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Politics : Stockman Scott's Political Debate Porch -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: stockman_scott who wrote (14928)	3/18/2003 6:05:00 PM
From: TigerPaw	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 89467

Cheney on Sunday said ElBaradei was "wrong" about Iraq's nuclear program and questioned the IAEA's credibility. As United Nations nuclear inspectors flee Iraq, some of them are angry at the Bush administration for cutting short their work, bad-mouthing their efforts and making false claims about evidence of weapons of mass destruction bayarea.com Responding to the U.S. emphasis on underground facilities, the inspectors slugged through the mud beneath a petroleum plant and paid a visit to an irrigation reservoir carved into the inside of a mountain. Neither contained anything suspicious. The nuclear inspectors -- the International Atomic Energy Agency's Iraq Action Team -- are lead by a Frenchman, Jacques Baute. Under his direction the team has focused on unraveling the clandestine Iraqi procurement networks that imported nuclear weapons technology in the 1980s and the aluminum tubing more recently. During unannounced visits to trading companies, the inspectors used special equipment to copy the hard drives of computers. Among the thousands of files they found some leads, as well as pornography. Traders in the procurement networks, the inspectors discovered, have been using their positions to steal oil-for-food money and shift the stolen profits out of the country. For example, a $100,000 purchase of humanitarian goods from Jordan might be inflated to $200,000, with the extra money split between the Iraqi buyer and the Jordanian seller. Some of the inspectors leave with a deep suspicion of U.S. motives. Some believe, for example, that recent flights of U.S. U-2 spy planes were intended to help the military draw up target lists, not to aid the inspectors in their search for weapons of mass destruction. The inspectors may have been getting too close to Halliburton deals. TP