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Politics : I Will Continue to Continue, to Pretend.... -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sully- who wrote (3573)	7/22/2004 3:19:37 PM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 35834

What number constitutes a <font color=blue>"stockpile"<font color=black>? Warner: <font size=4>New report backs Iraq WMD claims<font size=3> By APARNA H. KUMAR The Associated Press 7/21/2004, 7:51 a.m. CT WASHINGTON (AP) — <font size=4>An upcoming report will contain <font color=blue>"a good deal of new information"<font color=black> backing up the Bush administration's contention that Saddam Hussein pursued weapons of mass destruction, Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John Warner, R-Va., said. The administration cited Saddam's hunger for such weapons as a main reason to invade Iraq last year. <font color=blue> "I'm not suggesting dramatic discoveries,"<font color=black> Warner told reporters Tuesday, but <font color=blue>"bits and pieces that Saddam Hussein was clearly defying"<font color=black> international restrictions, <font color=blue>"and he and his government had a continuing interest in maintaining the potential to shift to production of various types of weapons of mass destruction in a short period of time."<font color=black> The report is by the civilian head of the Iraq Survey Group, Charles Duelfer, who reports to the CIA director. Initially the report was expected to be done this summer, but instead it will come out in September, Warner said. Warner said the new information covers <font color=blue>"some weapons that predate the first Gulf War that are still around and were used at the time Saddam Hussein used chemical weapons against the Iranians"<font color=black> as well as <font color=blue>"remnants of what he was doing himself here in the last several years."<font color=black> He would not elaborate, saying he didn't want to pre-empt the report. The senator made the comments after a closed briefing by Maj. Gen. Keith Dayton, who updated the panel on the Iraq Survey Group's progress. Dayton returned from Iraq last month after giving up his post as the military head of the hunt for weapons as part of a routine rotation. Marine Brig. Gen. Joseph J. McMenamin became director of the Iraq Survey Group on June 12. The intelligence community, meanwhile, hopes the trials and interrogations of <font color=blue>"high-level detainees"<font color=black> by the new Iraqi government could yield more information about Saddam's weapons programs, Warner said. <font color=blue> "The Iraqi people are still concerned that some remnants of this program are yet to be found,"<font color=black> Warner said. A defense official speaking on condition of anonymity Tuesday, said the survey group has not yet found any new evidence of Saddam weapons. While there are <font color=blue>"all kinds of documents"<font color=black> showing his intent to produce weapons of mass destruction, there is <font color=blue>"no treasure map that shows 'Here is where the missing munitions are,'"<font color=black> the official said. <font size=3> Copyright 2004 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. nola.com

To: Sully- who wrote (3573)	8/17/2004 6:00:15 PM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 35834

Saddam agents on Syria border helped move banned materials By Rowan Scarborough THE WASHINGTON TIMES Saddam Hussein periodically removed guards on the Syrian border and replaced them with his own intelligence agents who supervised the movement of banned materials between the two countries, U.S. investigators have discovered. <font size=4>The recent discovery by the Bush administration's Iraq Survey Group (ISG) is fueling speculation, but is not proof, that the Iraqi dictator moved prohibited weapons of mass destruction (WMD) into Syria before the March 2003 invasion by a U.S.-led coalition. Two defense sources told The Washington Times that the ISG has interviewed Iraqis who told of Saddam's system of dispatching his trusted Iraqi Intelligence Service (IIS) to the border, where they would send border inspectors away. The shift was followed by the movement of trucks in and out of Syria suspected of carrying materials banned by U.N. sanctions. Once the shipments were made, the agents would leave and the regular border guards would resume their posts. <font color=blue><font size=3> "If you leave it to border guards, then the border guards could stop the trucks and extract their 10 percent, just like the mob would do,"<font color=black> said a Pentagon official who asked not to be named. <font color=blue>"Saddam's family was controlling the black market, and it was a good opportunity for them to make money." <font color=black> Sources said Saddam and his family grew rich from this black market and personally dispatched his dreaded intelligence service to the border to make sure the shipments got through. The ISG is a 1,400-member team organized by the Pentagon and CIA to hunt for Saddam's suspected stockpiles of WMD, such as chemical and biological agents. So far, the search has failed to find such stockpiles, which were the main reason for President Bush ordering the invasion of Iraq to remove Saddam. <font size=4> But there is evidence of unusually heavy truck traffic into Syria in the days before the attack, and with it, speculation that some of the trucks contained the banned weapons. <font color=blue> "Of course, it's always suspicious,"<font color=black> the Pentagon official said. The source said the ISG has confirmed the practice of IIS agents going to the border. Investigators also have heard from Iraqi sources that this maneuver was done days before the war at a time of brisk cross-border movements. That particular part of the disclosures has not been positively confirmed, the officials said, although it dovetails with Saddam's system of switching guards at a time when contraband was shipped. The United States spotted the heavy truck traffic via satellite imagery before the war. But spy cameras cannot look through truck canopies, and the ISG has not been able to determine whether any weapons were sent to Syria for hiding. In an interview in October, retired Lt. Gen. James R. Clapper Jr., who heads the U.S. agency that processes and analyzes satellite imagery, said he thinks that Saddam's underlings hid banned weapons of mass destruction before the war. <font color=blue> "I think personally that those below the senior leadership saw what was coming, and I think they went to some extraordinary lengths to dispose of the evidence,"<font color=black> said Gen. Clapper, who heads the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency. <font color=blue>"I'll call it an 'educated hunch.' " <font color=black> He added, <font color=blue>"I think probably in the few months running up prior to the onset of combat that I think there was probably an intensive effort to disperse into private homes, move documentation and materials out of the country. I think there are any number of things that they would have done." <font color=black> Of activity on the Syrian border, Gen. Clapper said, <font color=blue>"There is no question that there was a lot of traffic, increase in traffic up to the immediate onset of combat and certainly during Iraqi Freedom. ... The obvious conclusion one draws is the sudden upturn, uptick in traffic which may have been people leaving the scene, fleeing Iraq and unquestionably, I'm sure, material as well." <font color=black> He also said, <font color=blue>"Based on what we saw prior to the onset of hostilities, we certainly felt there were indications of WMD activity. ... Actually knowing what is going on inside a building is quite a different thing than, say, this facility may well be a place where there may be WMD." <font color=black> The Iraq Survey Group, which periodically briefs senior officials and Congress, is due to deliver its next report in September. In addition to interviewing hundreds of Iraqis, the ISG has collected and cataloged millions of pages of documents, not all of which have been fully examined. Although Syria and Iraq competed for influence in the region, they shared the same Ba'athist socialist ideology and maintained close ties at certain government levels. The United States accused Syria during the war of harboring some of Saddam's inner circle. <font size=3> washtimes.com

To: Sully- who wrote (3573)	9/5/2004 4:47:35 AM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 35834

<font size=4>BBC: Saddam Almost Got Nuke from A. Q. Khan <font size=3>LGF <font size=4> A new BBC miniseries has a bombshell revelation, in every sense of the term: shortly before the first Gulf War, Saddam Hussein came <font color=blue>“within a whisker”<font color=black> of purchasing a complete, off-the-shelf nuclear device from Abdul Qadeer Khan’s Islamic nuclear black market. This ought to be huge news. But it isn’t. It’s a tiny blip in a BBC show mostly about Libya. There’s no transcript online, but you can listen to the audio here: <font color=blue> Dirty Wars.<font size=3> bbc.co.uk <font color=black>(Hat tip: tictoc.) littlegreenfootballs.com