<And we know that there are still some 500 tonnes of WMD material unaccounted for, according to Iraqi records (totaling some 6,000 warheads).>
Hawk, even if they tried, I doubt they'd be able to account for things very well. Even with USA expertise, I bet there are quite a few things that have gone missing from USA military stocks. I know in the oil industry, it was notoriously difficult to maintain good records of pumps, tanks and stocks and that was with hot shot auditors, accountants and all sorts of controls. A place like Iraq isn't going to have good records or any.
Who says there was 500 tonnes in the first place. Perhaps 500 tonnes were entered into stock accounting, but really that was just a paper entry to enable some cash to be sent to the right people instead. I dare say there was some bribery, corruption, misappropriation and other miscreant activities, even aside from the Simpson's type human blundering which is common everywhere.
Enron, Worldcom and other large companies had trouble accounting for things too. Do you think Saddam would have had every 500 tonnes of weapons of mass destruction programmes neatly stacked in a row while being harrassed, sanctioned, bombed and generally having problems.
Mqurice |
