Yes the lies continue and the complete made up story of why to invade another nation are drying up!
The Quest for Illicit Weapons
New York Times
Friday 18 April 2003
The continued failure of American forces to find any "weapons of mass destruction" in Iraq must be
worrying some officials, particularly at intelligence agencies that assured the White House that
Baghdad had such weapons. If Saddam Hussein authorized his field commanders to use chemical
weapons, as Secretary of State Colin Powell suggested to the United Nations in February,
presumably some of the weapons should have been overrun by Army and Marine forces as they
closed in on Baghdad. Yet so far every report of suspicious items has proved to be a false alarm. The
very fact that pressure is mounting on the Bush administration to prove the presence of unconventional
weapons makes it imperative that the White House bring in experienced inspectors from the United
Nations and the International Atomic Energy Agency to help locate illicit materials and enhance the
credibility of any findings. Current White House plans to bypass the U.N. are heading in the wrong
direction.
There may be good reasons for coming up dry so far. The Iraqis were expert at hiding forbidden
materials, and it could take some time to find secret storage and manufacturing sites in a nation that
is the size of California. But with every passing day, American credibility is called into question,
particularly by other nations that were not enthusiastic about military action to begin with. The chief
justification for invading Iraq was to get rid of Baghdad's stores of chemical and biological agents and
dismantle its effort to produce a nuclear bomb. These weapons were deemed a threat not only to
Iraq's neighbors, but also to the United States, particularly if Mr. Hussein were to make them available
to terrorists, as President Bush suggested in his State of the Union message.
The military units searching for unconventional arms in Iraq are not truly expert in finding hidden
weapons. They need to be buttressed not only by American civilian experts but, even more important,
by respected international inspectors as well. Such neutral experts need to ensure a strict chain of
custody and oversee the accuracy of laboratory analyses. Otherwise there is a danger that any
findings will be discounted by a skeptical world that is all too ready to believe that the evidence was
planted or manipulated.
The best hope for finding forbidden materials may be tips from Iraqi scientists who worked on the
programs or incriminating documents that reveal where illicit weapons were made or stored. Absent
such signposts, investigators will have to visit thousands of suspect sites to look for evidence. The
whole process could take many months, but it is important to carry through to a conclusion.
Although some administration officials say Iraqi leaders may have transferred banned weapons to
Syria, it seems unlikely that such movement would have gone unnoticed by spy satellites and drones
watching the key routes. Gen. Tommy Franks, the U.S. commander, believes the regime fell too
quickly to give Iraqis a chance to move banned items out of the country. If the weapons are there,
investigators should be able to find them. |
