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Another report of WMDs found in Iraq

In all fairness to Joe, the problem I had originally was only with the way he phrased what he was saying.  I didn't like to hear "...everyone knows that..." when he was talking about something that is partly opinion rather than necessarily fact.  Unless you're talking about something that is universally accepted (the sky is blue, the earth is round, the Air Force is better than the Army ;D, etc) you have to make sure you're clear in only representing your viewpoint or particular side of a debate.

Whether there's any truth to the statements on the CIA, well, that's a whole other can of worms that I don't want to touch!
 
Joe

You know what...Maybe its true and maybe its not.

What I was trying to get across to you is that people seem to like being forcefed by their school and by the media. The media do NOT tell the truth...or if they do its slanted to give the impression of something other than what it is. Remember they are in business to SELL something. That doesn't happen by telling the plain, unvarnished truth. Many times reporters will MAKE THINGS UP so they can sell papers. People rarely check the facts...thats what makes the media so dangerous as a tool of influence.

For instance what you're hearing about Iraq is not the truth...at least not all of it. Don't take my word for it...Go and dig for yourself.

As for schools...Well I know some (if not almost all) of the Profs are anti-Government and often demand that their students share their views or not pass the course.

I am not going to tell you whats right and whats wrong...I want you to actually look, and be aware of the sources that you're using and what influence and or deceit they may use in order to achieve their desired aim.

Now do you understand when I say "don't let anyone else do your thinking for you?!"

Slim

P.S. Garbageman you're a dirty bugger!! :D
 
As for these WMD's, I have always believed they exist or exsited, and one day some proper evidence will be found (they never found the Paris Gun did they, its still buried somewhere in France, and that was 1918).

Then to see what all the polititians will have to say, and all the other doubters and the anti war mentality snivel liberatrians.


Cheers,

Wes
 
Well, it's safe to say I've definatly gained some "Food for Thought" from all of this.  :o

I know that you can only believe about 25% of what the media shits out, and the rest is left to guessing. But that's the problem, there's no damn accountibility and too much guess work!

Anyway,

Thanks for the input folks
 
I will admit most of the information I've attained/retained has come from news etc, in regards to this thread.

There is your first problem.

But as experienced people who possibly have had interactions with US military, you DO think Saddam has sizeable WMD? Or, lets say YES, he did have them, lots of them. Would this constitute going to war with them and raping thier entire country? Before this war, apparrently the people of Iraq used to have running water and electricity which is pretty hard to find there now days apparrently.

Ask the Kurds or the Iranians about those WMD supplies. 

As for the second statement, I think the term "raping" shows how ignorant you are of the US and Allied operations in Iraq.

I dunno, I just think that the US pushed thier way into Iraq. Say for instance, we did join them and go to Iraq, would you folks have wanted to go/agreed with the US when it went against the United Nations??? I don't think that would have been very smart or Canadian.

Sure; we had no problem going into Kosovo with the US when they led the way without UN permission.  Why do we need the permission of Libya, Tanzania and Uruguay to conduct our foreign policy as we see fit?  I was quite disappointed that we stood up our two historic allies, Britain and the US, when they decided to pursue further regime change (probably the second of many) in the Middle East.
 
One more thing the US failed to do was to secure Iraq's borders with Syria and Iran prior to the war in order to intercept the WMD's Saddam was getting rid of. The Americans have themselves to blame, you base some war on one very firm argument, you then provide the evidence, or lose with the leftist media and public opinion.
 
As for the second statement, I think the term "raping" shows how ignorant you are of the US and Allied operations in Iraq.

I didn't actually mean "rape" in the literal sense, but they obliterated the country. They may not have carpet bombed or shelled the cities directly, but they took out any and most infrastructure the country had left in regards to water+power etc.

Sure; we had no problem going into Kosovo with the US when they led the way without UN permission.

Kosovo didn't involve committing ground troops to an extended and deadly field of urban warfare. It was a simple "bomb them back to the stone-age!"...

I do see your points though Infanteer, and they are valid. I agree with you that it makes us look horrible that we didn't stick to our guns and go with our old pals the US+Britain, but there were reasons for saying no. Not just in spite!

I suppose if your all up for "regime change" in a country that isn't ours, would you support the US if they decided to "have a regime change" in Cuba??? That would be a bloody mess also!

As you suggested in a post to me on a different thread, I'll pipe down and set the radio to recieve for awhile... But I suppose I am dispositioned badly towards the Americans as a militaristic nation.
 
Recruit Joe said:
Before this war, apparrently the people of Iraq used to have running water and electricity which is pretty hard to find there now days apparrently.

Yeah, they also had Saddam torturing and killing them just because they didn't agree.

Smoothbore said:
One more thing the US failed to do was to secure Iraq's borders with Syria and Iran prior to the war in order to intercept the WMD's Saddam was getting rid of.

How would the US secure Iraqs borders with Syria and Iran prior to the war??
 
Reference Water, Power and Infrastructure in Iraq.

Actually they didn't exist in Iraq.   They existed in some enclaves where wealthier Sunni's existed,   notably Baathists.   Coincidentally this group of bodies included Doctors, Engineers, Professors and Civil Servants - most of whom learned to speak English and lived in Baghdad and thus were conveniently placed for idle reporters with agendas to interview.

Talk to the Marsh Arabs that had their water cut off. Talk to the Basrans and the folks in Umm Qasr that not only had their water cut off but their power shut down.   The press talks about how quickly Saddam got the power and water up after GW1, he did this in the areas that his core support lived.   Not in the south, not in Basra, not even in Saddam City (Sadr City now, in Baghdad).

The money that he was making from the UN oil sales programme enriched him and his and a few friends in countries like ours while his people suffered under the sanctions.

If there was a case to be made for war, it wasn't terrorism, it wasn't WMDs, although I believe both of those to be valid, it was that Saddam was a thorough-going b*st*rd who was not only allowing his people to suffer for personal gain, he was causing them to suffer for propaganda value.   Sanctions don't work.   Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis died because the UN didn't want/allow/have the balls to Invade.   The invasion has so far cost less than a thousand allied soldiers lives, people that volunteered for the job,   and some 10,000 Iraqis.   You do the math and tell me if it was right not to invade.

Sanctions are a modern version of the oldest form of warfare going - siege warfare - where the goal is to starve out your opponents because you are too weak or too cowardly to take the city/country/fortress.   In that form of warfare the FIRST people to die are the people that can't contribute to the defence, the aged, the women and the children.  

How would that be received if instead of using the bloodless term sanction we stated clearly that we don't want to/can't waste our soldiers lives so we are going to starve the local population into submission or force them to such a state of desparation that they will choose to rise up against their overlords, risking a quick death from machine-gun bullets over a long, lingering painful death for them and their wives, parents and children.

'Pologies for the long run on sentence but I find the moral equivocation of those flaming multilateralists to be vomitous. There is a time for "jaw-jaw" as even Churchill would have it but likewise there is also a time for "War. War".    Even the sainted/benighted Jean Chretien endorsed that view. The only problem that he had with the Iraq war   was not the UN but the fact that his mates didn't want the war - and all of them stood to gain personally and financially.

OK , I'll go chill now that I have had my rant.   Bye Bye.

 
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,200499,00.html

Report: Hundreds of WMDs Found in Iraq

WASHINGTON — The United States has found 500 chemical weapons in Iraq since 2003, and more weapons of mass destruction are likely to be uncovered, two Republican lawmakers said Wednesday.

"We have found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, chemical weapons," Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., said in a quickly called press conference late Wednesday afternoon.

Reading from a declassified portion of a report by the National Ground Intelligence Center, a Defense Department intelligence unit, Santorum said: "Since 2003, coalition forces have recovered approximately 500 weapons munitions which contain degraded mustard or sarin nerve agent. Despite many efforts to locate and destroy Iraq's pre-Gulf War chemical munitions, filled and unfilled pre-Gulf War chemical munitions are assessed to still exist."

• Click here to read the declassified portion of the NGIC report.

He added that the report warns about the hazards that the chemical weapons could still pose to coalition troops in Iraq.

"The purity of the agents inside the munitions depends on many factors, including the manufacturing process, potential additives and environmental storage conditions. While agents degrade over time, chemical warfare agents remain hazardous and potentially lethal," Santorum read from the document.

"This says weapons have been discovered, more weapons exist and they state that Iraq was not a WMD-free zone, that there are continuing threats from the materials that are or may still be in Iraq," said Rep. Pete Hoekstra, R-Mich., chairman of the House Intelligence Committee.

The weapons are thought to be manufactured before 1991 so they would not be proof of an ongoing WMD program in the 1990s. But they do show that Saddam Hussein was lying when he said all weapons had been destroyed, and it shows that years of on-again, off-again weapons inspections did not uncover these munitions.

Hoekstra said the report, completed in April but only declassified now, shows that "there is still a lot about Iraq that we don't fully understand."

Asked why the Bush administration, if it had known about the information since April or earlier, didn't advertise it, Hoekstra conjectured that the president has been forward-looking and concentrating on the development of a secure government in Iraq.

Offering the official administration response to FOX News, a senior Defense Department official pointed out that the chemical weapons were not in useable conditions.

"This does not reflect a capacity that was built up after 1991," the official said, adding the munitions "are not the WMDs this country and the rest of the world believed Iraq had, and not the WMDs for which this country went to war."

The official said the findings did raise questions about the years of weapons inspections that had not resulted in locating the fairly sizeable stash of chemical weapons. And he noted that it may say something about Hussein's intent and desire. The report does suggest that some of the weapons were likely put on the black market and may have been used outside Iraq.

He also said that the Defense Department statement shortly after the March 2003 invasion saying that "we had all known weapons facilities secured," has proven itself to be untrue.

"It turned out the whole country was an ammo dump," he said, adding that on more than one occasion, a conventional weapons site has been uncovered and chemical weapons have been discovered mixed within them.

Hoekstra and Santorum lamented that Americans were given the impression after a 16-month search conducted by the Iraq Survey Group that the evidence of continuing research and development of weapons of mass destruction was insignificant. But the National Ground Intelligence Center took up where the ISG left off when it completed its report in November 2004, and in the process of collecting intelligence for the purpose of force protection for soldiers and sailors still on the ground in Iraq, has shown that the weapons inspections were incomplete, they and others have said.

"We know it was there, in place, it just wasn't operative when inspectors got there after the war, but we know what the inspectors found from talking with the scientists in Iraq that it could have been cranked up immediately, and that's what Saddam had planned to do if the sanctions against Iraq had halted and they were certainly headed in that direction," said Fred Barnes, editor of The Weekly Standard and a FOX News contributor.

"It is significant. Perhaps, the administration just, they think they weathered the debate over WMD being found there immediately and don't want to return to it again because things are otherwise going better for them, and then, I think, there's mindless resistance to releasing any classified documents from Iraq," Barnes said.

The release of the declassified materials comes as the Senate debates Democratic proposals to create a timetable for U.S. troops to withdraw from Iraq. The debate has had the effect of creating disunity among Democrats, a majority of whom shrunk Wednesday from an amendment proposed by Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts to have troops to be completely withdrawn from Iraq by the middle of next year.

At the same time, congressional Republicans have stayed highly united, rallying around a White House that has seen successes in the last couple weeks, first with the death of terror leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, then the completion of the formation of Iraq's Cabinet and then the announcement Tuesday that another key Al Qaeda in Iraq leader, "religious emir" Mansour Suleiman Mansour Khalifi al-Mashhadani, or Sheik Mansour, was also killed in a U.S. airstrike.

Santorum pointed out that during Wednesday's debate, several Senate Democrats said that no weapons of mass destruction had been found in Iraq, a claim, he said, that the declassified document proves is untrue.

"This is an incredibly — in my mind — significant finding. The idea that, as my colleagues have repeatedly said in this debate on the other side of the aisle, that there are no weapons of mass destruction, is in fact false," he said.

As a result of this new information, under the aegis of his chairmanship, Hoekstra said he is going to ask for more reporting by the various intelligence agencies about weapons of mass destruction.

"We are working on the declassification of the report. We are going to do a thorough search of what additional reports exist in the intelligence community. And we are going to put additional pressure on the Department of Defense and the folks in Iraq to more fully pursue a complete investigation of what existed in Iraq before the war," Hoekstra said.

 
Seems like grasping at straws to me and still doesn't change the fact that the Bush administration was wrong about Iraq being some sort of haven for WMD production.  Gordon and Trainor's recent military analysis of declassified sources from inside Saddam's regime show that he had indeed defanged himself; his generals were a little shocked when he announced that there was no chemical/biological weapons to defend Baghdad with.
 
I think this is the important part:
Reading from a declassified portion of a report by the National Ground Intelligence Center, a Defense Department intelligence unit, Santorum said: "Since 2003, coalition forces have recovered approximately 500 weapons munitions which contain degraded mustard or sarin nerve agent. Despite many efforts to locate and destroy Iraq's pre-Gulf War chemical munitions, filled and unfilled pre-Gulf War chemical munitions are assessed to still exist."

Pre-Gulf War. Meaning before 1991. Meaning that these are most likely forgotten remains buried somewhere or left somewhere in the Iraqi desert from a previous conflict. And since it said degraded, it means almost useless, as chemical and biological weapons have a shelf life of around 10 years or less.
 
"means almost useless, as chemical and biological weapons have a shelf life of around 10 years or less."

- I would not stake your life on that, if I were you...

;D

Tom
 
Armymatters said:
And since it said degraded, it means almost useless, as chemical and biological weapons have a shelf life of around 10 years or less.

Wrong,

Tell that to the fishermen in Baltic who pull up hydrolized mustard from post war dumping.  Or the farmers in France who are exposed to it.  Or the police officer in the US who investigated some WWII vessicant shells in a new property development and ended up in hospital.  Some agents do degrade, but just how many people are people are living on Gruinard Island?

D
 
"means almost useless, as chemical and biological weapons have a shelf life of around 10 years or less."

- I would not stake your life on that, if I were you...

Grin

Tom


I would. Amazingly enough in the last 15 years no Canadian or American has been killed by Iraqi WMDs. I'd say my chances are pretty good, as long as I don't go to Iraq. :)

I'm pretty sure he means useless as in "not a very useful weapon against the US".
 
I got burned last time when Colin Powell lied to the UN about WMD. Santorum has been such a weasel in the past he has no credibility. Things must be going badly in theatre if they are trotting out this dead horse.

"You break it, you bought it" - Colin Powell Warning President George W. Bush about going to war in Iraq
 
"You break it, you bought it" - Warning President George W. Bush about going to war in Iraq

Bush doesn't care, he's had his run and will be gone in 2 years. The American Chicken Hawks and Car Magnet patriots won't be able to stomach the casualties and the ugly, dirty war that the "reality based comunity" has warned about since the beginning. The cowardly US public opinion will press for a withdraw and the next prez will give it to them, and presto, another Al-Qaida victory.
 
Infanteer said:
Seems like grasping at straws to me and still doesn't change the fact that the Bush administration was wrong about Iraq being some sort of haven for WMD production.  Gordon and Trainor's recent military analysis of declassified sources from inside Saddam's regime show that he had indeed defanged himself; his generals were a little shocked when he announced that there was no chemical/biological weapons to defend Baghdad with.

I think your expectations of intelligence and the blame on the Administration is unfair.

In a totalitarian regime where information is highly compartmentalized, unless you flip a mole in the inner circle, you can only make a best guess at what's going on.

Look at recent WMD programs and their development.

Iraq - pre-Gulf War I, was 9-18 months away from a nuclear weapon at a huge facility that had been missed by everyone.
Libya - advanced nuclear program that no one knew existed until the A.Q. Khan was "interviewed", at which point Qaddafi cut a deal to have C-5's come pick it all up in exchange for renewed relations with the west.
North Korea - managed to produce nukes right under inspector's noses.

And back to Iraq and this invasion:
i)  As per your note, apparently the fact they DIDN'T have WMD's came as a surprise to many commanders who had been training to deploy them
ii)  Most analysts I've seen agree that even if Iraq was not actively producing the weapons at that time, they certainly had maintained the capability and WOULD HAVE as soon as sanctions were lifted as was being proposed by the Russians, French and Chinese.

Bottom Line:  If you want to point to Administration incompetence, I personally would by-pass intelligence and focus on the military, occupation and reconstruction plan.  That was truly pitiful and costs needless casualties because it allowed the local nationalists to push "the occupation" angle.  Pre-announcing a phased withdrawal at the point of invasion would've eliminated all of that....


Matthew.  :salute:
 
oh good, a debate on Iraq and it's legalities/necessities. It's not like that's ever been discussed here, before.
 
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