So the US hasn't officially changed it's strategy for searching for WMD, those press releases from Bush & Co. are liberal trickery. Keep digging your hole treeman pretty soon you'll be able to hide a couple of tons of WMD along with your weak one sided opinions.
Could this be the first legitimate find? Hopefully we won't overhype the discovery if we have found actual WMD this time. Tests Made on Possible Iraq Weapons Find By LOUIS MEIXLER, Associated Press Writer BAIJI, Iraq - The Iraqi chief liaison to U.N. weapons inspectors surrendered to U.S. forces Sunday, as American troops reported finding a metal drum that preliminary tests indicated could contain chemicals used to disable and kill. Lt. Gen. Hossam Mohammed Amin — No. 49 on the U.S. list of the 55 most-wanted figures from the regime of Saddam Hussein (news - web sites), the six of clubs in the deck of fugitive playing cards — was taken into custody in Baghdad. Capt. Kellie Rourke, division battle captain with the 101st Airborne Division, said Amin surrendered to soldiers of the division's 2nd Brigade and was taken to the international airport for questioning. Also known as Hossem Mohammed Amin al-Yasin, he was among the key figures in Saddam's weapons programs. He would be expected to have detailed knowledge of any illegal armaments and where they might be found, if they exist. Meanwhile, a dozen suspicious 55-gallon drums were found propped up with gravel in an open field near the northern Iraqi town of Baiji. Tests indicated one drum might contain the nerve agent cyclosarin and a blister agent that could be mustard gas, U.S. troops said. But more tests were being conducted. By design, initial test procedures favor positive readings, erring on the side of caution to protect soldiers. There have been numerous false reports that coalition forces have turned up chemical or biological weapons, and the U.S. Central Command was measured in its response to the discovery. "There are many sites that we look into every day, and when we have confirmed positive results we will provide that information," said Capt. Stewart Upton, a spokesman at Camp As Sayliyah, Qatar. "We just want to be very cautious that when we go with the information, that when we release nuclear, biological, or chemical information, that we're accurate." Mustard gas burns skin, eyes and lungs, while exposure to high amounts cyclosarin may lead to loss of muscle control, twitching, paralysis, unconsciousness, convulsions, coma, and death within minutes. Lt. Col. Ted Martin of the 10th Cavalry Regiment said soldiers went to the site near Baiji at midnight Friday after being alerted by U.S. Special Forces teams who became suspicions of the site because of the presence of surface-to-air missiles guarding the area. Martin said that in addition to the drums, soldiers also found two mobile laboratories containing equipment for mixing chemicals, but they appeared to have been looted. Abrams tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles ringed the 1.5-square-mile field Sunday evening, using night vision equipment to watch for intruders. Troops had permission to shoot to kill if anyone entered the area, which was near the Tigris River about a mile outside Baiji. Sgt. Maj. David List of the regiment's 1st Squadron said the field appeared to be a storage site for large missiles. "This whole country is a big ammo dump," said List, of West Warwick, R.I. While soft-pedaling the find at Baiji, Central Command trumpeted Amin's arrest. Thirteen of the 55 most-wanted figures are now in coalition hands. Three others are believed to be dead. "Almost every day additional people have been brought into custody," said Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, who arrived Sunday in Qatar, "and almost always it's because an Iraqi comes up to someone from the U.S. or the coalition and says 'I know where a person is and if you go down here you'll find them.'" During the U.N. inspectors' long, fruitless search for chemical, biological and nuclear weapons, they had to deal with Amin, head of Iraq (news - web sites)'s monitoring commission for more than a decade. Amin and his troops refused to allow U.N. inspectors into presidential palaces and other "sensitive sites" during the first round of U.N. inspections that ended in 1998. He was also one of the few Iraqis authorized to comment on weapons of mass destruction. Amin is believed to be British-educated and has a masters degree in radar and communication engineering. A former air force communications engineer, his career took off in 1980 when Saddam Hussein established the military's Technical and Scientific Committee, a weapons research and development think tank. It later became the Military Industrialization Organization, responsible for producing all of Iraq's most lethal weapons. Others members included Gen. Amer Rashid, Iraq's oil minister, and Amir al-Saadi, Saddam's senior weapons adviser, who is also in custody. Like most of Saddam's most trusted lieutenants, Amin is from a prominent Sunni Muslim family from northern Iraq, in Mosul. He also had powerful friends: He was also believed close to Saddam's son Qusai, and Saddam's personal secretary, Gen. Abide Hmoud, making him one of the best-connected insiders in the Iraqi ruling establishment.
I hope they at least find a token of something. This lack of finds is embarassing to American prestige... Anyhow, maybe the blowback from winning the conventional war so *easily* will be(try telling that to families of our or their casualties. ) we'll start a whole new type of arms race. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/27/w...2998&ex=1052410338&pagewanted=print&position= April 27, 2003 American Power Moves Beyond the Mere Super By GREGG EASTERBROOK tealth drones, G.P.S.-guided smart munitions that hit precisely where aimed; antitank bombs that guide themselves; space-relayed data links that allow individual squad leaders to know exactly where American and opposition forces are during battle — the United States military rolled out all this advanced technology, and more, in its lightning conquest of Iraq. No other military is even close to the United States. The American military is now the strongest the world has ever known, both in absolute terms and relative to other nations; stronger than the Wehrmacht in 1940, stronger than the legions at the height of Roman power. For years to come, no other nation is likely even to try to rival American might. Which means: the global arms race is over, with the United States the undisputed heavyweight champion. Other nations are not even trying to match American armed force, because they are so far behind they have no chance of catching up. The great-powers arms race, in progress for centuries, has ended with the rest of the world conceding triumph to the United States. Now only a nuclear state, like, perhaps, North Korea, has any military leverage against the winner. Paradoxically, the runaway American victory in the conventional arms race might inspire a new round of proliferation of atomic weapons. With no hope of matching the United States plane for plane, more countries may seek atomic weapons to gain deterrence. North Korea might have been moved last week to declare that it has an atomic bomb by the knowledge that it has no hope of resisting American conventional power. If it becomes generally believed that possession of even a few nuclear munitions is enough to render North Korea immune from American military force, other nations — Iran is an obvious next candidate — may place renewed emphasis on building them. . . . North Korea now stares into the barrel of the strongest military ever assembled, and yet may be able to defy the United States, owing to nuclear deterrence. As the global arms race ends with the United States so far ahead no other nation even tries to be America's rival, the result may be a world in which Washington has historically unparalleled power, but often cannot use it. Gregg Easterbrook is a senior editor of The New Republic and a contributing editor of The Atlantic Monthly. His next book, "The Progress Paradox," will be published this fall by Random House. Some factual errors in there but doesn't change the message.
I think it would be safe to say that the US is at least 20 to 30 years ahead technologically from our major international rivals. This does not include The UK and other major US supplied allies of course-except France I think they build a fair amount of their own weapons Mirage planes etc. I hope that any WMD finds or future Axis of Evil military actions will not require more emergency funding. I'm sure though if a war with N. Korea is necessary it will cost hundreds of billions more than Clinton's policy-- call it a pay-off if you must, but its cheaper than a major war. This post is all over the place its Sunday, time to get off the computer.
Well its been another full month with no subtantial finds of WMD. I guess the official line is going to be Iraq destroyed their WMD before the war. So the reason we went to war was officially to liberate the Iraqis? Iraq May Have Destroyed Weapons Before War -U.S. By Grant McCool NEW YORK (Reuters) - Iraq may have destroyed its purported chemical and biological weapons before the U.S.-led invasion in March, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said on Tuesday in an effort to explain why none had been found. President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair cited their belief that Iraq had banned weapons of mass destruction as the main reason for the March 20 invasion that ousted President Saddam Hussein's government. Rumsfeld told the New York-based Council on Foreign Relations think-tank he did not know why Iraq had not used chemical weapons against the invaders as Washington had predicted it would. He said the speed of U.S. advance may have caught Iraq by surprise, but added: "It is also possible that they decided that they would destroy them prior to a conflict." Rumsfeld told his audience of foreign policy analysts, diplomats and business leaders that he suspected "we'll find out a lot more information as we go along and keep interrogating people." Rumsfeld said Iraq was as large as California and search teams had only been working there seven weeks. He said there were hundreds of suspected sites to investigate. "It will take time," said Rumsfeld. On May 13, Maj. Gen. David Petraeus, commander of the Army's 101st Airborne Division, also raised the possibility that Iraq had destroyed its weapons stocks. "I just don't know whether it was all destroyed years ago -- I mean, there's no question that there were chemical weapons years ago -- whether they were destroyed right before the war, (or) whether they're still hidden," Petraeus said. MOBILE LABORATORIES Rumsfeld said U.S. intelligence agents had confirmed that two trailers found in northern Iraq were mobile biological weapons laboratories. No actual biological weapons were found on either trailer, U.S. officials have said. The Pentagon was working with the Central Intelligence Agency and other U.S. intelligence-gathering agencies to assess U.S. information obtained before the war and compare it with what has been found since, Rumsfeld said. But he insisted there were no disagreements between agencies. "We are looking at, before the conflict started, the kinds of things that we can benchmark," Rumsfeld said. The defense secretary, who wrote in the Wall Street Journal Tuesday that Washington would prevent a "remake of Iraq in Iran's image," said Iran was "being unhelpful today with respect to Iraq." "My personal view is that I'm still amazed at how fast it went from the Shah of Iran to the clerics, to the ayatollah," Rumsfeld said. "Maybe we'll be favorably surprised some day that it will go back to something ... where the people of that country will have a broader voice and an opportunity to affect their lives, which clearly they're restricted from doing."
They definitely found smoking gun style concrete proof of tons of WMD's like fifty times over a month ago. Don't you read johnheath's posts?
No, no, no! Haven't you been listening? The responses, weak as they are, have become easy to predict; If it's from someone who is still on the WmD mAgIc BuS, the line goes: "You haven't given us enough time! The WMD's will be found. It's just gonna take more than (insert whatever time it has been so far, usually erring slightly in favour of underestimating the time passed rather than the reverse)." For those who have seen the writing on the wall, irrespective of how much emphasis they placed on WMD's before the war, they are now saying " We were wrong, we insulted you anti-war people when you said that our government was lying to us, and we feel humbled and betrayed." woops. No, sorry, I meant to say that that's exactly what you will never see posted irrespective of what happens, or how much longer the WMD comes up empty... What you will see is guys who shouted in here about nukes and WMD's and protect our cities, and railed about the sillyness and naivety of arguing morals when you're facing standing in the hole where a city used to be, etc. now saying it was never really about WMDs, nor was it about the still not established links to 9-11...it was never about that, they now say. It was about freeing Iraq. Period. Pointing out anything they have said which contradicts this stance now is really bad form, as they must get insulted...and never resond with anything more than Saddam Hussein was a bad guy.
Tonight's Nightline's all about the Bush admin's lost credibility on the Iraq war. Started with quotes from Bush, Cheney, Powell and Rumsfeld as examples of gross exaggerations of the Iraq threat. On right now.
To be fair, there are never guarantees in things such as this. THe Bush Administration was working on a prediction. If there prediction turns out to be wrong, it won't mean we should not have invaded. You play the odds, and sometimes it turns out that you're wrong. It doesn't mean you were incorrect in acting as you did, since nobody is ever going to have perfect information if they're acting while such action would still be effective. Whether you're trading Richard Jefferson (and co) for Eddie Griffin or invading Iraq... the best decision at the time doesn't always turn out to be correct. Sometimes good decisions lead to bad results, and the other way around. I didn't think Bush should have invaded in the first place. But I don't think it's fair to crow *just* because he seems to have been wrong.
1) We're talking about starting a war...killing thousands...so I think it's safe to say that you can be held to the highest possible standard of accountability if you did so, and your reasons for doing so were wrong. Certainly higher than a GM is held to for a basketball trade. It's not as if going to war/not going to war is a fifty-fifty ptoposition, and they just ended up on the wrong side of the coin...You'd better be damn sure before you even consider something like that, becuase there are lots of people who won't be living anymore as a result. 2) It's also not as if there weren't a whole lot of people ( own intel community...the rest of the world, for example )saying "wait...there isn't enough proof yet...Take your time, there might be other ways." which Bush and co. ignored, with contempt. 3) There information wasn't only not perfect, it was pretty clear that there was very little care about it to begin with...presenting invented 'evidence' that would have taken a casual perusal to dismiss, lying, jumping the gun about any little bit of 'proof' like tubes, and when proven, instead of taking a step back and reconsidering, pushing forward and jumping on the next wild goose, like model airplanes...This was clearly not a zealous pursuit of the truth which just came up wrong...It is clear that the decision was made first, and the 'facts' looked for after as requred. There is even an admission now about placing misleading 'emphasis' on certain aspects in order to get what they wanted done done.
That's precisely the point here. It's not that they honestly got it wrong, it's that they never had any intention of getting it right.
It is a bit worrying that they have not found WMD yet. However, it seems clear to me that finding biological weapons is very difficult and easy to conceal. I don't have a problem with Saddam being gone, I still think that Saddam would have given support to terrorists in the form of chemical or biological weapons, so taking him out was a good thing. It sends a message to other rogue nations that the US is done p***y footing around. Good for us. DD
What is bothering me so much about all this is the single mindedness of our original reasoning for the war. Yes other issues were briefly mentioned, but the main focus was always WMD. I believe the US would have supported the war if they had focused on other reasons for going over there (i'm not going to get into whether those were right or wrong). The fact the Bush administration was so completely focused on what is increasingly looking like an outright lie is very worrisome. If all of Powell's lecturing turns out to be untrue, he will have become one of the greatest "tools" of modern times. Bush & Co. will have used him in a way that will forever ruin his international stature along with the country as a whole.
the main focus was always WMD I don't think that this is how it started. Bush mentioned in the state of the Union (January 2002) that Iraq as an axis of evil in the War on Terror (tm). Weeks later, Bush states the Iraq and Saddam are next on our list of countries with which we will deal. It is at this time that Bush states that we will act unilaterally, if need be. From the political fallout from this "unilateral" statement, Bush agree to work with the UNSC, which already had a WMD agenda. Thus, Bush kinda got back into the whole Iraq WMD quagmire. This also explains why Bush did such a half *ss job selling the WMD problem to the rest of the world. It was not his real reason for invading Iraq, just a pretext.
And what if it does take several months?...Iraq is a large country and think how hard it is for authorities to find just 1 suspected vehicle in just 1 city when it is a given that the vehicle is somewhere in the city...The evidence points to WMD being there, and the intelligence has supported this...It is consequential to worry involving the haste of getting to the eventuality...The point is to get to the eventuality with driven determination as if thousands of lives depended on the safeguard of such contents...If I know we are doing everything possible to find them (i.e. satellite imaging, field work, etc.), then the time lapse is understandable.
Now the DoD is saying that those mobile biolabs actually *were* mobile biowarfare labs - this is a decided break from earlier spurrious reports, because in those cases we had the media reporting on positives, while DoD said they weren't sure, but now the DoD is sure... Do we see the significance of this? If those were really mobile biowarfare labs, then one would have to conclude that the Iraqis had an active biowarfare program, would one not? There is no other explanation, although I'm sure that Timing will be able to concoct one (perhaps Halliburton planted them?). I had a feeling they weren't mobile pharmaceutical labs. It is just a matter of time.
You'd better hope so, because if I remember correctly, you once posted that you would stop posting on this BBS if no "weapons of mass destruction" were ever found. Treeman, your clock is ticking.
haven, The focus of Nightline last night was that the admin was presented plenty of intelligence they didn't like, as it didn't support the case for war, so they told them to keep looking til they found something that would support it. Most of the WMD intel as well as the intel suggesting Iraqis would embrace US troops was provided by the Iraqi opposition parties -- who had a clear stake in seeing the war go down. The premise of the broadcast was that you had two parties telling each other what they wanted to hear, never checking to really make sure it was good intel, meanwhile ignoring vast intel to the contrary. Koppell presented a question to a former CIA guy saying it seemed like there were three possibilities as to how it went down: (1) The intel was good and we'll find the WMD Bush promised in his speech to the nation, (2) The intel was bad and the admin was honestly misinformed and just got it wrong, or (3) the intel was bad and the admin willfully presented sketchy info as facts because they just really wanted the war. The CIA guy said, yep, those are all the possibilities. When asked which was most likely he said there was no doubt in his mind it was (3).
