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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Bilow who wrote (105717)	7/16/2003 7:57:13 AM
From: Neocon	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

There are repeated expressions from various agencies, including the IAEA, of fear that the material from Tuwaitha will end up in the hands of terrorists through the black market. Your attempts at obfuscation are contemptible........

To: Bilow who wrote (105717)	7/16/2003 8:02:33 AM
From: Neocon	Respond to of 281500

Nuclear watchdog fears terrorist dirty bomb after looting at al-Tuwaitha Ian Traynor in Zagreb Wednesday May 14, 2003 The Guardian United Nations nuclear inspectors, barred from Iraq by Washington, are increasingly worried that the widespread looting and ransacking of Iraq's nuclear facilities may result in terrorists building a radioactive "dirty bomb". The inspectors' concerns are shared internationally and the British government has report edly offered to raise the matter with Washington to try to get agreement on a return of the UN nuclear inspectors to Iraq. The main worry revolves around the fate of at least 200 radioactive isotopes which were stored at the sprawling al-Tuwaitha nuclear complex, 15 miles south of Baghdad. It has seen widespread looting, and reports from Baghdad speak of locals making off with barrels of raw uranium and the isotopes which are meant for medical or industrial use. "If this happened anywhere else there would be national outrage and it would be the highest priority," said a senior source at the UN nuclear watchdog, the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency. "The radioactive sources, some very potent ones, could get on to the black market and into the hands of terrorists planning dirty-bomb attacks," said Melissa Fleming, an IAEA spokeswoman. The IAEA chief, Mohammed El Baradei, has appealed twice to the US in the past month to be allowed to resume inspections of the Iraqi nuclear sites. The requests have gone unanswered, although the IAEA has forwarded details of suspect nuclear sites to the US. On Monday, Dr El Baradei raised the problem in London with the foreign secretary, Jack Straw, who is said to have been "supportive and sympathetic". "The Brits are saying they agree with us, that something needs to be done and that they will speak to the Americans," said the IAEA source. In recent sessions in Geneva on preparations for a review of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty in 2005, several delegates also attacked US security failures at al-Tuwaitha. Experts are muttering that the US, as the occupying power in Iraq, is now technically in breach of the non-proliferation treaty. There is a fear that the occupation, ostensibly to eliminate weapons of mass destruction, could result in more such weapons being created. Before the war there were 1,000 or more such devices in Iraq, at least 200 of them stored at a site known as Location C in al-Tuwaitha. It is not clear how many are missing, but IAEA officials have seen footage showing looters with casings containing isotopes. Mark Gvozdecky, the chief IAEA spokesman, said: "If this was happening anywhere else in the world _ we would insist on an immediate inspection. It has been more than a month since the initial reports of looting, more than a month since US forces took control." But UN inspectors are pessimistic about being allowed back, and note that the Anglo-American UN resolution on Iraq being negotiated in New York has no provision for a resumption of UN inspections. guardian.co.uk

To: Bilow who wrote (105717)	7/16/2003 8:14:31 AM
From: Neocon	Respond to of 281500

Blair, Bush not stupid enough to lie about Iraq (This Forum was written by Max Boot, senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, and first published in the Los Angeles Times.) Opponents of the war in Iraq must be chagrined to see pretty much all of their arguments discredited by events. The invasion did not cause greater regional unrest; instead it led to a resumption of Palestinian-Israeli peace talks. There have been no massive refugee flows or other humanitarian disasters. U.S. troops did not encounter a Stalingrad on the Euphrates. And so on. Not able to forgive George W. Bush and Tony Blair for being right, the naysayers are now emphasizing what looks to be their strongest argument: the failure so far to find weapons of mass destruction. The European media is in a frenzy about the ''lies'' that led to war. Those who make this argument must think that the U.S. and British governments are not only deeply venal but also stupid. Their theory, essentially, is this: The president and prime minister deliberately lied about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction to justify an invasion that they knew would show that no such weapons existed. It is indeed puzzling that U.S. forces haven't found more evidence of WMD, but this hardly shows that Bush and Blair lied. It does show how imperfect our intelligence about Iraq was, which actually makes the case for preventive war that much stronger. Critics of preventive wars suggest we should wait to hit back until just before we're going to be attacked or just after. But how are we going to find out about an attack just before it happens, or even how are we going to assign blame afterward? The safer course when dealing with rogue states that have demonstrated a capacity to manufacture and use WMD is to stop them before it's too late. Iraq, despite the paucity of ''smoking guns'', fits this category. No one doubts Saddam used chemical weapons against the Iranians and Kurds. Neither can there be any serious doubt that he kept WMD long after he was obliged to give them up by United Nations resolutions. It wasn't just the U.S. government that accused him of stockpiling WMD; so did other governments, including France. Why else would the French push so hard for inspections unless they thought there was something to inspect? Nothing since the war discredits the casus belli, which was Saddam's failure to fully cooperate with weapons inspectors - a failure that continued until the end, even though it cost the regime billions of dollars in lost oil revenue. Chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix's last report, released this week, found ''the long list of proscribed items unaccounted for, and as such resulting in unresolved disarmament issues, was neither shortened by the inspections nor by Iraqi declarations and documents.'' Was Blix too part of Bush's pro-war conspiracy? The mystery, in light of the postwar failure to find any WMD stockpiles, of course is why Saddam was so uncooperative. The simplest answer is he did have something to hide. The more unlikely explanation is he destroyed his stockpile but didn't want to definitively declare his lack of WMD because this would dispel his aura of power. Saddam may well have been playing a game by destroying his stockpiles but keeping the capacity to manufacture more as soon as the world's interest faded. In 1998, he stopped cooperating with U.N. weapons inspectors and suffered no serious consequences. He provided limited cooperation this time only because of the presence of hundreds of thousands of U.S. and British troops on his borders - a deployment he knew could not be maintained indefinitely. He probably hoped to outlast the international community again. That strategy failed, of course, because of the determination of Bush and Blair to hold him to account. They decided that, even if Saddam was not about to strike now, it made sense to remove him from power rather than wait for him to augment his WMD capacity in the future, possibly even by acquiring nuclear weapons. It is reasonable for critics to find this rationale for war unconvincing. It is not reasonable for them to accuse Bush and Blair of lying. Whatever the details of his WMD program, the fact that Saddam was a dangerous monster is no lie. 216.116.224.179

To: Bilow who wrote (105717)	7/16/2003 8:20:12 AM
From: Neocon	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Blix Defends Inspectors' Credibility EDITH M. LEDERER Associated Press UNITED NATIONS - Chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix on Tuesday said his inspectors' failure to turn up weapons of mass destruction in Iraq may have been nothing but a reflection of the truth, and he called American criticism of the prewar search off target. "I would say that I think the criticism that was directed to us was misdirected," Blix told The Associated Press in an interview, He retires June 30 after three years of leading the U.N. search for banned weapons. While defending the U.N. inspections program, Blix welcomed the U.S.-led ouster of Saddam Hussein. "He was an ancient type ruler who got control of a country with an oil income and could use 21st century weapons. That was a very dangerous combination, and I think we all feel a great relief that he is put out of action," Blix said. But Blix defended the independence and credibility of U.N. inspectors who left Iraq shortly before the United States and Britain attacked the country, in part at least, because of allegations Saddam had chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. The United Nations refused to back the military ouster of Saddam and the administrations of President Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair have come under heavy criticism because those weapons have not been found in the three months since the war began. However, Blix declined to gloat, saying that the matter was too serious. And he wished the U.S. teams now searching for banned weapons in Iraq "good luck." "I think we should all be looking to truth," he said. "We want to find out what was the real truth" - whether Saddam was concealing illegal weapons or had destroyed them before he was attacked. Nevertheless, he was critical of intelligence his teams received from the United States and other countries before the war began, saying the information was "not very good ... and that shook me a bit." In the weeks before the war, some U.S. officials strongly criticized Blix's reports to the Security Council for failing to support the Bush administration's contention that Saddam had an active illegal weapons programs. Blix reported that his inspectors had not found such weapons, but still had many outstanding questions about the country's previous weapons programs. Blix credited the U.S. military build up which started last summer for pressuring Iraq to allow U.N. inspectors to return in November after four years. While many people in the U.S. government believed from the beginning that inspections wouldn't work, Blix said he thinks Bush was sincere in initially wanting to give inspections a chance and not go to war. Even in late February, if Saddam had come forward as the British hoped and confessed "everything" about his weapons program that could have averted war, he said. Saddam didn't, and U.S. patience gave out - but Blix said his inspectors should have been given more time. "At the end, Iraqis were pretty frantic in trying to find explanations, not very successfully," he said. "I certainly think a number of months more would have been interesting to have, provided that we still had the military pressure," Blix said. "The longer that one does not find any weapons in spite of people coming forward and being rewarded for giving information, etc., the more I think it is important that we begin to ask ourselves if there were no weapons, why was it that Iraq conducted itself as it did for so many years?," Blix said. "They cheated, they retreated, they changed figures, they denied access, etc. Why was that if they didn't have anything really to conceal? I have speculations, one could be pride," he said. "Saddam Hussein regarded himself as an emperor of Mesopotamia, some said, and he regarded inspectors as impostors," Blix said. Nonetheless, he said, U.N. inspectors could not jump to conclusions - and the Bush administration shouldn't have either. "I think they should remember that in the future, too, that the international inspection that is not on a leash is the inspection that has the greatest credibility," Blix said. "It might even be right." dfw.com