The administration is now actually making official claims of looting -- as for why they can't back up their lies -- how pathetic can they get. I hope they don't expect the world to swallow this bullshit hook, line, and sinker -- like so, so many did in Powell's U.N. address.
... I truly thought that Powell would not lie; I figured him a man of integrity and honor. I was mistaken.
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Are Hints of 'Smoking Gun'
In Iraq Enough for the U.S.?
Putin, Skeptical of Hunt for Weapons,
Asks Inspector Blix to Testify at U.N.
By JOHN J. FIALKA and YOCHI J. DREAZEN
Staff Reporters of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
Although the U.S. military is finding more hints of an Iraqi arsenal of weapons of mass destruction, the Bush administration is finding it difficult to manage the expectations -- raised by its own pre-war rhetoric -- that U.S. forces would discover big weapons programs.
The simmering question of whether the U.S. will find the weapons programs President Bush cited as the main rationale for war will be taken up at the United Nations Security Council next week. Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has been openly skeptical about the presence of chemical, biological or nuclear weapons in Iraq, Thursday called for U.N. chief weapons inspector Hans Blix to testify Tuesday before the Security Council on how soon his inspectors might resume the hunt in Iraq.
U.S. officials say there may be a role for Mr. Blix and his team in chronicling Iraqi weapons programs, perhaps in confirming discoveries made by U.S. troops, but initially they want the search for chemical and biological weapons to be handled principally by American troops and specialists. <<<<--- gee I wonder why?
Inside Iraq, soldiers found more hints of illicit weapons programs Thursday. Members of the U.S. Army's Fourth Infantry Division found what appeared to be parts of a scud missile at Al Taji Army Airfield, 15 miles northwest of Baghdad. Al Taji, the home of Republican Guard units assigned to defend the Iraqi capital, was portrayed as one of Iraq's more suspect sites by Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, who gave the U.N. Security Council a detailed portrait of Iraq's clandestine weapons program on Feb. 5.
But while the U.S. framed the debate over Iraq's weapons of mass destruction before the war, it has turned up only fragments of the puzzle pieces to put in the frame.
Secretary Powell's speech was illustrated with satellite photos that, he said, showed four "active chemical munitions bunkers" at Al Taji. They were later removed before U.N. inspectors arrived, Mr. Powell said. One of the major concerns about Iraq that he and other U.S. officials raised before the war was that it would launch Scuds, tipped with warheads filled with chemical weapons, at Israel. <<<--- what happened to all of this?
The U.S. Army found the 30-square-mile facility to be largely abandoned. While they found a 30-foot-long missile lying on the ground near what appeared to be a repair shop and other parts that also appeared to be from other missiles, an Army officer in charge of the search said the items were "intriguing," but hadn't been conclusively identified as the prohibited Scuds.
GREAT EXPECTATIONS
Excerpts from Secretary of State Colin Powell's presentation to the U.N. in February:
On Iraq's chemical weapons and missiles:
• "Our conservative estimate is that Iraq today has a stockpile of between 100 and 500 tons of chemical-weapons agent. That is enough agent to fill 16,000 battlefield rockets." #LIE 1
On mobile biological-weapons facilities:
• "We know from sources that a missile brigade outside Baghdad was dispersing rocket launchers and warheads containing biological-warfare agent…"#LIE 2
• "We have firsthand descriptions of biological-weapons factories on wheels and on rails."#LIE 3
• "We know that Iraq has at least seven of these mobile, biological-agent factories …perhaps 18 trucks that we know of…imagine trying to find 18 trucks among the thousands and thousands of trucks that travel the roads of Iraq every day."
#LIE 4
On nuclear-weapons capability:
• "Saddam Hussein is very much focused on putting in place the key missing piece from his nuclear-weapons program, the ability to produce fissile material."
Army searchers also found dozens of gas masks and several sealed jars containing an unidentified white powder, but the picture emerging from Al Taji and from other places being searched in the California-sized country is still sketchy at best.
"In my opinion, they haven't found any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq because there quite simply aren't any," Barthelemy Courmont, a researcher at the French Institute for International and Strategic Relations in Paris, told Reuters news service. Mr. Blix, whose inspection team left Iraq shortly before the U.S. attack, told the German weekly Der Spiegel: "Now we will see whether London and Washington were right."
David Franz, a biological weapons expert who formerly led two U.N. inspection teams into Iraq, said he was quite skeptical of U.S. claims of mobile laboratories that Iraq supposedly used to create germs for biological weapons. The process for making deadly germs involves a "lot of bells and whistles" that might not work on a truck, he said.
But Mr. Franz, currently vice president for the Southern Research Institute in Birmingham, Ala., said he is surprised that the U.S. hasn't turned up any chemical weapons. In his speech to the U.N., Mr. Powell said "conservative estimates" by U.S. intelligence said Iraq had "between 100 and 500 tons" of nerve gas and other chemical agents.
"But I still hope they find something or someplace involving chemical weapons," Mr. Franz added.
David Kay, another former leader of U.N. inspection teams in Iraq, said one activity that is seriously complicating the U.S. search is the pervasive looting in Iraq, especially around government facilities. <<<-----pluhleeze, gimme a break -- just how stupid do they think the American people are?
Mr. Kay, who specializes in analyzing nuclear weapons proliferation for the Potomac Institute in Washington, said Iraqi scientists were suspected of working on a nuclear weapons design, using computers. "Right now these machines are probably looted," he added. "One of the things they've got to do is put out a reward for getting back computers, some of these hard drives could contain whole libraries of dangerous information." <<<---how pathetic is the administration sounding now?
Mr. Blix's U.N. inspection teams may be another victim of the looting. The compound where they lived in downtown Baghdad and most of their vehicles have, reportedly, been looted.
-- Jess Bravin and Alan Cullison contributed to this article.
Wall Street Journal (runs this "critical of Bush" article on Good Friday when markets are closed and readership is relatively non existent.)
Updated April 18, 2003 |
