Have they found WMD yet? (Part 1)

Society Pakistan & World Affairs
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This is interesting - if we had read the dictator’s intentions a bit more clearly, who knows when this embargo could have been lifted and when Iraq would have been certified to be free of WMD?

**

Blix casts doubt on WMDs, 23 May 2003, The Guardian

**The chief UN weapons inspector, Hans Blix, said he was starting to suspect Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction in advance of the war on Iraq, a German newspaper reported today.

“I am obviously very interested in the question of whether or not there were weapons of mass destruction, and I am beginning to suspect there possibly were none,” Mr Blix told the Berlin daily Der Tagesspiegel.**

If that were the case, he said, Iraq’s evasive behaviour in recent years could be due to Saddam Hussein’s fixation with Iraqi honour and a wish to dictate the conditions under which people could enter the country.

“For that reason, he said ‘no’ in many situations and gave the impression he was hiding something,” he said.

Mr Blix pointed to statements by Lt Gen Amer al-Saadi, who officials say led Iraq’s unconventional weapons programmes and surrendered to US-led forces last month. “The fact that al-Saadi surrendered and said there were no weapons of mass destruction has led to me to ask myself whether there actually were any,” Mr Blix told the paper. “I don’t see why he would still be afraid of the regime, and other leading figures have said the same.”

The US based its war on Iraq on claims the country was hiding weapons of mass destruction and had active programmes to produce more. UN inspectors had not found stocks of chemical or biological weapons by the time they were forced to leave the country on the eve of the US-led attack.

Mr Blix told the German paper that his teams remain to help the search if required. Washington is carrying out inspections of its own, which have so far failed to turn up evidence of WMD stocks. The White House has resisted a resumption of the UN inspections.

A UN resolution approved yesterday that ended sanctions against Iraq left the future of UN inspections in doubt. The resolution reaffirms that “Iraq must meet its disarmament obligations” and says the council will discuss the inspectors’ mandate later. It gives no timeframe.

“Given the tense security situation, it would not at present be practically feasible to send UN inspectors to Iraq,” Mr Blix said. "I also have the impression that the negative attitude toward UN inspectors … is turning into a generally defensive attitude toward the United Nations.

“If the security council decided that UN inspectors should verify evidence, findings and reports alongside the allies, our organisation would be prepared to do that,” he said.

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US Finds WPDs

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Of all people in this whole international event it is Hans Blix that stands vindicated for his findings and conclusions, and the US-UK completely humiliated.

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I have lost count of days US/UK has been on Iraqi soil and searching for WMDs, can anyone tell me how many days have gone by?

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[QUOTE]
Originally posted by Changez_like: *
**I have lost count of days US/UK has been on Iraqi soil and searching for WMDs, can anyone tell me how many days have gone by?
[/QUOTE]
*

i am afraid it is not a matter of "days" anymore, it is becoming a matter of months. Strangely enough, US officials are now asking for the same thing they so strenuously denied Hans Blix and his team: more time.

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Does anyone remember how long it took for the UN inspectors to find Saddam's WMD that were buried beside the Euphrates river during the first inpections efforts?

Not days. Not weeks. Not months. BUT 4 (FOUR) YEARS. And even then, the WMD were only found after some Iraqi came forward and spilled the beans.

Fortunately, with the removal of Saddam, time is now on our side. Before, time was clearly working against us.

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Unless i am mistaken, isn't the point that the US was, apparently, already aware of the locations of many of these WMD or chemical plants, prior to the invasion of Iraq - if we go by Powell's presentation to the Security Council, they were able to pinpoint quite a few precise locations of WMD based within Iraq. So now, technically, it should just be a matter of travelling to those spots - and as you stated, now that Hussein and his government have been ousted, the US is the predominant authority in that country. So it should not take them too long to uncover what they stated they already knew prior to the invasion ?

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[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by myvoice: *
Fortunately, with the removal of Saddam, time is now on our side. Before, time was clearly working against us.
[/QUOTE]
Is it? Does Saddam's removal from the chain (though we cannot verify that, perhaps he is hiding near the weapons, or the launch button? we dont know!) really increase our safety and give us this luxury of time?

As I recall--this is not my first time saying it--the threat that Iraq posed with its WMD was not from Saddam. We all admitted that he, himself would most likely not be the one to order or conduct any attack. We said that the threat lie in his giving the ability to terrorists. So, I ask you.. if we do not know where the weapons are, how are we to be confident that we accomplished the mission? that we removed these weapons from the hands of terrorists?? For all we know we may have just cut out the middleman.

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[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by spoon: *
Is it? Does Saddam's removal from the chain (though we cannot verify that, perhaps he is hiding near the weapons, or the launch button? we dont know!) really increase our safety and give us this luxury of time?

As I recall--this is not my first time saying it--the threat that Iraq posed with its WMD was not from Saddam. We all admitted that he, himself would most likely not be the one to order or conduct any attack. We said that the threat lie in his giving the ability to terrorists. So, I ask you.. if we do not know where the weapons are, how are we to be confident that we accomplished the mission? that we removed these weapons from the hands of terrorists?? For all we know we may have just cut out the middleman.
[/QUOTE]

Good questions all. But, I think you are overlooking a few things. Examine all the scenarios:

  1. Saddam never had WMD. We goofed and there never was any danger.
  2. Before the war, Saddam already gave them all away to the terrorists. Well, we're no better or worse off than before the war. The worst case scenario already happened and we'll have to cope with it.
  3. Saddam had them but hid them before the war started and we haven't found them yet. Under this scenario, they sure as heck aren't above ground, ready for use and/or sale to and transport by the terrorists. Someone would need to dig them up and move them while the entire country is under the watchful eye of our troops. The danger that you speak of above is more related to us assuming there are no WMD buried somewhere, then leaving Iraq, then having someone dig them up and provide them to the terrorists. Since we're going to be there awhile, that's why I say time is on our side.

Of the three scenarios, I still believe that number 3 is the most likely. Someday or other, someone will mention laying concrete in constructing some underground bunker. Someone else will remember seeing a few trucks being unloaded under a dark night sky. Eventually, someone will put all the little pieces together and a bunch of gasses, toxins, etc. will be unearthed.

I do acknowledge that the most mysterious thing to me is that we did not find some number of artillery shells loaded with gas or a scud or two armed with a chemical warhead. I truly expected that before Saddam's regime fully and finally collapsed that some gas attack would be launched (against either Israel, US troops or his own people). If that were the case, those exposed weapons would most certainly have been found by now.

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MV,

Scenario 4. Saddam gets rid of WMD, and figures if nothing is found, then sanctions will be lifted.

The odd part is that he did not allow the scientists to go out of the country. This could mean a few things. One, there were clandestine programs, but broken into very small cells. Only a few scientists would have known about any program. Two, Saddam realized that the scientists were the lynchpin of the program. As long as he had the scientific knowledge, he had a program, particularly one that had unlimited funding after sanctions were lifted. But, if the scientists went over seas and defected, the future of a program was doomed.

You have to ask yourself, if Saddam was really free of weapons, then why would he not allow the scientists to be interviewed out of the country? Simple nationalistic pride would not completely explain it. If indeed there were no active WMD programs, then what could the scientists say, other than to confirm that they are not working on a program? Thus the fear of defection, or totalitarian control must have kept the scientists suspiciously in the country. Either that or it was another of Saddams gross miscalculations. Frankly, there is not much a few artillery shells would have done other than prove that the US was right. Perhaps Saddam thought that there would be some ceasefire brokered by the French that would have been impossible if these weapons were used. Perhaps it proves that WMD cannot be used! Use of them simply guarantees the downfall of the regime....

Ironically nobody in the US sees this as an embarrassment. Quite the contrary, US citizens are completely un-worried about the lack of weapons.

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Iraq May Have Destroyed Weapons Before War -U.S.
Tue May 27, 4:33 PM ET Add Top Stories - Reuters to My Yahoo!

By Grant McCool

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Iraq (news - web sites) may have destroyed its purported chemical and biological weapons before the U.S.-led invasion in March, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said on Tuesday in an effort to explain why none had been found.

President Bush (news - web sites) and British Prime Minister Tony Blair (news - web sites) cited their belief that Iraq had banned weapons of mass destruction as the main reason for the March 20 invasion that ousted President Saddam Hussein (news - web sites)'s government.

Rumsfeld told the New York-based Council on Foreign Relations think-tank he did not know why Iraq had not used chemical weapons against the invaders as Washington had predicted it would.

He said the speed of U.S. advance may have caught Iraq by surprise, but added: “It is also possible that they decided that they would destroy them prior to a conflict.”

Rumsfeld told his audience of foreign policy analysts, diplomats and business leaders that he suspected “we’ll find out a lot more information as we go along and keep interrogating people.”

Rumsfeld said Iraq was as large as California and search teams had only been working there seven weeks. He said there were hundreds of suspected sites to investigate.

“It will take time,” said Rumsfeld.

On May 13, Maj. Gen. David Petraeus, commander of the Army’s 101st Airborne Division, also raised the possibility that Iraq had destroyed its weapons stocks.

“I just don’t know whether it was all destroyed years ago – I mean, there’s no question that there were chemical weapons years ago – whether they were destroyed right before the war, (or) whether they’re still hidden,” Petraeus said.

MOBILE LABORATORIES

Rumsfeld said U.S. intelligence agents had confirmed that two trailers found in northern Iraq were mobile biological weapons laboratories. No actual biological weapons were found on either trailer, U.S. officials have said.

The Pentagon (news - web sites) was working with the Central Intelligence Agency (news - web sites) and other U.S. intelligence-gathering agencies to assess U.S. information obtained before the war and compare it with what has been found since, Rumsfeld said.

But he insisted there were no disagreements between agencies.

“We are looking at, before the conflict started, the kinds of things that we can benchmark,” Rumsfeld said.

The defense secretary, who wrote in the Wall Street Journal Tuesday that Washington would prevent a “remake of Iraq in Iran’s image,” said Iran was “being unhelpful today with respect to Iraq.”

“My personal view is that I’m still amazed at how fast it went from the Shah of Iran to the clerics, to the ayatollah,” Rumsfeld said.

“Maybe we’ll be favorably surprised some day that it will go back to something … where the people of that country will have a broader voice and an opportunity to affect their lives, which clearly they’re restricted from doing.”

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so no WMD after all. now what?

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It looks more certain by the day that all this drama about WMD was just a charade to justify the illegal invasion of Iraq. It confirms one thing that the terrorist in this saga are messrs Bush and Blair and not Saddam.

The two BB's should be tried for war crimes and murder of thousands of innocent Iraqis.

How many more thousands of people around the globe are going to be killed to avenge the twin towers destruction.

I read the following on a site:

All the death, personal injury, and suffering caused to so many was predicated on the certainty of the existence of these weapons, and also "justified" by the failure of the UN inspection team to find them within a timetable shorter than the one the US and UK governments now seem to consider necessary for their own "inspectors".

Very true indeed.

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[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Ohioguy: *
....
Ironically nobody in the US sees this as an embarrassment. Quite the contrary, US citizens are completely un-worried about the lack of weapons.
[/QUOTE]

Trumpet of "Iraqi Freedom" is much much louder than "WMD".

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Rumsfield is now stating that US may never find WMD'S.

In light of this, the bullsh.. propoganda and what some US Guppies are stating, maybe the US deserves everything it gets.

It would of been a lot easier if Bush stated that he was avenging his fathers humiliation from the first Gulf war, rather than using the WMD lie.

Once labelled, forever smitten!

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How conveniently the anti-Iraqi freedom crowd ignore the two mobile biological weapons labs that have already been found. How do you explain them? How do you explain that Saddam failed to disclose there existence to the UN? How do you explain Iraq's denials that they had mobile labs? Do you think they just parked them somewhere a couple years ago and forgot about them?

Mobile biological weapons labs are used to research, develop and manufacture biological weapons. Hello?

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Hello hello, any WMDs there… hello… hellooo. :halo:

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:k:

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:konfused:

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Give me a few months of warnings and I would clean up too...those who Bash the U.S. for going into Iraq would be bashing the U.S. if WMD were/are found in Iraq, that fact wouldn't change their resentment towards the U.S. Anyways weapons are still being found, 30 missiles in the last few days. We’ll see if any WMD come up or not in the next few months. But like I said, that doesn't really matter to those who see the U.S. as a villian, does it?

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**Originally posted by underthedome: *
Give me a few months of warnings and I would clean up too...*

what about solid evidences, irrefutable proofs etc.?

those who Bash the U.S. for going into Iraq would be bashing the U.S. if WMD were/are found in Iraq, that fact wouldn't change their resentment towards the U.S.

Same goes for blind followers of US who will stay all-happy on "freedom" only.

*...We’ll see if any WMD come up or not in the next few months. But like I said, that doesn't really matter to those who see the U.S. as a villian, does it? *

Again, it really doesn't matter for blind followers of US if no WMD are really found even though that was the MAIN reason of invasion.