We ALSO know that in the early 1970s, Iraq’s dictator Saddam Hussein ordered the creation of a clandestine Nuclear Weapons Program (WMD). http://www.iraqwatch.org/perspectives/bas-hamza-iraqnuke-10-98.htm It all started when France agreed to provide Iraq with a MTR nuclear reactor system without requiring Iraq to subject themselves to International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) supervision. (how dumb was THAT?!) Despite Iraqi claims that the plant was for peaceful use, it was an unusual choice. The MTR design is useful for countries with established nuclear reactor construction programs, being used to test and analyse the effects of neutron flux upon metals used in reactor components. However, MTR is not particularly useful to countries which have no established reactor programs, unless they are interested in transmuting U238 to Pu239 to make a bomb, via the high neutron flux characteristic of an MTR.
Furthermore, Iraq was a leading oil and natural gas supplier, so their need for nuclear energy seemed unlikely.
We know Saddam’s Nuclear Weapon Program went mostly undetected until the first Gulf war in 1991. After the conclusion of the first Gulf War, and many subsequent high-level defections, the extent of this Nuclear Weapons program becomes pretty well known. Since the end of the Gulf War in 1991, the U.N. Special Commission (UNSCOM) and the International Atomic Energy Agency Action Team have spent tens of thousands of man-hours deciphering the secrets of Iraq’s clandestine nuclear weapons program and dismantling its components. The Action Team eventually came to a pretty thorough understanding of the program, which was far-reaching and well funded. Until 1995, Iraq denied having had any serious intention of building nuclear weapons, despite abundant evidence to the contrary uncovered by Action Team investigations. Then, after Hussein Kamel, Saddam’s son-in-law and head of the Ministry of Industry and Military Industrialization, defected in August 1995, his revelations about the scope and intensity of the nuclear weapons program threatened the credibility of the government’s denial. The United Nations Security Commission On Iraq (UNSCOM), in fulfillment of the U.N. Security Council mandate, began regular inspections to eliminate Iraq’s nuclear weapons program. Then in 1998 Saddam becomes increasingly uncooperative with UNSCOM to the point that Scott Ritter resigned his position as UN weapons inspector and sharply criticized the Clinton administration and the U.N. Security Council for not being vigorous enough about insisting that Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction be destroyed. Ritter also accused U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan of assisting Iraqi efforts at impeding UNSCOM’s work. "Iraq is not disarming", Ritter said on August 27, 1998, and in a second statement, "Iraq retains the capability to launch a chemical strike." UNSCOM was summarily pulled out of Iraq. This left the final status of Iraq’s Nuclear Weapons Program unknown for 4 years. Scott Ritter remarked that Iraq could "reconstitute chemical biological
weapons, long-range ballistic missiles to deliver these weapons, and
even certain aspects of their nuclear weaponization program."
President Bush was sworn into office in January 2001. Islamic militants carried out the worst ever attack on the West on September 11 later that same year by hijacking three fully loaded/fueled commercial airliners and flying them into the Pentagon and The World Trade Centers (a fourth is foiled mid-flight and crashes in afield, killing the passengers). All told, more than 3,000 innocent Americans are killed with another 6,300 injured. The U.N. inspections in Iraq resumed on 27 November 2002 under threat of an attack by the United States. In multiple reports during late 2002 through 2003 the UN inspectors claimed that Iraq had no nuclear weapons capacity (some feel this was to
forestall an invasion). htttp://www.un.org/News/dh/iraq/elbaradei27jan03.htm
Yet this month the AP has issued a story about the removal of 550 metric tons of "yellowcake" — the seed material for higher-grade nuclear enrichment — from the well known nuclear weapons lab south of Baghdad. AP Iraq Yellowcake Removal Story
Hasn’t the Bush administration maintained that Saddam Hussein had materials for making nukes, and wasn’t this indeed materials
for making nukes? Sounds like enough material for over 100 nukes! Colin Powell, Bush and Cheney were called liars regarding Saddam’s abilities and desires for nuclear weaponry, and the
Democrats along with their press sympathizers quickly joined the chorus, that "Bush lied" about Uranium.
Add to this that US planes were being fired at virtually every day within the “No-Fly” zones in Iraq. Saddam broke every part of the 1991 ceasefire.
He defied repeated UN resolutions. He interfered with UNSCOM inspectors. He corrupted “Oil for Food”. He supported and had undeniable links to terrorists. He had over a year to come to terms. The US Congress voted for military action. Of the 23 “Whereas..” clauses in the resolution, only 2 dealt with WMD anyway. The "known" sources (and still unaccounted for) were very much a factor in
our decision to go to war as well:
* 50 deployed Al-Samoud 2 missiles
* Various equipment, including vehicles, engines and warheads, related to the AS2 missiles
* 2 large propellant casting chambers
* 14 155 mm shells filled with mustard gas, the mustard gas totaling approximately 49 litres and still at high purity
* Approximately 500 ml of thiodiglycol
* Some 122 mm chemical warheads
* Some chemical equipment
* 224.6 kg of expired growth media
So the U.S. invades Iraq, and summarily captures Saddam Hussein. On October 3, 2003, the world digests David Kay’s Iraq Survey Group report that finds no stockpiles of WMD in Iraq, although it states the government intended to develop more weapons with additional capabilities. Weapons inspectors in Iraq do find some "biological laboratories" and a collection of "reference strains", including a strain of botulinum bacteria, "ought to have been declared to the UN." Kay testifies that Iraq had not fully complied with UN inspections. In some cases, equipment and materials subject to UN monitoring had been kept hidden from UN inspectors. "So there was a WMD program. It was going ahead. It was rudimentary in many areas", Kay would say in a later interview. In other cases, Iraq had simply lied to the UN in its weapons programs. In David Kay’s statement on the interim report of the ISG, the following paragraphs are found:
"We have not yet found stocks of weapons, but we are not yet at the point where we can say definitively either that such weapon stocks do not exist or that they existed before the war and our only task is to find where they have gone. We are actively engaged in searching for such weapons based on information being supplied to us by Iraqis."
"With regard to delivery systems, the ISG team has discovered sufficient evidence to date to conclude that the Iraqi regime was committed to delivery system improvements that would have, if Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) had not occurred, dramatically breached UN restrictions placed on Iraq after the 1991 Gulf War."
"ISG has gathered testimony from missile designers at Al Kindi State Company that Iraq has reinitiated work on converting SA-2 Surface-to-Air Missiles into ballistic missiles with a range goal of about 250 km. Engineering work was reportedly underway in early 2003, despite the presence of the U.N. Inspectors. This program was not declared to the UN."
"ISG has developed multiple sources of testimony, which is corroborated in part by a captured document, that Iraq undertook a program aimed at increasing the HY-2′s range and permitting its use as a land-attack missile. These efforts extended the HY-2′s range from its original 100 km to 150-180km. Ten modified missiles were delivered to the military prior to Operation Iraqi Freedom and two of these were fired from Umm Qasr during Operation Iraqi Freedom — one was shot down and one hit Kuwait."
Another notable statement is the following:
"We have discovered dozens of WMD-related program activities and significant amounts of equipment that Iraq concealed from the United Nations during the inspections that began in late 2002."
In a January 26, 2004 interview with Tom Brokaw of NBC news, Mr. Kay described Iraq’s nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons programs as being in a "rudimentary" stage. He also stated that "What we did find, and as others are investigating it, we found a lot of terrorist groups and individuals that passed through Iraq." In responding to a question by Mr. Brokaw as to whether Iraq was a "gathering threat" as President Bush had asserted before the invasion, Mr. Kay answered:
"Tom, an imminent threat is a political judgment. It’s not a technical judgment. I think Baghdad was actually becoming more dangerous in the last two years than even we realized. Saddam was not controlling the society any longer. In the marketplace of terrorism and of WMD, Iraq well could have been that supplier if the war had not intervened. "
Makes the stupid little mantra "Bush lied…." sound exponentially more retarded, doesn’t it?!
————
Speaking of lies, on to some absolutely ABHORRENT liars:
http://www.slate.com/id/2103795/
Plame’s Lame Game
What Ambassador Joseph Wilson and his wife forgot to tell us about the yellow-cake scandal.
By Christopher Hitchens
Posted Tuesday, July 13, 2004, at 12:27 PM ET
Two
recent reports allow us to revisit one of the great non-stories, and
one of the great missed stories, of the Iraq war argument. The
non-story is the alleged martyrdom of Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Wilson,
supposed by many to have suffered cruel exposure for their commitment
to the truth. The missed story is the increasing evidence that Niger,
in West Africa, was indeed the locus of an illegal trade in uranium ore
for rogue states including Iraq.
The Senate’s report on
intelligence failures would appear to confirm, despite her denials, that Valerie Plame did
recommend her husband Joseph Wilson for the mission to Niger. (shocker, I know…) In a memo
written to a deputy chief in the CIA’s Directorate of Operations, she
asserted that Wilson had "good relations with both the Prime Minister
and the former Minister of Mines [of Niger], not to mention lots of
French contacts." This makes a poor fit with Wilson’s claim, in a
recent book, that "Valerie had nothing to do with the matter. She
definitely had not proposed that I make the trip." (It incidentally
seems that she was able to recommend him for the trip because of the
contacts he’d made on an earlier trip, for which she had also proposed
him.)
Wilson’s earlier claim to the Washington Post that, in the
CIA reports and documents on the Niger case, "the dates were wrong and
the names were wrong," was also false, according to the Senate report.
The relevant papers were not in CIA hands until eight months after he
made his trip. Wilson now lamely says he may have "misspoken" on this.
(See Susan Schmidt’s article in the July 10 Washington Post.)
——————
In a 7/11/2008 Patriot Post (http://patriotpost.us/ )
Critics
of the Iraq War have been quick to point out that the UN already knew
about Saddam’s yellowcake, and that it was purchased before the 1991
Gulf War, but such arguments are meaningless in view of the Duelfer
Report’s conclusion that Saddam was trying to get sanctions lifted in
order to resume his WMD program.
In addition, there was
Saddam’s penchant for thwarting UN weapon inspectors. Had sanctions
been lifted with Hussein still in power, no honest person can dismiss
the likelihood of a nuclear arms race between Iraq and its primary
enemy, Iran. Moreover, British and U.S. intelligence agencies still
maintain that Iraq was interested in buying more yellowcake from Niger
in 1999, despite denials of Leftist celebrity Joseph Wilson.
Speaking
of Wilson, his lies were further exposed this week with the release of
a formerly classified CIA document. According to the document, “super
secret agent” Valerie Plame did in fact suggest that the CIA send her
husband to Niger to sort out what she called “this crazy report” about
Iraqi efforts to buy uranium.
Under oath, Plame told Congress
that she made no such recommendation, and Wilson himself has insisted
that Valerie had nothing to do with his little excursion. Somehow we
doubt that the Democrat-controlled Congress will call Plame back in to
explain herself. But no matter: The world is safer without Saddam
Hussein and his nuclear ambitions, and America is no doubt safer
without Valerie Plame at the CIA or Joseph Wilson at the State
Department.
——————–
Saddam Hussein’s record of arrogance and aggression speaks for itself. For example:
- his use of Chemical/Biological WMD in his war with Iran
- his use of Chemical/Biological WMD against Kurds in
Iraq - his invasion of Kuwait
- his SCUD missile strikes on Saudi Arabia and Israel
- his imprisonment, torture, rape and murder of Iraqi citizens and others for
decades - his acquisition of military equipment and supplies from France, Germany and Russia
- his harboring of terrorists in Iraq
for years leading up to 2003 - his defiance of UN sanctions
including hiding WMD materials from international inspectors - his jet fighter
aircraft buried in the Iraqi deserts - his likely movement of WMD materials from
Iraq to at least Syria (perhaps explaining Syria’s
attempts to obtain launch vehicles/missiles from North Korea, and the materialization of the nuclear processing facility in Syria which was summarily destroyed by Israel in 2007)
