WMD honcho reportedly quitting

Bengal B · Dec 22, 2003

Originally posted by JD
I agree with him on a lot of things - just not the war (a couple of aspects of the war I agree with him on, but not the bulk).

I agree he does a lot of name calling and is bombastic, but you guys aren't exactly respectful toward him either.
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Good diplomatic answer, JD. Cottonbowel gets no respect because he gives no respect.

Sourdoughman · Dec 22, 2003

Ditto Bengal B

dallastigers · Jan 10, 2004

If this is true maybe we should have just left finding them to the Danes.

Danish troops have found dozens of mortar rounds in southern Iraq which could contain chemical weapons according to initial tests.

The 36 120mm shells appeared to have been buried for at least 10 years, the army said.

All showed traces of blister gases, the army said, a group of chemical compounds which include mustard gas.

The comments are published on the Danish army website, according to Reuters news agency.
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BBC

dallastigers · Jan 10, 2004

Here is a CNN link.

CNN link

Old stuff but they were not supposed to have it, and definitely should not have been hiding it underground in plastic bags.

They were buried and packed in plastic. "Most were wrapped in plastic bags, and some were leaking," Kimmitt said.
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mesquite tiger · Jan 26, 2004

on your post dallas...they concluded those shells did not contain WMD materials. NOw this article appears today saying US and UK in spin control over allegations WMD never existed at all. I feel the President owes us an explanation on this issue, seeing how this was the biggest reason we invaded Iraq. I agree the removal of Hussien is a great victory for the free world, but if that is the real reason we were over there, just tell us....

http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/01/26/sprj.nirq.kay/index.html

CottonBowl'66 · Jan 26, 2004

Originally posted by mesquite tiger
on your post dallas...they concluded those shells did not contain WMD materials. NOw this article appears today saying US and UK in spin control over allegations WMD never existed at all. I feel the President owes us an explanation on this issue, seeing how this was the biggest reason we invaded Iraq. I agree the removal of Hussien is a great victory for the free world, but if that is the real reason we were over there, just tell us....

http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/01/26/sprj.nirq.kay/index.html
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Right, the mortar rounds the Danes found did NOT have any WMD in them after all. NO WMD have been found in Iraq.

The problem is that I am sure that Fox Propaganda and Rush never bothered to report that the mortar shells had no mustard or nerve gas in them. That is all the little right wingers hear listen to so they never get the truth.

David Kay, a bitch for Bush, is now saying there never were any WMD. Colin Powell is saying the same thing. Dick Cheney is still lying and still claiming there was a connection between Saddam and Osama.

And $87 billion a year of American taxdollars are going to Iraq every year for the next few years thanks to Bush. It could be more depending on just how much Halliburton overcharges us or rips off the American taxpayer for.

dallastigers · Jan 27, 2004

Originally posted by mesquite tiger
on your post dallas...they concluded those shells did not contain WMD materials. NOw this article appears today saying US and UK in spin control over allegations WMD never existed at all. I feel the President owes us an explanation on this issue, seeing how this was the biggest reason we invaded Iraq. I agree the removal of Hussien is a great victory for the free world, but if that is the real reason we were over there, just tell us....

http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/01/26/sprj.nirq.kay/index.html
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Read what this guy was saying three months ago about the dangererous information they were finding and record destruction, not stockpiles but other information. You are playing the Democratic game of what is the present sound bite - stockpiles. Do we think Osama has stockpiles of WMDs - No, but we still fear that he may use them on us sooner rather than later. It just takes one.

quote:
Why are we having such difficulty in finding weapons or in reaching a confident conclusion that they do not exist or that they once existed but have been removed? Our search efforts are being hindered by six principal factors:

1. From birth, all of Iraq's WMD activities were highly compartmentalized within a regime that ruled and kept its secrets through fear and terror and with deception and denial built into each program;

2. Deliberate dispersal and destruction of material and documentation related to weapons programs began pre-conflict and ran trans-to-post conflict;

3. Post-OIF looting destroyed or dispersed important and easily collectable material and forensic evidence concerning Iraq's WMD program. As the report covers in detail, significant elements of this looting were carried out in a systematic and deliberate manner, with the clear aim of concealing pre-OIF activities of Saddam's regime;

4. Some WMD personnel crossed borders in the pre/trans conflict period and may have taken evidence and even weapons-related materials with them;

5. Any actual WMD weapons or material is likely to be small in relation to the total conventional armaments footprint and difficult to near impossible to identify with normal search procedures. It is important to keep in mind that even the bulkiest materials we are searching for, in the quantities we would expect to find, can be concealed in spaces not much larger than a two car garage;

6. The environment in Iraq remains far from permissive for our activities, with many Iraqis that we talk to reporting threats and overt acts of intimidation and our own personnel being the subject of threats and attacks. In September alone we have had three attacks on ISG facilities or teams: The ISG base in Irbil was bombed and four staff injured, two very seriously; a two person team had their vehicle blocked by gunmen and only escaped by firing back through their own windshield; and on Wednesday, 24 September, the ISG Headquarters in Baghdad again was subject to mortar attack.

What have we found and what have we not found in the first 3 months of our work?

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. The discovery of these deliberate concealment efforts have come about both through the admissions of Iraqi scientists and officials concerning information they deliberately withheld and through physical evidence of equipment and activities that ISG has discovered that should have been declared to the UN. Let me just give you a few examples of these concealment efforts, some of which I will elaborate on later:

· A clandestine network of laboratories and safehouses within the Iraqi Intelligence Service that contained equipment subject to UN monitoring and suitable for continuing CBW research.

· A prison laboratory complex, possibly used in human testing of BW agents, that Iraqi officials working to prepare for UN inspections were explicitly ordered not to declare to the UN.

· Reference strains of biological organisms concealed in a scientist's home, one of which can be used to produce biological weapons.

· New research on BW-applicable agents, Brucella and Congo Crimean Hemorrhagic Fever (CCHF), and continuing work on ricin and aflatoxin were not declared to the UN.

· Documents and equipment, hidden in scientists' homes, that would have been useful in resuming uranium enrichment by centrifuge and electromagnetic isotope separation (EMIS).

· A line of UAVs 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 km, 350 km 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 UN.

· Plans and advanced design work for new long-range missiles with ranges up to at least 1000 km -- well beyond the 150 km range limit imposed by the UN. Missiles of a 1000 km range would have allowed Iraq to threaten targets through out the Middle East, including Ankara, Cairo, and Abu Dhabi.

· Clandestine attempts between late-1999 and 2002 to obtain from North Korea technology related to 1,300 km range ballistic missiles --probably the No Dong -- 300 km range anti-ship cruise missiles, and other prohibited military equipment.

In addition to the discovery of extensive concealment efforts, we have been faced with a systematic sanitization of documentary and computer evidence in a wide range of offices, laboratories, and companies suspected of WMD work. The pattern of these efforts to erase evidence -- hard drives destroyed, specific files burned, equipment cleaned of all traces of use -- are ones of deliberate, rather than random, acts.

For example,

· On 10 July 2003 an ISG team exploited the Revolutionary Command Council (RCC) Headquarters in Baghdad. The basement of the main building contained an archive of documents situated on well-organized rows of metal shelving. The basement suffered no fire damage despite the total destruction of the upper floors from coalition air strikes. Upon arrival the exploitation team encountered small piles of ash where individual documents or binders of documents were intentionally destroyed. Computer hard drives had been deliberately destroyed. Computers would have had financial value to a random looter; their destruction, rather than removal for resale or reuse, indicates a targeted effort to prevent Coalition forces from gaining access to their contents.

· All IIS laboratories visited by IIS exploitation teams have been clearly sanitized, including removal of much equipment, shredding and burning of documents, and even the removal of nameplates from office doors.

· Although much of the deliberate destruction and sanitization of documents and records probably occurred during the height of OIF combat operations, indications of significant continuing destruction efforts have been found after the end of major combat operations, including entry in May 2003 of the locked gated vaults of the Ba'ath party intelligence building in Baghdad and highly selective destruction of computer hard drives and data storage equipment along with the burning of a small number of specific binders that appear to have contained financial and intelligence records, and in July 2003 a site exploitation team at the Abu Ghurayb Prison found one pile of the smoldering ashes from documents that was still warm to the touch.

I would now like to review our efforts in each of the major lines of enquiry that ISG has pursued during this initial phase of its work.

With regard to biological warfare activities, which has been one of our two initial areas of focus, ISG teams are uncovering significant information -- including research and development of BW-applicable organisms, the involvement of Iraqi Intelligence Service (IIS) in possible BW activities, and deliberate concealment activities. All of this suggests Iraq after 1996 further compartmentalized its program and

focused on maintaining smaller, covert capabilities that could be activated quickly to surge the production of BW agents.

Debriefings of IIS officials and site visits have begun to unravel a clandestine network of laboratories and facilities within the security service apparatus. This network was never declared to the UN and was previously unknown.

We are still working on determining the extent to which this network was tied to large-scale military efforts or BW terror weapons, but this clandestine capability was suitable for preserving BW expertise, BW capable facilities and continuing R&D -- all key elements for maintaining a capability for resuming BW production.

The IIS also played a prominent role in sponsoring students for overseas graduate studies in the biological sciences, according to Iraqi scientists and IIS sources, providing an important avenue for furthering BW-applicable research.

This was the only area of graduate work that the IIS appeared to sponsor.

Discussions with Iraqi scientists uncovered agent R&D work that paired overt work with nonpathogenic organisms serving as surrogates for prohibited investigation with pathogenic agents.

Examples include: B. Thurengiensis (Bt) with B. anthracis (anthrax), and medicinal plants with ricin.

In a similar vein, two key former BW scientists, confirmed that Iraq under the guise of legitimate activity developed refinements of processes and products relevant to BW agents. The scientists discussed the development of improved, simplified fermentation and spray drying capabilities for the simulant Bt that would have been directly applicable to anthrax, and one scientist confirmed that the production line for Bt could be switched to produce anthrax in one week if the seed stock were available.

A very large body of information has been developed through debriefings, site visits, and exploitation of captured Iraqi documents that confirms that Iraq concealed equipment and materials from UN inspectors when they returned in 2002.

One noteworthy example is a collection of reference strains that ought to have been declared to the UN.

Among them was a vial of live C. botulinum Okra B. from which a biological agent can be produced.

This discovery -- hidden in the home of a BW scientist -- illustrates the point I made earlier about the difficulty of locating small stocks of material that can be used to covertly surge production of deadly weapons.

The scientist who concealed the vials containing this agent has identified a large cache of agents that he was asked, but refused, to conceal. ISG is actively searching for this second cache.

Additional information is beginning to corroborate reporting since 1996 about human testing activities using chemical and biological substances, but progress in this area is slow given the concern of knowledgeable Iraqi personnel about their being prosecuted for crimes against humanity.

We have not yet been able to corroborate the existence of a mobile BW production effort. Investigation into the origin of and intended use for the two trailers found in northern Iraq in April has yielded a number of explanations, including hydrogen, missile propellant, and BW production, but technical limitations would prevent any of these processes from being ideally suited to these trailers. That said, nothing we have discovered rules out their potential use in BW production.

We have made significant progress in identifying and locating individuals who were reportedly involved in a mobile program, and we are confident that we will be able to get an answer to the questions as to whether there was a mobile program and whether the trailers that have been discovered so far were part of such a program.

Let me turn now to chemical weapons (CW). In searching for retained stocks of chemical munitions, ISG has had to contend with the almost unbelievable scale of Iraq's conventional weapons armory, which dwarfs by orders of magnitude the physical size of any conceivable stock of chemical weapons.

For example, there are approximately 130 known Iraqi Ammunition Storage Points (ASP), many of which exceed 50 square miles in size and hold an estimated 600,000 tons of artillery shells, rockets, aviation bombs and other ordinance. Of these 130 ASPs, approximately 120 still remain unexamined.

As Iraqi practice was not to mark much of their chemical ordinance and to store it at the same ASPs that held conventional rounds, the size of the required search effort is enormous.

While searching for retained weapons, ISG teams have developed multiple sources that indicate that Iraq explored the possibility of CW production in recent years, possibly as late as 2003.

When Saddam had asked a senior military official in either 2001 or 2002 how long it would take to produce new chemical agent and weapons, he told ISG that after he consulted with CW experts in OMI he responded it would take six months for mustard.

Another senior Iraqi chemical weapons expert in responding to a request in mid-2002 from Uday Husayn for CW for the Fedayeen Saddam estimated that it would take two months to produce mustard and two years for Sarin...

quote:
They have told ISG that Saddam Husayn remained firmly committed to acquiring nuclear weapons. These officials assert that Saddam would have resumed nuclear weapons development at some future point. Some indicated a resumption after Iraq was free of sanctions.

At least one senior Iraqi official believed that by 2000 Saddam had run out of patience with waiting for sanctions to end and wanted to restart the nuclear program.

The Iraqi Atomic Energy Commission (IAEC) beginning around 1999 expanded its laboratories and research activities and increased its overall funding levels.

This expansion may have been in initial preparation for renewed nuclear weapons research, although documentary evidence of this has not been found, and this is the subject of continuing investigation by ISG.

Starting around 2000, the senior Iraqi Atomic Energy Commission (IAEC) and high-level Ba'ath Party official Dr. Khalid Ibrahim Sa'id began several small and relatively unsophisticated research initiatives that could be applied to nuclear weapons development.

These initiatives did not in-and-of themselves constitute a resumption of the nuclear weapons program, but could have been useful in developing a weapons-relevant science base for the long-term. We do not yet have information indicating whether a higher government authority directed Sa'id to initiate this research and, regretfully, Dr. Said was killed on April 8th during the fall of Baghdad when the car he was riding in attempted to run a Coalition roadblock.
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link

dallastigers · Jan 27, 2004

Originally posted by CottonBowl'66
The problem is that I am sure that Fox Propaganda and Rush never bothered to report that the mortar shells had no mustard or nerve gas in them. That is all the little right wingers hear listen to so they never get the truth.

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Cotteonbowel you keep talking out your a$$ and maybe one day you will get something right.

From Foxnews.com

Wednesday, January 14, 2004

COPENHAGEN, Denmark _—_Mortar shells found in southern Iraq by the Danish military do not appear to contain chemical weapon agents as originally suspected, Fox News has learned.

After a 16-man team from the Iraqi Survey Group (search) was sent to the scene to examine the mortar shells, tests of five of them yielded no traces of chemical agent, a Danish military official told Fox on Wednesday.

Initial testing by the Danes and the British indicated that the set of 36 shells possibly contained blister gas, a type of chemical weapon agent.

One shell was to be brought back to Baghdad for further testing, Fox News learned, and an electronic assessment of the shells was to be sent to a U.S. lab for further analysis.

Both the Danish and U.S. officials told Fox that the latest negative finding wasn't conclusive and said a more final assessment could come in the next three to five days.

The news came just as a U.S.-led team started a series of tests Tuesday to determine whether the liquid blister agent was in the cluster of mortar shells.

Fourteen members of the ISG, made up of intelligence analysts, interrogators and translators, were testing the 120mm shells with a mobile laboratory at the Iraqi site over the next few days, Maj. Kim Gruenberger of the Danish Army Operational Command (search) told The Associated Press.

The U.S. military believes the shells are remnants from the 1980-1988 war between Iraq and neighboring Iran.

"They have been working since this morning," said Gruenberger, who spoke from the Danish army's command center in Karup, 165 miles northwest of Copenhagen.

Danish troops and Icelandic de-miners uncovered the shells Friday after receiving tips from local residents near Qurnah, north of the city of Basra, where Denmark's 410 soldiers are based.

Preliminary tests on the plastic-wrapped but damaged shells showed they contained a liquid blister agent. But initial tests by field troops are designed to favor a positive reading, erring on the side of caution to protect soldiers. More sophisticated tests are often necessary.

Some Iraqis have told Danish soldiers that other mortar shells were buried in the area, including a stockpile dumped in the Tigris River that could contain as many as 400 rounds, Gruenberger said.

Danish engineers will start investigating those sites after they are done with the present case, he said.

In October, Dutch marines found several dozen artillery shells dating to the 1991 Gulf War in southern Iraq, but the shells contained no biological or chemical agents. In April, U.S. troops found a dozen 55-gallon drums in northern Iraq. Preliminary tests found possible evidence of a nerve agent and a blister agent, but later tests found the contents were not chemical weapons.

Before launching the war on March 20, the United States asserted Iraq still had stockpiles of mustard gas, a World War I-era blister agent that is stored in liquid form. The chemical burns skin, eyes and lungs.

U.S. intelligence officials also claimed Iraq had sarin (search), cyclosarin (search) and VX (search), which are extremely deadly nerve agents.

During the war, potential chemical and biological findings were sent to a U.S. government laboratory in Fort Detrick, Md., and to a British government laboratory in Portendown, Britain. In some cases, a third set was sent to the United Nations' chemical weapons watchdog agency in The Hague, Netherlands. All the tests came back negative.

Since the war ended, the U.S.-led coalition has found several caches that tested positive for mustard gas but later turned out to contain missile fuel or other chemicals.

Other discoveries early in the U.S.-led occupation turned out to be old caches that already had been tagged by U.N. inspectors and were scheduled for destruction.
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FOXNEWS link

dallastigers · Jan 27, 2004

More from Kay.

In an exclusive interview with The Telegraph, Dr Kay,who last week resigned as head of the Iraq Survey Group, said that he had uncovered evidence that unspecified materials had been moved to Syria shortly before last year's war to overthrow Saddam.

"We are not talking about a large stockpile of weapons," he said. "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 programme. Precisely what went to Syria, and what has happened to it, is a major issue that needs to be resolved."

Dr Kay's comments will intensify pressure on President Bashar Assad to clarify the extent of his co-operation with Saddam's regime and details of Syria's WMD programme. Mr Assad has said that Syria was entitled to defend itself by acquiring its own biological and chemical weapons arsenal.
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Link

On Friday, Polish troops discovered four anti-aircraft missiles that are believed to have been produced in Europe this year, a Polish defense ministry spokesman in Warsaw said.

While they are not weapons of mass destruction, the missiles were banned under a 1990 arms embargo.

Testing facility discovered

Kay's 1,200-person team has found two new facilities near a prison where it believes biological weapons tests were conducted on prisoners.

"We have taken senior Iraqi leaders in detention to them," Kay said. The leaders were those who evidence indicated had been involved in the experiments.

"They were clearly shaken up by being taken there," he said, adding they were afraid that "we would make them face a lineup" of victims.

Referring to samples of botulinum toxin Kay has reported finding in a scientist's home, he said the deadly toxins were stored in the scientist's family refrigerator, near their food, and he returned even more dangerous toxins back to his institute.

Kay said that Iraq had paid North Korea $10 million for No Dong missile technology but that the North Koreans did not give it to them. The Iraqis asked for their money back, and the North Koreans refused, he said.

"It's a lesson in negotiating with the North Koreans," he said.
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Clinton News Network link

"I actually think the intelligence community owes the president rather than the president owing the American people," he said.

"We have to remember that this view of Iraq was held during the Clinton administration and didn't change in the Bush administration," Kay said.

"It is not a political 'gotcha' issue. It is a serious issue of 'How you can come to a conclusion that is not matched in the future?'"

Other countries' intelligence agencies shared the U.S. conclusion that Iraq had stockpiled such weapons, though most disagreed with the United States about how best to respond.
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Despite not finding any WMD, Kay said his team found that the Iraqi senior leadership "had an intention to continue to pursue their WMD activities. That they, in fact, had a large number of WMD-related activities."

Kay predicted investigators would find that Iraqi scientists were "working on developing weapons or weapons concepts that they had not moved into actual production."
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Kay also raised the possibility -- one he first discussed in a weekend interview with "The Sunday Telegraph" of London -- that clues about banned weapons programs might reside across Iraq's western border.

"There is ample evidence of movement to Syria before the war -- satellite photographs, reports on the ground of a constant stream of trucks, cars, rail traffic across the border. We simply don't know what was moved," Kay said.

But, he said, "the Syrian government there has shown absolutely no interest in helping us resolve this issue."

Kay acknowledged that the truth might never be revealed. Widespread looting in Baghdad after the invasion destroyed many government records. "There's always going to be unresolved ambiguity here."
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This is CNN

Based on Kay's own words , all of them not just he did not find stockpiles, Bush does not owe us an explanation.

JSracing · Jan 27, 2004

Re: Re: WMD honcho reportedly quitting

Originally posted by CottonBowl'66
Let's face reality: if no poisonous gas was found in warheads, in missiles on launchers ready to be fired on the battlefield, then Saddam never had them.

The supposed "hunt" for WMD was just more PR spin by the Bush liars. They just hope this goes away quietly and the American people forget all the lies Bush told on why he was conquering Iraq.

Having said that, I am surprised that no WMD were found in Iraq. I figured Bush would "find" them, whether Saddam had them or not.

It will probably be left for the historians to discover, but I strongly suspect Bush knew Saddam had no weaponized WMD before he invaded. There is no way I think he would have risked having ten thousand or more American corpses.

He knew Saddam had no military to fight back with and no WMD, and he knew Iraq was easy pickings. He attacked not because Saddam was a threat, but because he knew he was basically defenseless.

The only thing we are waiting for now is finding out the real reason Bush took over Iraq. We do not know that yet.
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Well now that makes sense......Bush wanted it to die down so he keeps a search going? And keeps pushing for answers.

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WMD honcho reportedly quitting

Bengal B Founding Member

Sourdoughman TigerFan of LSU and the Tigerman

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mesquite tiger Diabolical Genius

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