Theres something wrong with the world today

[aerofan113]

I love how Republicans to this day like to bring up things like Travelgate, the Monica Lewinsky Scandal and other such scandals and turn a blind eye to some of the bullshit that the current administration has pulled. Lets start with Haliburton. Do any of you remeber the no-bid contract that Haliburton was given? This of course has NOTHING to do with the fact that Dick Cheny used to be CEO. Nobody seems to have a problem with the fact that no ther US company got to bid on this job. The of course youhave the war in Iraq. We went over there because of the WMDs and the links that Iraq had to Al Queda. To this day we have ABSOLUTLY NO SOILD PROOF of any such links and Colin Powell, the only decent member of this admin, admited they will most likely never find wmds. Why you may ask. Cause they were never there. Thats not it either. While its not a scandal, this president LET OSAMA BIN LADEN GET AWAY. Dont kid yourselves. We were so damn close to getting him and then we took all of our troops away to go to war in Iraq for WMDs that werent there. That was the reason for the war. Despite what others might say. In the end Bush will never be held accountable. I think hes gonna win the election and get a lot more soliders killed by putting them in Iraq. Sad but true.

[Lord Worm]

Politics is big business. Would anybody govern a country if there weren't some very real material incentives invovled?

[aerofan113]

Sending soliders to get killed and letting terrorists get away isnt buisness. Its a goddamn crime.

[Shotgun Plasma]

let me guess, this is another "anti-bush" thread but remain hidden code.

[Lord Worm]

Yes, because sending people to die needlessly is only wrong when Bush is doing it.
You saw right through us.

[HereticPB]

Your way of thinking is just so funny. HAHAHA.

And was it Wrong for JFK and LBJ to send teenagers to war in Vietnam and killing over 50,000 people without having a real plan to win the war and leave unlike Bush. It took Nixon to take us out cause there was no way of winning. What about the killing of people at the Cole bombing, the embassy bombings, the 3000 lives of the World Trade center, the lives of many at the Pentagon, The World Trade center in 1993, WWII, the lives lost at Pearl harbor, WWI, The Civil war, The war of 1812, etc.

We went over there because of the WMDs and the links that Iraq had to Al Queda. To this day we have ABSOLUTLY NO SOILD PROOF of any such links and Colin Powell, the only decent member of this admin, admitted they would most likely never find wmds. Why you may ask. Cause they were never there. That’s not it either. While its not a scandal, this president LET OSAMA BIN LADEN GET AWAY. Don’t kid yourselves. We were so damn close to getting him and then we took all of our troops away to go to war in Iraq for WMDs that weren’t there. That was the reason for the war. Despite what others might say. In the end Bush will never be held accountable. I think he is going to win the election and get a lot more soldiers killed by putting them in Iraq. Sad but true.

No links to Al-Queda huh? Except Al Queda training camps inside Iraq as well as support for them via health, food, money. No WMD huh? What about Mustard Gas, botulinum virus, sarin nerve gas, banned scud missles, mobile chemical labs, nuclear materials and bomb making materials underground in the backyard of an Iraqi Scientist's house, Airplanes hidden under the sand. It has also been found out that many of their weapons have been moved out to other countries like Syria and Iran. Also some connection of 911 and the terrorists connected to Saudi Arabia. We had - have troops in Iraq and in Afghanistan. Nobody left.

Like when we got a phone call from Pakistan saying they have Bin Laden but Bill Clinton didn't want any part of that due to the economy doing so well. We could have had him in jail and probably could have prevented 911, Cole bombing, etc. We even had a special force after Bin Laden during Clinton’s term but they were not allowed to assassinate a foreign person due to an American law.

As for Halliburton I don't know much about that. And nobody is perfect.

[aerofan113]

Perfect, theyre criminals Heretic. The company is being investigated now for unlawful practices when Dick Cheny was CEO. Yes, i think it was damn wrong to go to Veitnam. So if your asking me was Keneddy wrong than i say yes. And so is Bush but youll never admit that.

[HereticPB]

Why do you have to argue over stupid shit? They are criminals for being a business. Hmm?, yea, gotcha.

Bush is not wrong for going after a tyrant that has killed his own people, tortured, maimed, shot people in the street at point blank (not personally but ordered). We freed another country from a Hitler-esque person. You do know about Freedom and Liberty right these things that allow you to speak your mind as your doing here. Which was not allowed in Iraq otherwise you would get shot in the head.

Was the intel on weapons wrong? Yes and no, but that is not Bush's fault it is the fault of the CIA for not finding correct and valid information and was like this because of monetary cuts, bad decisions, bad laws by every liberals favorite person Bill Clinton. If it wasn't for his bad decisions and the terrible people that he had surrounding him we could not get to the correct point and path. I don't want to go all in that again.

What happens if tomorrow some of our troops finds a cache of weapons that includes big surpluses of Sarin Gas, nukes, etc. Are you going to turn around and be nice to the President because he was correct? No, more than likely you would come back with some weird ass conspiracy story out of your ass or parrot it from what you heard saying that Bush knew those were there, that he was specifically hiding them, and wanted to unleash the info just before the election so he could be re-elected.

I remember what Powell said when specifically asked about WMDs, specifically nuclear WMD. He stated that they were probably not there. While backing up with that they have already found many things that fit into the WMD category such as the gases and viruses listed above.

It is true there is something wrong with the World today and that wrong involves wild eyed, conspiracy theorized, mass hysterical, socialist left ideals of insanity. :tardbang:

[aerofan113]

Actullay Heretic, your wrong. Im getting used to that now. If we found nukes tommorow i would say, well i was wrong. But we wont. Cause they arent there. Saddam gave up on a nuclear program after the first gulf war.

[Lord Worm]

Socialist insanity? What countries have the world's top rated quality of life?

Norway, (Sweeden) and Canada, in that order. All of which are socialist states. The world's most powerful and richest country comes in sixth. Could that be because a small percentage of the people enjoy all the wealth? Laissez-Faire can Sucez-moi.

[peasantlover]

worm, quote a source or shut up. "quality of life" is incredibly subjective anyway.


Aerofan, there is NO OTHER COMPANY that does what Haliburton is. There is absolutely no alternative than to send Haliburnton in.

Ok.. Heretic, stop bring up JFK.. Vietnam has nothing to do with Iraq.

That being said, he is right. There have, in fact, been numerous ties between terrorists (including Al Quieda) and Iraq that have been proven. You can keep saying there havent been Aero, but that doesnt change the fact that there have been.

[aerofan113]

Show me proof they have been. Cause you are wrong untill you prove otherwise. And maybee in the past there was one or two terrorists that have been there but pick a country in that region where terrorists havent gone. Iran has had 5 times the terrorists in their country. The fact is Al Queda and Saddam Hussien HATED each other. I belive i saw this on either the History channel or another bi-partisan educational show. Ive also seen ppl on news shows saying the same thing. If we went to Iraq cause they had a relationship with a few terrorists than we need to nuke the whole damn region. Iran, Saudia Arabia, Sudan, all have harbored terrorists in the past and still do currently. Why didnt we invade Iraq and take over the country in the first gulf war? Cause he was infinatly more dangerous then. And it was after the gulf war that Saddam gave up on getting a nuke. You want me to change my mind about these things? Show me some links and lemme take a look at your facts.

[HereticPB]

Well this is going to sting but here goes.

Fallen Iraqi President Saddam Hussein did not have stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction, but left signs that he had idle programs he someday hoped to revive, the top U.S. weapons inspector in Iraq concludes in a draft report due out soon.

According to people familiar with the 1,500-page report, the head of the Iraq Survey Group, Charles Duelfer, will find that Saddam was importing banned materials, working on unmanned aerial vehicles in violation of U.N. agreements and maintaining a dual-use industrial sector that could produce weapons.

Duelfer also says Iraq only had small research and development programs for chemical and biological weapons.

As Duelfer puts the finishing touches on his report, he concludes Saddam had intentions of restarting weapons programs at some point, after suspicion and inspections from the international community waned.


After a year and a half in Iraq, however, the United States has found no weapons of mass destruction - its chief argument for going to war and overthrowing the regime.

An intelligence official said Duelfer could wrap up the report as soon as this month, but noted it may take time to declassify it. Those who discussed the report inside and outside the government did so Thursday on the condition of anonymity because it contains classified material and is not yet completed.

If the report is released publicly before the Nov. 2 elections, Democrats are likely to seize on the document as another opportunity to criticize the Bush administration's leading argument for war in Iraq and the deteriorating security situation there.

Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry has criticized the president's handling of the war, but also has said he still would have voted to authorize the invasion even if he had known no weapons of mass destruction would be found there.

Duelfer's report is expected to be similar to findings reported by his predecessor, David Kay, who presented an interim report to Congress in October. Kay left the post in January, saying, "We were almost all wrong" about Saddam's weapons programs.

The new analysis, however, is expected to fall between the position of the Bush administration before the war - portraying Saddam as a grave threat - and the declarative statements Kay made after he resigned.

It will also add more evidence and flesh out Kay's October findings. At that time, Kay said the Iraq Survey Group had only uncovered limited evidence of secret chemical and biological weapons programs, but he found substantial evidence of an Iraqi push to boost the range of its ballistic missiles beyond prohibited ranges.

He also said there was almost no sign that a significant nuclear weapons project was under way.

Duelfer's report doesn't reach firm conclusions in all areas. For instance, U.S. officials are still investigating whether Saddam's fallen regime may have sent chemical weapons equipment and several billion dollars over the border to Syria. That has not been confirmed, but remains an area of interest to the U.S. government.

The Duelfer report will come months after the Senate Intelligence Committee released a scathing assessment of the prewar intelligence on Iraq.

After a yearlong inquiry, the Republican-led committee said in July the CIA kept key information from its own and other agencies' analysts, engaged in "group think" by failing to challenge the assumption that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and allowed President Bush and Secretary of State Colin Powell to make false statements.

The Iraq Survey Group has been working since the summer of 2003 to find Saddam's weapons and better understand his prohibited programs. More than a thousand civilian and military weapons specialists, translators and other experts have been devoted to the effort.

http://apnews.excite.com/article/20040917/D855871G0.html

Why didnt we invade Iraq and take over the country in the first gulf war? Cause he was infinatly more dangerous then. Cause it was against the law to do so at the time.

Peasant it has everything to do with Iraq as the left is accusing Bush of killing people for no reason which is poppycock when obviously a liberal president did kill for no reason or plan. The left never bring that up when they talk about people dying and it is Bush's fault. Majority of people that go into the military think before joining that there is a possibly there may be a war. It is there job. Yes it is sad that people die but it is there job to go to war. The poor that go into the military as last resort know that there might be a war. Why this pissing and moaning over the President going to war. The people in the service know that is a possibility. War!

The fact is Al Queda and Saddam Hussien HATED each other. I belive i saw this on either the History channel or another bi-partisan educational show. Ive also seen ppl on news shows saying the same thing.

That makes it automatically right or correct cause you saw it on TV. Two enemies of a larger enemy usually form a partnership. Germany picked up Italy and Japan cause we were bigger militarily at the time. Ever hear of My enemy of my enemy is my friend.

If we found nukes tommorow i would say, well i was wrong. Ok

HtPB

[HereticPB]

Now to go against the report by the AP.

The shell contained three liters of Sarin -- nearly a gallon. It was a type of shell designed to mix chemical components during flight, which was why the explosion didn't kill anyone (though two soldiers were treated for exposure). Three liters of Sarin is enough, if the components are mixed properly, to realistically kill hundreds, and potentially thousands. A concentration of 100 milligrams of Sarin per cubic meter of air is enough to constitute a lethal dose for half the people breathing it within one minute.

This type of chemical warfare shell had never been declared by Iraq -- it was not even known that Iraq had ever made them. The 1999 UNSCOM report on Iraq reported that thirty binary/Sarin shells were known to exist, and stated that all had been accounted for. According to UNSCOM, "Iraq developed a crude type of binary munition, whereby the final mixing of the two precursors to the agent was done inside the munition just before delivery." Someone actually had to physically pour the components of the Sarin (or other type of G-series nerve agent) into the shells before they could be fired. At least, that's how the ones we knew about worked.

So, a previously-unknown type of artillery shell is found in Iraq, containing an actual, verifiable chemical weapon. This is front page news, right? Should we expect apologies from formerly doubting Liberals? Newspapers filled with retractions from prominent Democrats? Conciliatory visits to President Bush from Jaques Chirac and Gerhardt Schroeder? Not so fast. Remember: it's an election year. Liberals, Democrats, terrorists and appeasers all want President Bush to lose the election so everyone can get back to business as usual. Terrorists want to get back to their implacable war against Western civilisation, and the others want to get back to trying to placate them. The media, as long as we let them get away with it, will only run stories that attack President Bush and undermine support for him. In fact, Liberals already have their spin on this Sarin find ready to go. The vast majority of them -- when you can get them to admit that the Sarin and the shell are real -- argue that it doesn't matter for one of four "reasons."

A. The shell is old, from before the 1991 Gulf War, so it's not what we were looking for.

Since the cease-fire that suspended the Gulf War depended on Saddam's handing over to the UN "[a]ll chemical and biological weapons and all stocks of agents and all related subsystems and components and all research, development, support and manufacturing facilities", this shell is precisely what we were looking for, especially if it predates 1991. This shell and others like it is why the UN passed 17 resolutions demanding that Saddam disarm. No matter how old it was, it was still lethal. There is no statute of limitations on weapons of mass destruction.

B. There is only one shell, not a stockpile, so it doesn't mean anything.

This one shell contained enough WMD material to potentially kill as many people as died on 9/11, all by itself. Is it logical to assume that this is the only one in existence -- or just wishful thinking? The fact is that we still don't know how much Sarin Iraq actually produced. "At first, Iraq told UNSCOM that it had produced an estimated 250 tons of tabun and 812 tons of sarin. In 1995, Iraq changed its estimates and reported it had produced only 210 tons of tabun and 790 tons of sarin." (Yes, that's tons.) At the very least, it tells us that we haven't nearly finished looking for the WMDs that Saddam was supposed to surrender, and didn't. Besides... a shell containing mustard gas was also found. Well, maybe there were only two WMD shells in all of Iraq.

C. Just because Saddam had WMDs after all, it doesn't mean Bush didn't lie about them.

As ridiculous as it sounds, this appears to be the instinctive, defensive reaction of many Liberals to this news. They so badly need to believe that President Bush lied in order to legitimise their hatred of him that they're capable of this sort of twisted reasoning. The rationale seems to be that WMDs don't count if they aren't exactly where the CIA told us they were, as if they couldn't be moved.

D. The terrorists didn't even know it was a chemical shell.

Well, they do now. And they know where they found it, too.

We need to redouble our efforts to stop the terrorists and find Saddam's WMDs, before they're used to derail the new Iraqi government's formation. The media's refusal to give this news the coverage it deserves can only be due to a calculated attempt to reduce American support for our efforts in Iraq, including that of tracking down Saddam's banned weapons. The Left's deliberate silence on this subject for the purpose of influencing our election only helps our enemies.

http://www.mensnewsdaily.com/archive/m-n/mariani/2004/mariani052804.htm
http://news.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=8209

[HereticPB]

Part 2:


Saddam's WMD Have Been Found

New evidence out of Iraq suggests that the U.S. effort to track down Saddam Hussein's missing weapons of mass destruction (WMD) is having better success than is being reported. Key assertions by the intelligence community that were widely judged in the media and by critics of President George W. Bush as having been false are turning out to have been true after all. But this stunning news has received little attention from the major media, and the president's critics continue to insist that "no weapons" have been found.

In virtually every case - chemical, biological, nuclear and ballistic missiles - the United States has found the weapons and the programs that the Iraqi dictator successfully concealed for 12 years from U.N. weapons inspectors.

The Iraq Survey Group (ISG), whose intelligence analysts are managed by Charles Duelfer, a former State Department official and deputy chief of the U.N.-led arms-inspection teams, has found "hundreds of cases of activities that were prohibited" under U.N. Security Council resolutions, a senior administration official tells Insight. "There is a long list of charges made by the U.S. that have been confirmed, but none of this seems to mean anything because the weapons that were unaccounted for by the United Nations remain unaccounted for."

Both Duelfer and his predecessor, David Kay, reported to Congress that the evidence they had found on the ground in Iraq showed Saddam's regime was in "material violation" of U.N. Security Council Resolution 1441, the last of 17 resolutions that promised "serious consequences" if Iraq did not make a complete disclosure of its weapons programs and dismantle them in a verifiable manner. The United States cited Iraq's refusal to comply with these demands as one justification for going to war.

Both Duelfer and Kay found that Iraq had "a clandestine network of laboratories and safe houses with equipment that was suitable to continuing its prohibited chemical- and biological-weapons [BW] programs," the official said. "They found a prison laboratory where we suspect they tested biological weapons on human subjects." They found equipment for "uranium-enrichment centrifuges" whose only plausible use was as part of a clandestine nuclear-weapons program. In all these cases, "Iraqi scientists had been told before the war not to declare their activities to the U.N. inspectors," the official said.

But while the president's critics and the media might plausibly hide behind ambiguity and a lack of sensational-

looking finds for not reporting some discoveries, in the case of Saddam's ballistic-missile programs they have no excuse for their silence. "Where were the missiles? We found them," another senior administration official told Insight.

"Saddam Hussein's prohibited missile programs are as close to a slam dunk as you will ever find for violating United Nations resolutions," the first official said. Both senior administration officials spoke to Insight on condition that neither their name nor their agency be identified, but their accounts of what the United States has found in Iraq coincided in every major area.

When former weapons inspector Kay reported to Congress in January that the United States had found "no stockpiles" of forbidden weapons in Iraq, his conclusions made front-page news. But when he detailed what the ISG had found in testimony before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence last October, few took notice. Among Kay's revelations, which officials tell Insight have been amplified in subsequent inspections in recent weeks:


A prison laboratory complex that may have been used for human testing of BW agents and "that Iraqi officials working to prepare the U.N. inspections were explicitly ordered not to declare to the U.N." Why was Saddam interested in testing biological-warfare agents on humans if he didn't have a biological-weapons program?


"Reference strains" of a wide variety of biological-weapons agents were found beneath the sink in the home of a prominent Iraqi BW scientist. "We thought it was a big deal," a senior administration official said. "But it has been written off [by the press] as a sort of 'starter set.'"


New research on BW-applicable agents, brucella and Congo-Crimean hemorrhagic fever, and continuing work on ricin and aflatoxin that were not declared to the United Nations.


A line of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), or drones, "not fully declared at an undeclared production facility and an admission that they had tested one of their declared UAVs out to a range of 500 kilometers [311 miles], 350 kilometers [217 miles] beyond the permissible limit."


"Continuing covert capability to manufacture fuel propellant useful only for prohibited Scud-variant missiles, a capability that was maintained at least until the end of 2001 and that cooperating Iraqi scientists have said they were told to conceal from the U.N."


"Plans and advanced design work for new long-range missiles with ranges up to at least 1,000 kilometers [621 miles] - well beyond the 150-kilometer-range limit [93 miles] imposed by the U.N. Missiles of a 1,000-kilometer range would have allowed Iraq to threaten targets throughout the Middle East, including Ankara [Turkey], Cairo [Egypt] and Abu Dhabi [United Arab Emirates]."


In addition, through interviews with Iraqi scientists, seized documents and other evidence, the ISG learned the Iraqi government had made "clandestine attempts between late 1999 and 2002 to obtain from North Korea technology related to 1,300-kilometer-range [807 miles] ballistic missiles - probably the No Dong - 300-kilometer-range [186 miles] antiship cruise missiles and other prohibited military equipment," Kay reported.

In testimony before Congress on March 30, Duelfer, revealed that the ISG had found evidence of a "crash program" to construct new plants capable of making chemical- and biological-warfare agents. The ISG also found a previously undeclared program to build a "high-speed rail gun," a device apparently designed for testing nuclear-weapons materials. That came in addition to 500 tons of natural uranium stockpiled at Iraq's main declared nuclear site south of Baghdad, which International Atomic Energy Agency spokesman Mark Gwozdecky acknowledged to Insight had been intended for "a clandestine nuclear-weapons program."

In taking apart Iraq's clandestine procurement network, Duelfer said his investigators had discovered that "the primary source of illicit financing for this system was oil smuggling conducted through government-to-government protocols negotiated with neighboring countries [and] from kickback payments made on contracts set up through the U.N. oil-for-food program" [see "Documents Prove U.N. Oil Corruption," April 27-May 10].

What the president's critics and the media widely have portrayed as the most dramatic failure of the U.S. case against Saddam has been the claimed failure to find "stockpiles" of chemical and biological weapons. But in a June 2003 Washington Post op-ed, former chief U.N. weapons inspector Rolf Ekeus called such criticism "a distortion and a trivialization of a major threat to international peace and security."


Lt. Gen. Amer Rashid al-Obeidi (left) and Lt. Gen. Amer Hamoodi al-Saddi (right) speak to an unidentified French intelligence officer at the Baghdad International Arms Fair in April 1989, and another French officer listens in (behind al-Saadi, facing camera)

The October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate on Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction concluded that Saddam "probably has stocked at least 100 metric tons (MT) and possibly as much as 500 MT of CW [chemical warfare] agents - much of it added in the last year." That assessment was based, in part, on conclusions contained in the final report from U.N. weapons inspectors in 1999, which highlighted discrepancies in what the Iraqis reported to the United Nations and the amount of precursor chemicals U.N. arms inspectors could document Iraq had imported but for which it no longer could account. Until now, Bush's critics say, no stockpiles of CW agents made with those precursors have been found. The snap conclusion they draw is that the administration "lied" to the American people to create a pretext for invading Iraq.

But what are "stockpiles" of CW agents supposed to look like? Was anyone seriously expecting Saddam to have left behind freshly painted warehouses packed with chemical munitions, all neatly laid out in serried rows, with labels written in English? Or did they think that a captured Saddam would guide U.S. troops to smoking vats full of nerve gas in an abandoned factory? In fact, as recent evidence made public by a former operations officer for the Coalition Provisional Authority's (CPA's) intelligence unit in Iraq shows, some of those stockpiles have been found - not all at once, and not all in nice working order - but found all the same.

Douglas Hanson was a U.S. Army cavalry reconnaissance officer for 20 years, and a veteran of Gulf War I. He was an atomic demolitions munitions security officer and a nuclear, biological and chemical defense officer. As a civilian analyst in Iraq last summer, he worked for an operations intelligence unit of the CPA in Iraq, and later, with the newly formed Ministry of Science and Technology, which was responsible for finding new, nonlethal employment for Iraqi WMD scientists.

In an interview with Insight and in an article he wrote for the online magazine AmericanThinker.com, Hanson examines reports from U.S. combat units and public information confirming that many of Iraq's CW stockpiles have indeed been found. Until now, however, journalists have devoted scant attention to this evidence, in part because it contradicts the story line they have been putting forward since the U.S.-led inspections began after the war.

But another reason for the media silence may stem from the seemingly undramatic nature of the "finds" Hanson and others have described. The materials that constitute Saddam's chemical-weapons "stockpiles" look an awful lot like pesticides, which they indeed resemble. "Pesticides are the key elements in the chemical-agent arena," Hanson says. "In fact, the general pesticide chemical formula (organophosphate) is the 'grandfather' of modern-day nerve agents."

The United Nations was fully aware that Saddam had established his chemical-weapons plants under the guise of a permitted civilian chemical-industry infrastructure. Plants inspected in the early 1990s as CW production facilities had been set up to appear as if they were producing pesticides - or in the case of a giant plant near Fallujah, chlorine, which is used to produce mustard gas.

When coalition forces entered Iraq, "huge warehouses and caches of 'commercial and agricultural' chemicals were seized and painstakingly tested by Army and Marine chemical specialists," Hanson writes. "What was surprising was how quickly the ISG refuted the findings of our ground forces and how silent they have been on the significance of these caches."

Caches of "commercial and agricultural" chemicals don't match the expectation of "stockpiles" of chemical weapons. But, in fact, that is precisely what they are. "At a very minimum," Hanson tells Insight, "they were storing the precursors to restart a chemical-warfare program very quickly." Kay and Duelfer came to a similar conclusion, telling Congress under oath that Saddam had built new facilities and stockpiled the materials to relaunch production of chemical and biological weapons at a moment's notice.


At Karbala, U.S. troops stumbled upon 55-gallon drums of pesticides at what appeared to be a very large "agricultural supply" area, Hanson says. Some of the drums were stored in a "camouflaged bunker complex" that was shown to reporters - with unpleasant results. "More than a dozen soldiers, a Knight-Ridder reporter, a CNN cameraman, and two Iraqi POWs came down with symptoms consistent with exposure to a nerve agent," Hanson says. "But later ISG tests resulted in a proclamation of negative, end of story, nothing to see here, etc., and the earlier findings and injuries dissolved into nonexistence. Left unexplained is the small matter of the obvious pains taken to disguise the cache of ostensibly legitimate pesticides. One wonders about the advantage an agricultural-commodities business gains by securing drums of pesticide in camouflaged bunkers 6 feet underground. The 'agricultural site' was also colocated with a military ammunition dump - evidently nothing more than a coincidence in the eyes of the ISG."

That wasn't the only significant find by coalition troops of probable CW stockpiles, Hanson believes. Near the northern Iraqi town of Bai'ji, where Saddam had built a chemical-weapons plant known to the United States from nearly 12 years of inspections, elements of the 4th Infantry Division found 55-gallon drums containing a substance identified through mass spectrometry analysis as cyclosarin - a nerve agent. Nearby were surface-to-surface and surface-to-air missiles, gas masks and a mobile laboratory that could have been used to mix chemicals at the site. "Of course, later tests by the experts revealed that these were only the ubiquitous pesticides that everybody was turning up," Hanson says. "It seems Iraqi soldiers were obsessed with keeping ammo dumps insect-free, according to the reading of the evidence now enshrined by the conventional wisdom that 'no WMD stockpiles have been discovered.'"

At Taji - an Iraqi weapons complex as large as the District of Columbia - U.S. combat units discovered more "pesticides" stockpiled in specially built containers, smaller in diameter but much longer than the standard 55-gallon drum. Hanson says he still recalls the military sending digital images of the canisters to his office, where his boss at the Ministry of Science and Technology translated the Arabic-language markings. "They were labeled as pesticides," he says. "Gee, you sure have got a lot of pesticides stored in ammo dumps."

Again, this January, Danish forces found 120-millimeter mortar shells filled with a mysterious liquid that initially tested positive for blister agents. But subsequent tests by the United States disputed that finding. "If it wasn't a chemical agent, what was it?" Hanson asks. "More pesticides? Dish-washing detergent? From this old soldier's perspective, I gain nothing from putting a liquid in my mortar rounds unless that stuff will do bad things to the enemy."

The discoveries Hanson describes are not dramatic. And that's the problem: Finding real stockpiles in grubby ammo dumps doesn't fit the image the media and the president's critics carefully have fed to the public of what Iraq's weapons ought to look like.


A senior administration official who has gone through the intelligence reporting from Iraq as well as the earlier reports from U.N. arms inspectors refers to another well-documented allegation. "The Iraqis admitted they had made 3.9 tons of VX," a powerful nerve gas, but claimed they had never weaponized it. The U.N. inspectors "felt they had more. But where did it go?" The Iraqis never provided any explanation of what had happened to their VX stockpiles.

What does 3.9 tons of VX look like? "It could fit in one large garage," the official says. Assuming, of course, that Saddam would assemble every bit of VX gas his scientists had produced at a single site, that still amounts to one large garage in an area the size of the state of California.

Senior administration officials stress that the investigation will continue as inspectors comb through millions of pages of documents in Iraq and attempt to interview Iraqi weapons scientists who have been trained all their professional lives to conceal their activities from the outside world.

"The conditions under which the ISG is working are not very conducive," one official said. "But this president wants the truth to come out. This is not an exercise in spinning or censoring."

http://www.insightmag.com/main.cfm?include=detail&storyid=670120

[HereticPB]

Part 3:


Iraqi Weapons in Syria

On Dec. 24, 2002, nearly three months before fighting in Iraq began, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon accused Saddam Hussein's regime of transferring key materials for his weapons of mass destruction (WMD) programs to Syria in convoys of 18-wheel trucks to hide them from U.N. weapons inspectors. "There is information we are verifying, but we are certain that Iraq has recently moved chemical or biological weapons into Syria," Sharon told Channel Two television in Israel.

Before talking about this on Israeli television, Sharon gave detailed information to the Bush White House on what Israel knew and what it suspected. Insight has learned, however, that once the information was handed over to the U.S. intelligence community, officials at the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) swept it aside as lacking credibility.

In May 2003, just as major combat operations in Iraq were winding down, new reports surfaced in Israel, this time alleging that convoys of Iraqi water tankers carrying WMD components crossed the border into Syria repeatedly between Jan. 10 and March 10. The tankers reportedly were met by Syrian special forces and escorted to the heroin poppy fields of a Syrian-controlled area in Lebanon's Bekáa Valley, where their contents were dumped into specially prepared pits and buried. Again, INR discounted the reports, U.S. officials tell Insight.

Reports of Iraqi WMD winding up in Syria were not just coming from the Israelis. In October 2003, retired Air Force Lt. Gen. James Clapper, head of the National Imagery and Mapping Agency, revealed that vehicle traffic photographed by U.S. spy satellites indicated that material and documents related to Saddam's forbidden WMD programs had been shipped to Syria before the war. It was no surprise that the United States and its allies had not found stockpiles of forbidden weapons in Iraq, Clapper told a breakfast briefing given to reporters in Washington. "Those below the senior leadership saw what was coming, and I think they went to extraordinary lengths to dispose of the evidence," he said.

"We have had six or seven credible reports of Iraqi weapons being moved into Syria before the war," a senior administration official tells Insight. "In every case, the U.S. intelligence community sought to discount or discredit those reports."

This January, after he returned to Washington from Iraq, where for six months he had served as the CIA's top gun with the Iraq Survey Group hunting for Saddam's banned weapons, David Kay said he had uncovered evidence that weapons material had been moved to Syria shortly before the war. "We are not talking about a large stockpile of weapons," he told the Sunday Telegraph in London. "But we know from some of the interrogations of former Iraqi officials that a lot of material went to Syria before the war, including some components of Saddam's WMD program. Precisely what went to Syria, and what has happened to it, is a major issue that needs to be resolved."

Another piece of this puzzle was provided by a Syrian intelligence officer in letters smuggled to an antiregime activist living in Paris named Nizar Nayouf. In one letter the source identified three locations in Syria where WMD materials had been buried under an agreement between the Syrian and Iraqi leadership. Two of the sites were specially dug underground bunkers and tunnels. The third site was a factory operated by the Syrian air force in the village of Tal Sinan, located between the cities of Hama and Salimiyyah. In a follow-up letter dated Jan. 7, Nayouf's source provided more details on these locations, along with a map, and alleged that some of the weapons had been moved out of Iraq in ambulances.

So are Saddam's WMD stockpiles in Syria? When Insight asked the CIA if it was investigating these and other reports, a spokesman acknowledged there was "some evidence that way" and that the United States was "looking at all types of possibilities," but vigorously discouraged further inquiries. Administration officials tell Insight that the refusal to report on Syria's complicity with Saddam's regime stems from a "pro-Syria bias in the State Department and some elements of the intelligence community, whose threshold for evidence on Syria is suspiciously high."

Shoshana Bryen regularly escorts groups of retired U.S. military flag officers (admirals and generals) to Israel for meetings with senior Israeli political and military leaders, as well as intelligence officials. "We went to Israel just before the war and just after," she tells Insight. "Both times, Israeli intelligence officials told us, yes, WMD were definitely in Iraq, and that they had been sent to Syria." The Bush administration was trying to downplay these reports, she believes, "because if Iraqi weapons are in Syria, we're going to have to do something about it, and they don't want another war."

http://www.insightmag.com/main.cfm?include=detail&storyid=670123

[HereticPB]

Part 4:

The United Nations has determined that Saddam Hussein shipped weapons of mass destruction components as well as medium-range ballistic missiles before, during and after the U.S.-led war against Iraq in 2003.

The UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission briefed the Security Council on new findings that could help trace the whereabouts of Saddam's missile and WMD program.

The briefing contained satellite photographs that demonstrated the speed with which Saddam dismantled his missile and WMD sites before and during the war. Council members were shown photographs of a ballistic missile site outside Baghdad in May 2003, and then saw a satellite image of the same location in February 2004, in which facilities had disappeared.

UNMOVIC acting executive chairman Demetrius Perricos told the council on June 9 that "the only controls at the borders are for the weight of the scrap metal, and to check whether there are any explosive or radioactive materials within the scrap," Middle East Newsline reported. "It's being exported," Perricos said after the briefing. "It's being traded out. And there is a large variety of scrap metal from very new to very old, and slowly, it seems the country is depleted of metal."

"The removal of these materials from Iraq raises concerns with regard to proliferation risks," Perricos told the council. Perricos also reported that inspectors found Iraqi WMD and missile components shipped abroad that still contained UN inspection tags.
He said the Iraqi facilities were dismantled and sent both to Europe and around the Middle East. at the rate of about 1,000 tons of metal a month. Destionations included Jordan, the Netherlands and Turkey.

The Baghdad missile site contained a range of WMD and dual-use components, UN officials said. They included missile components, reactor vessel and fermenters – the latter required for the production of chemical and biological warheads.
"It raises the question of what happened to the dual-use equipment, where is it now and what is it being used for," Ewen Buchanan, Perricos's spokesman, said. "You can make all kinds of pharmaceutical and medicinal products with a fermenter. You can also use it to breed anthrax."

The UNMOVIC report said Iraqi missiles were dismantled and exported to such countries as Jordan, the Netherlands and Turkey. In the Dutch city of Rotterdam, an SA-2 surface-to-air missile, one of at least 12, was discovered in a junk yard, replete with UN tags. In Jordan, UN inspectors found 20 SA-2 engines as well as components for solid-fuel for missiles.

"The problem for us is that we don't know what may have passed through these yards and other yards elsewhere," Buchanan said. "We can't really assess the significance and don't know the full extent of activity that could be going on there or with others of Iraq's neighbors."
UN inspectors have assessed that the SA-2 and the short-range Al Samoud surface-to-surface missile were shipped abroad by agents of the Saddam regime. Buchanan said UNMOVIC plans to inspect other sites, including in Turkey.

In April, International Atomic Energy Agency director-general Mohammed El Baradei said material from Iraqi nuclear facilities were being smuggled out of the country.

http://www.worldtribune.com/worldtribune/breaking_1.html

[HereticPB]

Part 5:
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=21497

[Shotgun Plasma]

wow....got me felling asleep reading all that.

[Mirai]

Heretic, I think it is counter-active making 5 long-ass posts one after the other. You can't make a point if nobody can be bothered to read it.

[aerofan113]

It was agaisnt the law to go to war with Iraq and invade? The invade another country for no reason. Now this time we invaded the country for no reason whatsoever. We kicked the UN weapons inspectors out so we could unlawfully got to war. And dont give me this GW Bush crap about doing what was in the best interest of the country. CCause at the time Iran, Saudia Arabia, and Korea were way more of a threat. The fact is that we went to war without the consent of the UN cause there were weapons of mass destructions. Now Bush is making up all kinds of excuses as to why we went to war. Heretic, since when did you start taking what the UN said seriously. And it does matter if i saw it on the History channel. Weather or not you belive me is irrelevant. Ill try to find a link to the show though.

[aerofan113]

“By December 1998, Iraq had in fact been disarmed to a level unprecedented in modern history.” - Scott Ritter, UNSCOM Chief Weapons Inspector

There ya go heretic. Since you take what the UN has to say so seriously.

[Mach]

let me guess, this is another "anti-bush" thread but remain hidden code.
LMAO, another classic Shotgun quote!

Oh, and Aerofan, the only problem with the world today is that it has too many whiny anti-American and anti-moral idiotic socialist liberals running their mouths making life miserable for others.

[HereticPB]

It was against the law to assassinate a foreign head of state like Saddam. First we had no interest to go into Iraq we where making Saddam get out of Kuwait. Saddam was starting a Hitler move of taking over countries one by one The law has since be eradicated.

It was against the law to go to war with Iraq and invade? The invade another country for no reason. Now this time we invaded the country for no reason whatsoever. We kicked the UN weapons inspectors out so we could unlawfully got to war. And don’t give me this GW Bush crap about doing what was in the best interest of the country. Cause at the time Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Korea were way more of a threat. The fact is that we went to war without the consent of the UN cause there were weapons of mass destructions. Now Bush is making up all kinds of excuses as to why we went to war. Heretic, since when did you start taking what the UN said seriously. And it does matter if I saw it on the History channel. Weather or not you believe me is irrelevant. I'll try to find a link to the show though.


Went to war without consent huh? How about 17 UN resolutions, How about Resolution 1441 to Iraq to talk about their weapons or face dire consequences all members of the UN voted for it unanimously. When there are facts backing the UN is when I use them as backup.

We kicked the UN inspectors out cause they were not doing their job. The UN inspectors told Iraq when and where the inspection would take place so any smart criminal would move the items out before the inspectors came which is what happened. The inspectors came in the front door while Iraqis were carting off the products in trucks out the back door towards other weapon hideouts or in Syria or Lebanon.

“By December 1998, Iraq had in fact been disarmed to a level unprecedented in modern history.” - Scott Ritter, UNSCOM Chief Weapons Inspector
I didn't post that. I can’t believe you would post that after those 5 articles of facts. Also, that is a quote of his opinion not based on facts. Because obviously he had/has Scud missiles, gases, and toxins cause they have been found.

North Korea is not a threat. They try to black mail countries with false stories of Nukes and attacks.

And it does matter if I saw it on the History channel. Weather or not you believe me is irrelevant. I'll try to find a link to the show though. Yes it does because GE, which owns NBC, which are highly liberal, owns the History channel.

You don't believe that many people care about other beings in another land? You don't believe that there is good in the world? You don't believe in living in Liberty and Freedom. What is so wrong with giving freedom to countries that can't get away from a dictatorship, a totalitarian government that rules with an iron fist and kills people for speaking their minds.

aerofan my young friend you need to smarten up and do some real research and not parrot what other people say or what you hear from ABC,NBC,CBS, and CNN.

I have facts. You have rhetoric as insincere or grandiloquent language with obsessed fits of fury and rage with sprinkles of infatuated insanity. You are crooked, askew and unsound you should not argue without determined and sound facts.

[aerofan113]

North Korea is not a threat? Thats just stupid. Any country with an insane and seniale dictator that we know IS CLOSE TO OR HAS NUKES is a threat. How can you possibly make the claim that Iraq was a threat and North Korea is not?? Back that up for me please. Im sorry if im the only one here that doesnt feel like reading your three page copy and paste. Shorten it up a bit.

[aerofan113]

You don't believe that many people care about other beings in another land? You don't believe that there is good in the world? You don't believe in living in Liberty and Freedom. What is so wrong with giving freedom to countries that can't get away from a dictatorship, a totalitarian government that rules with an iron fist and kills people for speaking their minds.

aerofan my young friend you need to smarten up and do some real research and not parrot what other people say or what you hear from ABC,NBC,CBS, and CNN.

I have facts. You have rhetoric as insincere or grandiloquent language with obsessed fits of fury and rage with sprinkles of infatuated insanity. You are crooked, askew and unsound you should not argue without determined and sound facts.

Ok Heretic, for posting this you are offically the most idiotic and extreme person in here. Viper, Peasentlover, they bring me facts. I dont have time to read your three page essay so please shorten it. You seriously disgust me. What facts do you have. Im sorry i dont have you years of experience...wait your a 24 year old smart ass. Discussing politics is one thing but this is a personal attack on me. You should be ashamed of yourself and I would like an apology although i know i wont get one. You think i dont belive in liberty? WTF are you talking about?

[HereticPB]

Because Iraq has weapons and NK does not.

You can't shorten facts. That is the problem with society now everybody is so fucking stupid and can't read they don't know what is going on.

[The Dude]

Sending soliders to get killed and letting terrorists get away isnt buisness. Its a goddamn crime.


Those soilders want to go and fight. No one makes you join the Armed forces in America.


The World is so niave to the real threat of today. We can't just stand by and let shit happen. If we dont take a powerfull swing at terrorism know one will. Sometimes the hardest thing to do is what is right. I believe people put way to much trust in their goernment.

[Lord Worm]

The world's top-ranked countries for Quality of Life is a yearly report published by the UN.

http://www.undp.org/hdr2001/clips/norway.pdf

This is an older report, from 2001. The newer report (I can't find the direct UN link) puts Norway, Sweeden and Canada in 1st, 2nd and 3rd, and US in 6th.

I agree with Quality of Life being subjective. But there had to be some standardized method in determining it.

[aerofan113]

They dont have a say in how they are used. Its up to the president to use good judgement. I my opinon going to war in iraq wasnt good judgement.

[aerofan113]

Because Iraq has weapons and NK does not.

You can't shorten facts. That is the problem with society now everybody is so fucking stupid and can't read they don't know what is going on.

North Korea has nukes or is very close to them. Name the weapons we found after our invasion heretic? We found nothing of wmd calliber. Just a bunch of crappy scud missles. Not all people are fucking stupid. But its nice to know theres pricks like you to call others names when they dont agree with you.

[The Dude]

North Korea has nukes or is very close to them. Name the weapons we found after our invasion heretic? We found nothing of wmd calliber. Just a bunch of crappy scud missles. Not all people are fucking stupid. But its nice to know theres pricks like you to call others names when they dont agree with you.

We have only been in Iraq for a few years. Slowly but surely we will find out what was really happening in Iraq. It may take a few decades as it did in Nazi Germany, until we knowthe complete story

[Lord Worm]

Yeah, sure. At 8 billion dollars per year, we can have a nice leisurely stroll through the desert.

[HereticPB]

In fact one year and a couple of months. A year and people are bitching about it!

[Lord Worm]

Well, mainly because that money comes from us, the tax payers. How would you like to pay that much tax for welfare? I'd bet you wouldn't like paying more welfare.

[peasantlover]

eh, North Korea does have nukes Heretic. The Clinton administration gave them to them.

[HereticPB]

Reactors, yes. Nukes, maybe. Stupid of Bubba aint it.

[Viper]

Aero, do me a favor. I know it's a lot to read and look over but please read what was pasted. It tells you exactly what I've been telling you for a year now. I wasn't lieing to you. I've been trying to get you to see the truth and it's there. It even explains why the media hasn't been covering it.

North Korea is a very real threat. There is no disputing that but you have to accept that so was Iraq. Why do you believe NK is a threat but not Iraq? I don't understand that part other than the fact that NK flaunts their capability in the streets while Iraq just denies it has them.

Please don't be afraid to have been wrong. There won't be requests for apologies. There is no 'I told you so' just a friendly internet shake and an understanding that we need to finish the job and look to the next threat.

Just read it, please.

[plebben]

Politics is big business. Would anybody govern a country if there weren't some very real material incentives invovled?
Yes. those people with nothing but political and humane motivation in this world are probably very hard to find. But somewhere there are those who are pure in heart and soul(think of a good symphonic moviescore in the background).

[Sandman]

Lets start with Haliburton. Do any of you remeber the no-bid contract that Haliburton was given? This of course has NOTHING to do with the fact that Dick Cheny used to be CEO. Nobody seems to have a problem with the fact that no ther US company got to bid on this job. I don't know alot about Haliburton, however there are not many companies (if any) that do what they do. To not give them the bid JUST BECAUSE the Vice President was the former CEO is ridiculous, and that's what you're asking. Maybe Haliburton was the best for the job?

The of course youhave the war in Iraq. We went over there because of the WMDs and the links that Iraq had to Al Queda. To this day we have ABSOLUTLY NO SOILD PROOF of any such links and Colin Powell, the only decent member of this admin, admited they will most likely never find wmds. Why you may ask. Cause they were never there. Well, if you read the links Heretic posted, you'd find that you're wrong. Sure, we haven't found incredibly large stockpiles of nukes, but we have found WMDs. We have found illegal weapons. We ousted Saddam who had been killing his own people and people of other countries for years.

Thats not it either. While its not a scandal, this president LET OSAMA BIN LADEN GET AWAY. Dont kid yourselves. We were so damn close to getting him and then we took all of our troops away to go to war in Iraq for WMDs that werent there. That was the reason for the war. Despite what others might say. In the end Bush will never be held accountable. I think hes gonna win the election and get a lot more soliders killed by putting them in Iraq. Sad but true.Okay, now that's just the dumbest thing I've heard today.

1. We did not take troops out of Afghanistan to move them into Iraq.
2. George Bush let him get away? Or perhaps we have no fucking clue where he is, and no, that's not George Bush's fault. George Bush isn't the head of intelligence.
3. A more relevant statement would be to say that Bill Clinton let Osama get away.



And aerofan, why the fuck do you get so god damned worked up over politics? I think you'll probably have a heart attack if you take everything in life as seriously as you take politics.

[Mach]

Notice how the people that were strongly opposed to war against Iraq were countries in the UN like Germany and France. Now it's being discovered why they were really against the war. It's because they were aiding the brutal dictator Hussein himself. France provided the ammunition for Iraq that ended up killing American soldiers.