking on condition of anonymity, tried to counter the American focus on Blix and said they were disappointed with his report. Instead, they emphasized ElBaradei's findings and said inspectors should get the time they need.

In the CBC interview, Aziz also said Iraq has fully cooperated with inspectors and would do so in the future. "All other aspects of cooperation have been met and we promise to be more forthcoming in the future replying to all their needs in (a) way that will satisfy them," he said.

 

You're probably right, but still...many people and <b>countries</b> were using the inspections as a plea for America to hold off going to war. It's probably the main reason that action hasn't been taken already.

Now, it 's beginning to look like the Bush administration's insistence that the inspections will not work was correct all along. I mean, this is a serious issue, and two of the main inspectors can't even agree about whether Iraq is cooperating or not. It's almost approaching a level of incompetency in my opinion.