the Syrian connection is especially significant. I believe i mentioned several years a chat i had with the [former] commander of the 1st marine division (ironically, at CES), where he stated there were convoys of trucks headed into Syria in the run up to the invasion. i've always thought that's where you'd find "stockpiles" of Saddam's WMD. see also the bolded bit about the 500 tons of yellowcake the US removed from Iraq. -- While the media have been quick to run with WikiLeaks’ U.S. State Department cable releases to undermine Washington’s efforts to effect stability in unstable parts of the world, it is slow, if not silent, in giving credit where credit is due. Although other credible sources confirmed it before WikiLeaks did, in receiving similar disinterested responses from the media, it should be clear now that President Bush’s concerns about Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction (WMD) program were well-founded. The controversy goes back to Bush’s State of the Union address in January 2003. In the speech, he said the British government learned Saddam had "recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." This became one of several justifications leading to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq two months later — and one about which, Bush critics later claimed, he lied. British intelligence had determined an effort was made by Iraq to obtain "yellowcake" — a uranium concentrate extracted from ores for use as material in higher-grade nuclear enrichment — from Niger. The waters separating fact from fiction over this allegation were muddied after various claims and counter-claims followed. In July 2003, former U.S. career diplomat Ambassador Joe Wilson, in a New York Times op-ed, claimed he had been sent to Africa by the Bush Administration in 2002 — and had debunked the yellowcake claim. While Wilson reported he had met with a former Niger prime minister, who said he knew of no such sales, that prime minister also recalled a 1999 visit by the Iraqis seeking to buy yellowcake. Despite Wilson's claim, a 2004 bipartisan Senate intelligence committee report found his visit actually supported evidence Saddam was undertaking a WMD effort, based on the 1999 incident. The 2003 Iraq invasion by U.S. forces also launched a massive effort to find WMDs. By late 2003, as determined in a review by a Wired Magazine editor of WikiLeaks documents on the issue, the Administration was losing faith WMDs would be found. But, as Wired reports, the WikiLeaks documents clearly show "for years afterward, U.S. troops continued to find chemical weapons labs, encounter insurgent specialists in toxins and uncover weapons of mass destruction. . . . Chemical weapons, especially, did not vanish from the Iraqi battlefield. Remnants of Saddam's toxic arsenal, largely destroyed after the Gulf War, remained. Jihadists, insurgents and foreign (possibly Iranian) agitators turned to these stockpiles during the Iraq conflict — and may have brewed up their own deadly agents." A September 2004 New York Times op-ed by the former head of Saddam’s nuclear research program supported this, as well. He wrote: "[T]he West never understood the delusional nature of Saddam Hussein’s mind . . . he lived in a fantasy world . . . . giving lunatic orders . . . he kept the country’s Atomic Energy Commission alive . . . Saddam fooled . . . the world . . . . [O]ur nuclear program could have been reinstituted at the snap of Saddam Hussein’s fingers." Of note too is a January 2004 revelation by Syrian journalist defector Nizar Nayuf. He reported there were three locations in Syria where Iraqi WMDs had been transported prior to the 2003 invasion and were being stored. He also revealed some of these sites were being built with North Korean cooperation. This explained why three years later Israel attacked a nuclear facility being built in Syria by Pyongyang — and Syria’s subsequent failure to criticize Israel for fear of drawing further international attention to what Damascus had been doing. Five years after Joe Wilson’s op-ed claimed no yellowcake was sold to Iraq — the ease with which Saddam could have snapped his fingers and reinstituted his nuclear program became apparent. In July 2008, in an operation kept secret at the time, 37 military air cargo flights shipped more than 500 metric tons of yellowcake — found in Iraq — out of the country for further transport and remediation to Canada. The U.S. government is committed to efforts to make the world a safer place by seeking the removal of WMD threats. One would think a press undermining that effort at the time under the guise of freedom of the press would feel an obligation to accurately report the success of such a governmental effort. This should especially be the case after those same media contributed to the false perception Saddam possessed no WMD capability and, therefore, never really posed a serious threat. As evidenced by the WikiLeaks disclosures, apparently no such obligation is felt.
Wait wtf, yellow cake is for real? Spoiler starts around 1:30 <object width="480" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/wlwk8rh425Y?fs=1&hl=en_US"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/wlwk8rh425Y?fs=1&hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="385"></embed></object>
I'm not surprised that in the piles of Wikileaks material there is something about WMD being found in Iraq as that was known already. What was said about that material though was that it was material dating back to the Iran-Iraq war and not part of an ongoing WMD program. As for hints about a Syrian connection again not surprising as that was a topic of long discussion. While this is interesting I don't think any of this justifies the argument that Saddam's Iraq was an immediate or even credible threat based on WMD. Keep in mind that the Wikileaks material are considered problematic because they paint the US in a bad light. Certainly any material that would justify the invasion of Iraq wouldn't have been hidden away but trumpeted. Remember even GW Bush himself says in his memoirs he was frustrated by the lack of evidence.
You commented on the very thing that makes this thread irrelevant. The WMD's weren't threatening, were old outdated, and maybe capable of causing a slight skin irritation.
About 5 years of liberal assertions, flushed down the toilet. Hey liberals, I'd like to be the first to serve you a warm, steaming cup of.... Spoiler TOLD YA SO, BRAHS
Did I miss something? The article doesn't have much of anything in it. Some bits about finding old chem weapon labs and some yellowcake in 2008 (with no context given, really), and allegations about storage sites in Syria. Still no indication of any active WMD program. The article also does a terrible job of indicating what, if anything, was revealed in wikileaks docs too. I don't think anyone should expect the wikileaks doc to provide a smoking gun for WMD in Iraq. If Bush had that information, he would have published it already -- unless it was something particularly embarassing, like Saddam had our nukes.
They didn't have any current programs, that is the point. They didn't have any WMDs, at worst, they had WSIs (Weapons of Skin Irritation).
you apparently did not read the article, the entire thrust of which was the media wasn't paying attention, and why that might be so. further, neither bush, nor anyone else in his admin, ever claimed saddam, or his WMD program, presented an imminent (immediate) threat to the US. rather, it was the nexus of his admitted antipathy to the us, past support of terrorist organisations, the atrocities os 9/11, *and* his WMD programs that created the perfect saddamite storm...
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So far not even a hint of anyone faintly acknowledging the idea that some of this may be true even when the Syrian connection has been speculated for years. So let's make a reach and play what if': What if everything Basso originally posted was absolutely true. Would the left side sweep it under the rug or dismiss the importance just to fit their agenda? Or would you say "Holy cr@p....glad we nipped that in the bud"? Fact: The Democractic Congress supported Bush's actions with the belief that there were WMDs and Sadaam would not come out and deny that he did not (and fully comply with all UN resolutions).
The liberals would rather attempt humor to try to dodge any real discussion on the matter -- it's a sign that they don't have an answer.