WAR: Powell: Unlikely WMD Stocks Will Be Found in Iraq

Secretary of State Powell has stated that the nuclear and biological weapons in all likelyhood will never be found. This is the first time an administration official has been so blunt on the issue.



As Bush has said, WMD or not, getting Sadam out was a key goal. Be it oil or protection of Isreal, Saddams ouster is a positive one. That being said it highlights the glaring failure of our and other intel services in the Middle East. Given the recent event in North Korea and the lack of solid info there, clearly a MAJOR overhaul is needed at the NSA, CIA et al. Im not sure the Intelligence Tsar is going to help all that much


[edit on 9-14-2004 by Valhall]

Big news today! That's quite a reversal from some previous statements of the Bush administration.

What do you call it when they reverse like that again? I keep forgetting.

Originally posted by RANT
Big news today! That's quite a reversal from some previous statements of the Bush administration.
What do you call it when they reverse like that again? I keep forgetting.

Just take a look at Kerry stances on the issues, that will give the clue in you need But seriously its not a flip flop. Its just an admission that something went wrong with the Intell they recived.

So can someone tell me why we went to War with Iraq, when there are more dangerous States that are activly seeking to develop weapons of mass destruction? Countries like North Koria and Iran.
Dont get me wrong, any state should be able to be allowed to use Nuclear power for peacefull means but there are Countries out there that we know for a fact want the Bomb, and in the case of NK may even have it as we speak.
There was never any WMD in Iraq and our governments are only just admitting to the fact in the hope we wont make a big deal about it.
So did all those young men and women give thier lives and health for baral of bloody oil?
You cant tell me we invaded to free the Iraqi people, it never bothered us for the 20+ years that Saddam was in charge before we decided he was the boogyman.

Originally posted by Janus
So can someone tell me why we went to War with Iraq, when there are more dangerous States that are activly seeking to develop weapons of mass destruction? Countries like North Koria and Iran..

As I see it:

Sadam needed to go. He was brutal and the Iraqi people did not complain about him because they could not

It was resonable to assume that the had WMD. The intell was flawed. I do agree with you on NK though. Kim is a crazy MOFO and should have been taken out a long time ago.

The two biggest reasons: Oil and to protect Isreal. Not from Iraq mind you, but from Iran which now has 2 countries with US troops around it.

The oil is critical IMHO its only a matter of time before the house of Saud is toppled. When that happens, you could have two countries controlling alot of oil openly hostile to the US.

It doesn't surprise me.
He seemed sceptical about the WMD evidence from early on.

Powell's doubts over CIA intelligence on Iraq prompted him to set up secret review:
Much of the initial information for Mr Powell's speech to the UN was provided by the Pentagon, where Paul Wolfowitz, the US deputy defence secretary, set up a special unit, the Office of Special Plans, to counter the uncertainty of the CIA's intelligence on Iraq.

Mr Powell's team removed dozens of pages of alleged evidence about Iraq's banned weapons and ties to terrorists from a draft of his speech, US News and World Report says today.[B] At one point, he became so angry at the lack of adequate sourcing to intelligence claims that he declared: "I'm not reading this. This is bull#,"[/B] according to the magazine.

Originally posted by Janus
There was never any WMD in Iraq and our governments are only just admitting to the fact in the hope we wont make a big deal about it.
So did all those young men and women give thier lives and health for baral of bloody oil?
You cant tell me we invaded to free the Iraqi people, it never bothered us for the 20+ years that Saddam was in charge before we decided he was the boogyman.

Saddam had shown in the past that he had intention to use any capabilities Iraq had to attack and invade other countries, for example Kuwait. He was also a despot who waged a war against the true natives of Iraq, the Assyrian Christians and others, including many of his own people if they even said anything against him in public.

If you read the Butler report and the latest UNMOVIC reports on what they have found that was in Iraq until late 2003 and even 2004, Iraq had many banned weapons, like missiles and rockets for missiles. Iraq also fired at least 3-4 banned missiles at the coalition in Kuwait this time around, missiles that were banned from Iraq. Did Iraq have wmd? yes, they did, have we found the stockpiles that the UN and other agencies said Iraq had and were unacounted for? no....

The Butler report also mentioned that Bush was right and that Saddam had tried to acquire uranium from Africa.

We also have the reports after 9/11 and until earlier this year from Russia in which they state that they believe that Saddam was planning on making terrorist attacks on the US...

What happened to the stokpiles of wmd?.... we have reports that many were taken to Iran and other countries, just like Iraq sent parts of banned missiles and even entire factories to scrap yards around the world which they had in late 2003. As for what happened to the rest of the stockpiles of wmd...the following might shed some light.

By Ion Mihai Pacepa
............
As a former Romanian spy chief who used to take orders from the Soviet KGB, it is perfectly obvious to me that Russia is behind the evanescence of Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction. After all, Russia helped Saddam get his hands on them in the first place. The Soviet Union and all its bloc states always had a standard operating procedure for deep sixing weapons of mass destruction � in Romanian it was codenamed "Sarindar, meaning "emergency exit."Iimplemented it in Libya. It was for ridding Third World despots of all trace of their chemical weapons if the Western imperialists ever got near them.
.............

Excerpted from.
www.washtimes.com...

There are several ex-soviet military that say the same thing, Russia has helped Saddam in the past acquire wmd and other weapons, some of the deals made with Saddam were in late 2003, before the war started.

You can find more information/corroboration about all of the above in these forums.

BTW, what we haven't found in Iraq yet is the unacounted "stockpiles" of wmd that Iraq was supposed to have and everyone in the world was saying they had.



[edit on 14-9-2004 by Muaddib]

I just found the following piece of information.

September 8, 2004 :: Washington Post :: News

The new Iraqi authorities have been systematically shipping parts of formerly banned missiles to outside the country, according to a recently released report by the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, or UNMOVIC. The May report, to be presented before the UN today, found that at least 42 engines from banned missiles have been shipped to other countries as scrap, as well as other equipment useful for assembling weapons of mass destruction. Counties to which such materials have been shipped include Jordan and the Netherlands, but the report suggests that much more has been shipped to Asia and other parts of the middle east.

Excerpted from.
www.missilethreat.com...

The original article from the Washington post is only available to subscribers.

Originally posted by Muaddib
I just found the following piece of information.

That report is old news.
It's already been discussed here.
A PDF of the May 28 report is on the UNMOVIC website. Pay close attention to the satellite photos of the weapons storage facilities, they were razed after the US took control and the UN was kicked out:

UNMOVIC Seventeenth Quarterly Report
UN document S/2004/435 of 28 May 2004:
A team of Commission experts visited the site concerned in the Netherlands
and examined one missile engine that had been salvaged from the scrap metal
process. By comparing the serial production number on the engine with information
in the UNMOVIC database, the experts were able to confirm that the engine was one
from an SA-2 missile that had been tagged by United Nations inspectors in the past
and had not been declared as having been fired.

Here's the latest report from August 27 2004:

UNMOVIC Eighteenth Quarterly Report
UN document S/2004/693 of 27 August 2004.
A significant number of items relevant to the UNMOVIC mandate were
observed at the scrapyards. They included 20 SA-2 missile engines, a solid
propellant-mixing vessel tagged by UNMOVIC during its 2002-2003 inspection
activities in Iraq, fragmented remains of an SA-2 airframe and booster, as well as
four chemical-related vessels made of corrosion-resistant material that had been
tagged by the Commission as dual-use items. According to information received
from the trading company representatives, the tagged chemical vessels had been
dismantled from the chemical industrial complex near Fallujah. The Commission�s
experts were able to confirm that information by comparing the serial numbers of
the United Nations tags still attached to the vessels with information in the
UNMOVIC database.

[edit on 14-9-2004 by AceOfBase]

Originally posted by AceOfBase

That report is old news.
It's already been discussed here.
A PDF of the May 28 report is on the UNMOVIC website (pay close attention to the satellite photos of the weapons storage facilities, they were razed after the US took control and the UN was kicked out:

UN MOVIC Seventeenth Quarterly Report
UN document S/2004/435 of 28 May 2004:
A team of Commission experts visited the site concerned in the Netherlands
and examined one missile engine that had been salvaged from the scrap metal
process. By comparing the serial production number on the engine with information
in the UNMOVIC database, the experts were able to confirm that the engine was one
from an SA-2 missile that had been tagged by United Nations inspectors in the past
and had not been declared as having been fired.

I was the first one to give links to the May 28th UNMOVIC report. The last report i gave is from September 8th 2004, in which the new authorities in Iraq are reporting they are still sending banned parts they have found.

I have read the reports, and the razing of the buildings started before we went to Iraq, when Saddam saw that we were going in, he quickly sent orders to do so. Even after he was captured his loyalists were still taking care of some of these buildings....


[edit on 14-9-2004 by Muaddib]

Let me give you an excerpt from UNMOVIC about this.

The existence of
missile engines originating in Iraq among scrap in Europe may affect the accounting of proscribed engines known to have been in Iraq�s possession in March 2003. Both IAEA and UNMOVIC have kept the Security Council informed of this matter.

Excerpted from.
www.un.org...

You will find the above on the third page. You will also find the following.

Representatives of the scrapyard
company indicated that a number of similar engines (5 to 12) had been seen in the scrapyard in January and February of this year. More engines could have been processed and passed through the yard unnoticed. Company staff confirmed that other items made of stainless steel and other corrosion-resistant metal alloys bearing the inscription �Iraq� or �Baghdad� had been observed in shipments delivered from the Middle East since November 2003. A number of items were examined and sampled on-site by UNMOVIC experts with a portable metal analyser and were determined to be composed of inconel and titanium � both dual-use materials subject to monitoring. Photographs of other materials bearing Arabic script were
taken.

Excerpted from above link.


[edit on 14-9-2004 by Muaddib]

Here's an article, identical to the Washington Post article, that does not require registration:

U.N.: Iraqis Shipped Metal Out of Country
The report says export of the materials was handled by the Iraqi Ministry of Trade, which was under the direct supervision of U.S. occupation authorities until June 28, when the Americans handed power to Iraq's interim government.

The report criticized "the systematic removal" of items subject to U.N. monitoring from a number of sites.

The U.N. inspectors, who are barred from Iraq, said commercial satellite photos show that several important sites once used to manufacture missiles and precursors for chemical weapons have been destroyed or cleaned out.

This appears to refer to the August report I posted above.
I'm not sure why the first site you posted said it was the May report.

The May report, to be presented before the UN today,

Originally posted by Muaddib
Let me give you an excerpt from UNMOVIC about this.

How do those excerpts help your point?

other items made of stainless steel and other corrosion-resistant metal alloys bearing the inscription �Iraq� or �Baghdad� had been observed in shipments delivered from the Middle East since November 2003.

Delivered since November 2003.
Who was in charge of the government at that time?
Is it the country who went there to find weapons of mass destruction and then failed to keep track of the weapons that were already known about?
Keep in mind that this happened before the handover.

Scrap yard managers estimated that 60,000 tons passed through Jordan's largest free trade zone in 2003, and an additional 70,000 went through until June this year, the report said.

[edit on 14-9-2004 by AceOfBase]

The report says those banned materials were in possesion of Iraq before we went there. Would the US continue to get rid and destroy wmd and factories from Iraq? of course, that's what we went there to do.

Originally posted by Muaddib
The report says those banned materials were in possesion of Iraq before we went there. Would the US continue to get rid and destroy wmd and factories from Iraq? of course, that's what we went there to do.

They were there and had already been tagged and monitored by the UN.
The sites were known about so why weren't they secured?

If it was the US who razed these known sites then why not notify UNMOVIC afterwards?

-----Edited because of double post---------

[edit on 14-9-2004 by Muaddib]

Ace, those parts were banned from Iraq, meaning they were not supposed to have them at all, much less fire some of those banned missiles at the coalition.

Who razed all those factories and materials? It seems that part of it was done by Saddam, and it seems (althou we do need more information about this) the US continued to raze those sites since it was why we went there to do in the first place.

[edit on 14-9-2004 by Muaddib]

Oh and btw, if we were in total control of the country, why are we still encountering resistance?

We have not controlled every part of Iraq that I know of. There are parts that are controled by the insurgents.

As to your question of why we would get rid of those wmd and banned materials. My "guess" is that since there are insurgents in Iraq who are attacking our troops, it could be very possible that the resistance could have taken control of these facilities and banned parts, just like some of them used chemical missiles and improvised them as roadside bombs, they could do the same with these materials and US authorities in Iraq decided to avoid this possibility.



[edit on 14-9-2004 by Muaddib]

I'm asking why you would get rid of them and not notify the people who were monitoring them.

I'm aware you are not in control of the entire country but this war was about WMD so the first and highest priority would have been to secure those sites during the earliest days of the war.


[edit on 14-9-2004 by AceOfBase]

Originally posted by AceOfBase
I'm asking why you would get rid of them and not notify the people who were monitoring them.

I guess we do not have that information, so there is probably no way you can get an anwser to that, unless you ask the people with the information.