quote:Read that carefully.
We will always try to consult with our friends in the region so that they are not surprised and do everything we can to explain the purpose of our responses. We had a good discussion, the Foreign Minister and I and the President and I, had a good discussion about the nature of the sanctions -- the fact that the sanctions exist -- not for the purpose of hurting the Iraqi people, but for the purpose of keeping in check Saddam Hussein's ambitions toward developing weapons of mass destruction. We should constantly be reviewing our policies, constantly be looking at those sanctions to make sure that they are directed toward that purpose. That purpose is every bit as important now as it was ten years ago when we began it. And frankly they have worked. He has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction. He is unable to project conventional power against his neighbors. So in effect, our policies have strengthened the security of the neighbors of Iraq, and these are policies that we are going to keep in place, but we are always willing to review them to make sure that they are being carried out in a way that does not affect the Iraqi people but does affect the Iraqi regime's ambitions and the ability to acquire weapons of mass destruction, and we had a good conversation on this issue.
Colin Powell, Secretary of State
"It would have been nice if the UN had gotten off its duff and done their part..."
quote:I believe this has been proven false.
And the L29 jet trainers converted to UAV Chemical weapons delivery systems.
quote:Apparently not many because the "Coalition" has not been able to find any. And instead of admitting this, the "Coalition" has been delaying the printing of the report on this.
And of course just how many Chemical warheads did the Iraqis forget to destroy besides those that were found by accident a few years back.
quote:What sympathy for Hussain's regime? No one in this thread had stated anything even retotely praising Saddam. Opposition to the war (or criticism of the reasons we went to war) does not=support for Saddam.
The out pouring of symphathy for Saddam Hussiens regime Is quite touching.
quote:Where was this link? Please bear in mind that we get the "Europeans are anti-semitic" crap from the US and US based news sources about every 3 months. And the French Communist Party isn't exactly representative of the French people. And how exactly does it fit in with recent events? Did I miss France bombing Israel or saying, yeah terrorism against Israel is OK?
A recent link about Frances Communist party also mentioned the prevailence of Anti-Semetic feeling among the French people. That actualy came as a suprize to me. Though I guess it fits with the recent events well enough.
quote:Well done. Although the 'war on terror' seems to basically mean those attacking the Irraelis and the US. And still no word on any prosecutions of the oh, so many Americans who funded the IRA.
The Israeli's are not the only victims of terrorist attacks.
quote:Mr. Powell's mere words matter a great deal, as words should from Secretaries of State and Presidents. Words spoken by Secretaries of State and Presidents in public forums are indicators of administration policy and as such carry great weight in international and national circles.
Powells statement was aparently made long before Sept.11,2001 alot of peoples attitudes changed in that time period.
This thread was not based on anything that matters in world of today. Words are after all just words. Some have great importance and others do not.
quote:Did anyone ever say he was?
And if Hussein was not a threat to his neighbors, then he certainly wasn’t a threat to the United States of America.
quote:
David Kay will tell the intelligence committees of both houses of Congress that Saddam pretended his battlefield commanders had chemical weapons, in order to deter invasion, according to the Washington Post.
At closed briefings on Thursday, he is also widely expected to say that so far no weapons have been found.
The BBC's Justin Webb says that, although the results are only provisional, it is fair to predict that they will not be the findings the Bush administration wanted or expected to see.
REPORT INTO WMDs IN IRAQ
By David Kay
Introduction
Iraq has WMDs. Everone knows that.
Chapter 1
Gosh, I wonder where these WMDs are? Here? Nope.
Chapter 2
How about over here? Nope. There? Nope.
Chapter 3
Let's ask these people. . ? Nope. How about you? Nope.
Chapter 4
Ooh, what's this? Oh, fertilizer. Aha! Chemical protection gear! Oh, "Best Before End: 1991." Rats.
Conclusion
Can't find anything, sorry.
Appendix
Oh, wait, here they are!
quote:Like, maybe, with the help of the Russians (who had well-known plans for fast WMD disposal and had employed them before, and a "delegation" of whom were in Iraq at the time) in the last few days before the shooting began.
Originally posted by Ritten:
Yes, that is very puzzling, I do admit, unless his capacity was destroyed some how....
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quote:
You'll find out sometime this month, I expect.
Kay is planning to make his case to Congress as early as mid-September.
Rob, First of Two
quote:More from the Times....
WASHINGTON, Oct. 2 � The government's chief weapons inspector in Iraq told Congress Thursday that his team had failed to find illegal weapons after three months of scouring the country, but he said they had discovered some evidence of Saddam Hussein's intent to develop such weapons and even signs that Baghdad had retained some capacity to do so.
----
Congressional leaders from both parties expressed concern that Dr. Kay's group had not found proof that Iraq, on the eve of war, had unconventional weapons.
"I'm not pleased by what I heard today," said Senator Pat Roberts, the Kansas Republican who is chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. He said Americans were hoping there would be a breakthrough by now, but, he said, "There has not been a breakthrough."
He said his committee is continuing to investigate why the C.I.A. and other agencies were off the mark in assessing Iraq's weapons programs.
Senator John D. Rockefeller IV, the West Virginia Democrat who is the ranking minority member on the Senate intelligence committee, said that Dr. Kay's report raised fresh doubts about the Bush administration's policy of pre-emptive war.
"I just think it's extraordinary that a decision was made to go to war, and that we were told by our highest policy makers that there was, you know, an imminent threat," he said.
He said he wondered whether further inspections would turn up anything, saying "this raises real questions about something called the doctrine of pre-emption, the way we make decisions at the highest level," he said.
James Risen and Judith Miller, The New York Times
quote:Something from the Washington Post maybe?
NEWS ANALYSIS: ASSESSMENT
A Reckoning: Iraqi Arms Report Poses Political Test for Bush
The preliminary report delivered on Thursday by the chief arms inspector in Iraq forces the Bush administration to come face to face with this reality: that Saddam Hussein's armory appears to have been stuffed with precursors, potential weapons and bluffs, but that nothing found so far backs up administration claims that Mr. Hussein posed an imminent threat to the world.
In public, President Bush says that is not the issue. What should make a difference to Americans, and to the world, he says, is that Mr. Hussein is gone and Iraq is free. "One thing is for certain," Mr. Bush argued last month at a fund-raiser, using a line he repeats often these days. "Terrorist groups will not ever be able to get weapons of mass destruction in Iraq because Saddam Hussein is no more."
But in private, Mr. Bush's political aides concede that it does matter, and it may matter more as the politics of running for president collide with the realities of containing the chaos in occupied Iraq.
While the report by the arms inspector, David Kay, is not final, and while the inspectors may yet come upon a cache of weapons, the preliminary findings support the claims of critics, including Democratic candidates, that Mr. Bush used dubious intelligence to justify his decision to go to war. At worst, these critics say, the usual caveats and cautions of the underlying intelligence reports were ignored in the rush to war.
Without question, the gap between what Mr. Bush said existed in Iraq and what Dr. Kay has failed to find will be argued about again and again as Americans discuss whether it was right to go into Iraq in the first place, and debate what to do now.
David E. Sanger, The New York Times
quote:
In Iraq, U.S. Finds No Banned Weapons
Tenet Assails Panel Leaders' Criticism of Prewar Data
After searching for nearly six months, U.S. forces and CIA experts have found no chemical or biological weapons in Iraq and have determined that Iraq's nuclear program was in only "the very most rudimentary" state, the Bush administration's chief investigator formally told Congress yesterday.
Before the war, the administration said Iraq had a well-developed nuclear program that presented a threat to the United States.
Now, "It clearly does not look like a massive, resurgent program, based on what we discovered," former U.N. weapons inspector David Kay, who heads the government's search, said yesterday after briefing House and Senate intelligence committees in a closed session on his interim report. He said he will need six to nine months to conclude his work, and congressional sources said the administration is requesting an additional $600 million toward the effort to find weapons of mass destruction.
Dana Priest and Walter Pincus, The Washington Post
quote:
There has been mixed reaction to a US-led interim report into the search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq that says none have yet been found.
Hans Blix - the man who headed the United Nations weapons inspection team in Iraq before the war - says CIA official David Kay's report contained "no surprises".
But the vice-president of the Senate Intelligence Committee - Jay Rockefeller, a Democrat - said America's armed forces had been put at risk, based on a threat that appeared not to have existed.
quote:
Mr Kay, who heads the Iraq Survey Group (ISG) said it was too early to reach definitive conclusions and much work remains to be done.
But Mr Blix told the BBC that America still had not come up with any evidence that Iraq had posed a great enough threat to justify war.
"I don't think there are any surprises. The most important point is that they confirm that they have not found any stocks of weapons of mass destruction of any kind," he said
quote:
But the Republican chairman of the House of Representatives intelligence committee, Porter Goss, said the decision to go to war had been made because of the bad things Saddam Hussein had been doing.
quote:
Mr Kay it was too early to say whether WMDs "do not exist or that they existed before the war".
Much evidence about Iraq's banned weapons programmes which once existed had been "irretrievably lost", he said.
The ISG, however, found significant evidence of continuing Iraqi weapons research and development.
Teams found clandestine laboratories and found live botulinum toxin - which could be used to make biological weapons - at an Iraqi scientist's home, the report said.
quote:So, as usual it's ambiguous; there's enough stuff in the report to provide ammunition for both sides. It should be noted,however, that even if conclusive evidence of WMD programs is found, it would be a long way from WMD being ready in 45 minutes.
Plans were discovered for missiles capable of flying up to 1,000 kilometres (625 miles) - well beyond the 150 km range limit (93 miles) set by the United Nations, it added.
There were also alleged contacts with North Korea to obtain missile technology.
Mr Kay said additional information was beginning to corroborate reports of human testing activities using chemical and biological substances.
quote:So Iraq was invaded because they have meth-labs?
Teams found clandestine laboratories
quote:Yep, a distinct change of tune from the pre-war statements made by our Dear Leader and Bush.
It's all intent, intent, intent, isn't it?
quote:Not to mention that American lives are worth more than those of foreigners.
But of course they're darkies and we're not, our ends are more important than theirs.
quote:At last count I saw about 10,000 Iraqis died while being liberated, tell their families an illegal war was justified.
How many landfills full of corpses did our invasion prevent?
quote:For which read "in that it's Americans, not Iraqis that are responsible for the ending of same."
improved quality of life
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quote:So, what he's saying is: "Yeah, we'd like to help Iraq, but if he gave up his weapons, then, sure, he could stay."
"All we‘re interested in is getting rid of those weapons of mass destruction. We think the Iraqi people would be a lot better off with a different leader, a different regime. But the principal offense here are weapons of mass destruction," Mr. Powell said.
quote:Actually, I'd argue that given the time it was said, this best translates as "we're still trying to build a coalition, which would undoubtedly include Arab states, and we don't want to say anything that will undoubtedly collapse it."
Originally posted by Veers:
I couldn't find Bush's statements, but I found these.
Colin Powell, Oct. 2002
Very interesting.
Note:
quote:So, what he's saying is: "Yeah, we'd like to help Iraq, but if he gave up his weapons, then, sure, he could stay."
"All we‘re interested in is getting rid of those weapons of mass destruction. We think the Iraqi people would be a lot better off with a different leader, a different regime. But the principal offense here are weapons of mass destruction," Mr. Powell said.
quote:
CIA Finds No Evidence Hussein Sought to Arm Terrorists
The CIA's search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq has found no evidence that former president Saddam Hussein tried to transfer chemical or biological technology or weapons to terrorists, according to a military and intelligence expert.
Anthony Cordesman, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, provided new details about the weapons search and Iraqi insurgency in a report released Friday. It was based on briefings over the past two weeks in Iraq from David Kay, the CIA representative who is directing the search for unconventional weapons in Iraq; L. Paul Bremer, the U.S. civil administrator there; and military officials.
"No evidence of any Iraqi effort to transfer weapons of mass destruction or weapons to terrorists," Cordesman wrote of Kay's briefing. "Only possibility was Saddam's Fedayeen [his son's irregular terrorist force] and talk only."
One of the concerns the Bush administration cited early last year to justify the need to invade Iraq was that Hussein would provide chemical or biological agents or weapons to al Qaeda or other terrorists. Despite the disclosure that U.S. and British intelligence officials assessed that Hussein would use or distribute such weapons only if he were attacked and faced defeat, administration spokesmen have continued to defend that position.
Walter Pincus, The Washington Post
quote:These phrases are indeed interesting:
[Modher Sadeq-Saba] Tamimi's covert work, which he recounted publicly for the first time in five hours of interviews, offers fresh perspective on the question that led the nation to war. Iraq flouted a legal duty to report the designs. The weapons they depicted, however, did not exist. After years of development -- against significant obstacles -- they might have taken form as nine-ton missiles. In March they fit in Tamimi's pocket, on two digital compact discs.
The nine-month record of arms investigators since the fall of Baghdad includes discoveries of other concealed arms research, most of it less advanced. Iraq's former government engaged in abundant deception about its ambitions and, in some cases, early steps to prepare for development or production. Interviews here -- among Iraqi weaponeers and investigators from the U.S. and British governments -- turned up unreported records, facilities or materials that could have been used in unlawful weapons.
But investigators have found no support for the two main fears expressed in London and Washington before the war: that Iraq had a hidden arsenal of old weapons and built advanced programs for new ones. In public statements and unauthorized interviews, investigators said they have discovered no work on former germ-warfare agents such as anthrax bacteria, and no work on a new designer pathogen -- combining pox virus and snake venom -- that led U.S. scientists on a highly classified hunt for several months. The investigators assess that Iraq did not, as charged in London and Washington, resume production of its most lethal nerve agent, VX, or learn to make it last longer in storage. And they have found the former nuclear weapons program, described as a "grave and gathering danger" by President Bush and a "mortal threat" by Vice President Cheney, in much the same shattered state left by U.N. inspectors in the 1990s.
A review of available evidence, including some not known to coalition investigators and some they have not made public, portrays a nonconventional arms establishment that was far less capable than U.S. analysts judged before the war. Leading figures in Iraqi science and industry, supported by observations on the ground, described factories and institutes that were thoroughly beaten down by 12 years of conflict, arms embargo and strangling economic sanctions. The remnants of Iraq's biological, chemical and missile infrastructures were riven by internal strife, bled by schemes for personal gain and handicapped by deceit up and down lines of command. The broad picture emerging from the investigation to date suggests that, whatever its desire, Iraq did not possess the wherewithal to build a forbidden armory on anything like the scale it had before the 1991 Persian Gulf War.
David Kay, who directs the weapons hunt on behalf of the Bush administration, reported no discoveries last year of finished weapons, bulk agents or ready-to-start production lines. Members of his Iraq Survey Group, in unauthorized interviews, said the group holds out little prospect now of such a find. Kay and his spokesman, who report to Director of Central Intelligence George J. Tenet, declined to be interviewed.
Barton Gellman, The Washington Post