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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Skywatcher who wrote (496632)	11/21/2003 11:05:52 AM
From: Neocon	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769667

I did not think it would be the British protestors, myself, but there was a reasonable fear that the commotion caused by the demonstrations would provide cover for terrorists. I do not know if you noticed, but a number of protesters were of Indian or Pakistani descent. It would not have been hard to have hidden among them, if one were from the Middle East. And, after all, some of those fighting with the Taliban carried British passports, so it is not inconceivable that some protestors could have gone too far.......

To: Skywatcher who wrote (496632)	11/21/2003 2:39:51 PM
From: PartyTime	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 769667

Part One: The interview with Hussein Kamel: the text of the transcript is here Gen. Hussein Kamel, the former director of Iraq's Military Industrialization Corporation, in charge of Iraq's weapons programme, defected to Jordan on the night of 7 August 1995, together with his brother Col. Saddam Kamel. Hussein Kamel took crates of documents revealing past weapons programmes, and provided these to UNSCOM. Iraq responded by revealing a major store of documents that showed that Iraq had begun an unsuccessful crash programme to develop a nuclear bomb (on 20 August 1995). Hussein and Saddam Kamel agreed to return to Iraq, where they were assassinated (23 February 1996). The interview was conducted in Amman on 22 August 1995, 15 days after Kamel left Iraq. His interviewers were: * Rolf Ekeus, the former executive chairman of Unscom (from 1991 to 1997). * Professor Maurizio Zifferero, deputy director of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and head of the inspections team in Iraq. * Nikita Smidovich, a Russian diplomat who led UNSCOM's ballistic missile team and former Deputy Director for Operations of UNSCOM. During the interview, Major Izz al-Din al-Majid (transliterated as Major Ezzeddin) joins the discussion (p.10). Izz al-Din is Saddam Hussein's cousin, and defected together with the Kamel brothers. He did not return with them to Iraq in 1996, moving instead to Jordan and now to an unknown European country. In the transcript of the interview, Kamel states categorically: "I ordered destruction of all chemical weapons. All weapons - biological, chemical, missile, nuclear were destroyed" (p. 13). Kamel specifically discussed the significance of anthrax, which he portrayed as the "main focus" of the biological programme (pp.7-8). Smidovich asked Kamel: "were weapons and agents destroyed?" Kamel replied: "nothing remained". He confirmed that destruction took place "after visits of inspection teams. You have important role in Iraq with this. You should not underestimate yourself. You are very effective in Iraq." (p.7) Kamel added: "I made the decision to disclose everything so that Iraq could return to normal." (p.8) Furthermore, Kamel describes the elimination of prohibited missiles: "not a single missile left but they had blueprints and molds for production. All missiles were destroyed." (p.8) On VX, Kamel claimed: "they put it in bombs during last days of the Iran-Iraq war. They were not used and the programme was terminated." (p.12). Ekeus asked Kamel: "did you restart VX production after the Iran-Iraq war?" Kamel replied: "we changed the factory into pesticide production. Part of the establishment started to produce medicine [...] We gave insturctions [sic] not to produce chemical weapons." (p.13). Despite the significance of these claims, it was not known that Kamel made this assertion until February 2003. Kamel's claim was first carried on 24 February 2003 by Newsweek, who reported that Kamel told U.N. inspectors that Iraq had destroyed its entire stockpile of chemical and biological weapons and banned missiles, as Iraq claims (Newsweek, 3/3/03). Newsweek reported that the weapons were destroyed secretly, in order to hide their existence from inspectors, in the hopes of someday resuming production after inspections had finished. The CIA and MI6 were told the same story, Newsweek reported. However, these facts were "hushed up by the U.N. inspectors" in order to "bluff Saddam into disclosing still more", according to Newsweek. CIA spokesman Bill Harlow angrily denied the Newsweek report. "It is incorrect, bogus, wrong, untrue," Harlow told Reuters the day the report appeared (Reuters, 24 February 2003). On Wednesday (26 February 2003), a complete copy of the Kamel transcript -- an internal UNSCOM/IAEA document stamped "sensitive" -- was obtained by Glen Rangwala.