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Politics : Proof that John Kerry is Unfit for Command -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: lorne who wrote (8441)	9/8/2004 2:35:07 PM
From: Chas.	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 27181

336 hours of logged fly time in a F102 Delta Dagger is awesome......considering everytime you strapped into one of those guided missles you were saying your prayers for a safe return...F102 Delta Daggers & F106 Delta Darts were awesomely fast fighter-interceptors for the day....their only role was to get up ...intercept a heavy...and whatever came next including ejecting....I served 5 years with ADC and these jets....it would have been a hell of a lot safer where Kerry was and only 120 days...... most people today have no clue, no idea of what went down in the 60s...70s....sad... regards

To: lorne who wrote (8441)	9/8/2004 3:02:10 PM
From: Ann Corrigan	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 27181

Great. Is the UN helping to reelect Pres Bush?: U.N.: Iraqis Shipped Metal Out of Country 07-Sep-2004 Story from AP UNITED NATIONS - Less than three months after U.S.-led forces toppled Saddam Hussein, American-appointed Iraqi authorities began shipping thousands of tons of scrap metal out of the country, including at least 42 engines from banned missiles, according to a new report from U.N. weapons inspectors circulated Tuesday. The scrap exports also included equipment that could be used to produce weapons of mass destruction, said the report, which was to be presented to the U.N. Security Council on Wednesday. The report says export of the materials was handled by the Iraqi Ministry of Trade, which was under the direct supervision of U.S. occupation authorities until June 28, when the Americans handed power to Iraq's interim government. The report criticized "the systematic removal" of items subject to U.N. monitoring from a number of sites. The U.N. inspectors, who are barred from Iraq, said commercial satellite photos show that several important sites once used to manufacture missiles and precursors for chemical weapons have been destroyed or cleaned out. The report also said it was impossible to know what happened to U.N.-monitored equipment with the potential for making banned weapons. The study includes a lengthy analysis by the inspectors on the range and weapons-carrying capabilities of Iraq's pilotless drone aircraft - a subject of intense debate before last year's U.S.-led invasion of Iraq which was revived again this year. The Bush administration cited the threat posed by the remotely piloted vehicles in making its case to invade Iraq. But the inspectors reported that their lengthy analysis found no evidence that Iraq's drones could disperse chemical or biological weapons or travel beyond a 92-mile limit, imposed on Iraq after the first Gulf War in 1991. The report by the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, known as UNMOVIC, cautioned, however, that it did not have access to information from U.S. inspectors in the Iraq Survey Group who are still in the country and expected to produce a major report later this month. Their chief, Charles Duelfer, told Congress on March 30 that one of Iraq's drones went far beyond that limit. When the Security Council imposed sanctions on Iraq after its 1990 invasion of Kuwait, U.N. weapons inspectors started tagging equipment that had potential dual use in both legitimate civilian activities and banned weapons production. Interviews with 20 people involved in the scrap metal trade in Jordan revealed that the first Iraqi scrap metal started arriving in June 2003, followed by stainless steel and other more valuable alloys later last summer, the report said. Scrap yard managers estimated that 60,000 tons passed through Jordan's largest free trade zone in 2003, and an additional 70,000 went through until June this year, the report said. U.N. inspectors were told this was "only a small part of all scrap materials exported from Iraq to the other countries that border Iraq and further to Europe, North Africa and Asia," it said. U.N. inspectors were also told that "a lot of high quality industrial production equipment from facilities all over Iraq had been purchased by unnamed contractors at low cost, dismantled and moved out of the country," the report said, adding that this could include equipment subject to U.N. monitoring. In Jordanian scrapyards, U.N. inspectors found 20 SA-2 missile engines in June that could be used in banned Al Samoud 2 missiles and four chemical-related vessels made of corrosion-resistant material that had been tagged. Trading company representatives said the vessels were dismantled from the chemical industrial complex near Fallujah, 40 miles west of Baghdad, and U.N. inspectors confirmed this by comparing the serial numbers to those listed on the U.N. tags. A Rotterdam scrap company discovered 22 additional tagged SA-2 missile engines in early July in a shipment from Turkey, it said. U.N. inspectors said Jordan and the Netherlands have agreed to allow them to observe the destruction of the engines and the other tagged equipment. Among the sites which the U.N. said were critical to its inspection and from which materials had been removed, the report cited the Al Samoud Factory, a major missile facility about 20 miles west of Baghdad, that was razed. The whereabouts of 18 SA-2 missile engines, seven high-tech machines that could be used to produce precision parts for missiles, and other tagged equipment essential to missile production are unknown. Similarly, the report said, the Fallujah 2 and 3 units, which were part of Iraq's main Muthana chemical weapons production establishment, "have been completely emptied and destroyed."