To: epicure who wrote (131725 ) 5/6/2004 9:24:06 AM From: Hawkmoon Read Replies (1) | Respond to I see that you really can't stand to be wrong- even about something as small as the definition of 20/20 and your use of it. Bush has that problem too. So sorry. all you really did was take one side of the issue of WMDs and "roll the intellectual bones", hoping you'd be right YOU WERE WRONG with regard to whether Saddam was continuing research into WMDs, and prohibited launch systems, including biological agents (which are far more insidious). Because not only did such R&D continue, it was personnally funded and supervised by Saddam himself, not some underling...guardian.co.uk I have covered a lot of ground today, much of it highly technical. Although we are resisting drawing conclusions in this first interim report, a number of things have become clearer already as a result of our investigation, among them: 1. Saddam, at least as judged by those scientists and other insiders who worked in his military-industrial programs, had not given up his aspirations and intentions to continue to acquire weapons of mass destruction. Even those senior officials we have interviewed who claim no direct knowledge of any ongoing prohibited activities readily acknowledge that Saddam intended to resume these programs whenever the external restrictions were removed. Several of these officials acknowledge receiving inquiries since 2000 from Saddam or his sons about how long it would take to either restart CW production or make available chemical weapons. if OIF had not intervened, would have resulted in the production of missiles with ranges at least up to 1,000 km, well in excess of the UN permitted range of 150 km. These missile activities were supported by a serious clandestine procurement program about which we have much still to learn. we have confidence that there were at a minimum clandestine ongoing research and development activities that were embedded in the Iraqi Intelligence Service. While we have much yet to learn about the exact work programs and capabilities of these activities, it is already apparent that these undeclared activities would have at a minimum facilitated chemical and biological weapons activities and provided a technically trained cadre. Let me conclude by returning to something I began with today. We face a unique but challenging opportunity in our efforts to unravel the exact status of Iraq's WMD program. The good news is that we do not have to rely for the first time in over a decade on the incomplete, and often false, data that Iraq supplied the UN/IAEA; data collected by UN inspectors operating with the severe constraints that Iraqi security and deception actions imposed; information supplied by defectors, some of whom certainly fabricated much that they supplied and perhaps were under the direct control of the Iraqi Intelligence Service; data collected by national technical collections systems with their own limitations. The bad news is that we have to do this under conditions that ensure that our work will take time and impose serious physical dangers on those who are asked to carry it out. Why should we take the time and run the risk to ensure that our conclusions reflect the truth to the maximum extent that is possible given the conditions in post-conflict Iraq? For those of us that are carrying out this search, there are two reasons that drive us to want to complete this effort.
